Slaid Cleves on "Southern Discomfort" "Delightfully disturbing, or disturbingly delightful?"

I don't have the kind of finances that allow me to hire a publicist to "work" the release of my solo CD, I just have myself and my friends to rely on. But that doesn't really worry me, because even if I did the whole music industry is so confused right now I could just be setting the money on fire for all I know. When I started out making music, we were entirely on our own with no infrastructure or roadmap, making venues where we could find them and printing up our own 'zines. We didn't get our music out to everybody, sure. But we got it out to the other music freaks, just like us, and that's who we wanted to be connecting with in the first place.

When the internet came along, we jumped on it (Bad Livers had a website up in 1993, before I had a browser to even see it.) It was a great tool to communicate directly with our fans and circumnavigate the normal channels that were, and are, frankly toxic to good music making.

Oh how the times have changed, and the disruptions of the web based economies have made what once looked like a great way to connect appear today to be a swampy morass, with its once flowing pipes now choked with pap and dreck and the good stuff seemingly just as hard to access as ever. Sometimes it feels like its built that way on purpose.

Good thing I have such great friends who I'm hoping with turn their friends on to my music. Slaid Cleves is one of those friends. I sent him a copy of my debut CD, with trepidation as Slaid is a wonderful storyteller and songwriter and this was my very first songwriting effort. Here's his response:

"Hey Mark,

Great job, man.  That's one to be proud of.  I don't know if you were looking for quotes, but it certainly did inspire a few:

That's the least boring album I've heard in a long time.  Jam packed with sweetness and angst, it's delightfully disturbing (or maybe disturbingly delightful).  One thing it's not is subtle.  Recommended for any roots music/Americana fan who's been a little bored lately."

Thanks Slaid!

(I have another really great review from my pal Papa Mali, but that's going to be published in the Austin Chronicle soon!)

Here's me backing Slaid singing a Don Walser tune at the Broken Spoke:

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Texas Folklife Presents : Festival of Texas Fiddling.

Yes, not "Texas Fiddle" but "Texas Fiddling." Doesn't seem much more than semantics, but there is a real change in the wind afoot and from my perspective that's a very good thing.

I see folks other than Anglo-Texan here, do you?

The term "Texas Fiddle" has for far too long been restricted to the very narrowest band of the contemporary "contest" culture of Anglo-Texan music. To be clear here, we're talking about music played primarily to impress a judge at a contest, so as to win a cash prize. It may have started out as something quite different, but like so many American institutions, the people who started it would be hard pressed to recognize, much less enjoy, what it has become. 

In my youth, not THAT long ago, the Fiddle Contest was held at the Country Fair where there would be prizes for champion Hog Breeding, Best Apple Pie and a display of Steam Engines and Tractors. There'd be a dance band, sometimes a polka band if it was held in a Bohemian or Moravian populated county. And coincidentally, there was a Fiddle Contest; all in good fun, with age slots for everyone from the rank beginner to actual Pros.

But things changed, gradually at first but now quite completely. The "hey let's get all the neighbors together for some family fun" element has receded, replaced with atmosphere of oft-acrimonious combat, where the weak were vanquished and humiliated in public by decidedly un-neighborly out-of-towners who made a side business of snatching prize purses wherever they could. As the context changed, so too did the music. In many way it became the perfect "kudzu" of fiddling style, and testosterone boosted version of Scots-Irish traditional tunes that appealed to the listener and in many ways washed over and drowned all the many regional styles of fiddling around the whole US, much less here in Texas. It was, and is, a "white" washing of Texas culture.

But there's always been so much more to the story and it has been one of the great joys of my life to seek out and promote these other "flavors" of Texas fiddle music. This festival marks what I hope is a sea-change in how the public see "Texas" fiddling, in all it's many shades, ethnicities and communities.

(I will relate however that this festival feels really familiar. I guess maybe its because I've been actively working with, in some cases actually discovering, 80% of the participants at this event. I guess it really is true that a "prophet has no honor in his hometown;" in my 25 years in Texas hardly any of these folks got any attention at home, but I leave for good and this happens. Not sure how to feel about that, other than to be validated in my contention that these voices are worth listening to all along. Dad always said: "Pass on the credit, but take the cash!")

I first encountered border fiderelo Jose Moreno, at a Panchanga in San Benito TX while on tour with Santiago Jimenz, Jr. and Don Walser 1995. Eventually and with much prodding got Arhoolie to cut a CD with him, which lead to an invitation teaching staff of the The Festival of American Fiddle Tunes in Pt. Townsend, (and there was that time at the Blackpot Festival his drummer didn't show up and was my first and last time as a conjunto drummer!!) His music is a genuine mixture of Native American "matachine" music, Orquestra Tipica and even classic border Tex-Mex. He's a fine accordionist and mandolinist as well and not to be missed.

A very proud Polish Papa

Union Organizer/Independent Radio DJ Frank Motley introduced me to Brian Marshall's community of familial music making over 20 years ago and in that time we've been up in Pt. Townsend twice and have appeared on many stages around the US including the Lincoln Center for the Arts,  Lowell Folk Festival and the American Folk Festival on the Bangor Waterfront. We've been playing music log enough for Brian to raise up a whole second generation of Marshall Musicians, Jakub and Mika, clarinet and fiddle respectively.

Mr. Poullard

And it was through Brian I met the amazing Ed Poullard, equally deft on fiddle or one of his very sought after hand built accordions, and his Creole community as well. Ed's one of the nicest people I have ever met and his smile shines through in his fiddle playing especially.

Seanorr.com

Though he will have his "Celtic" fiddler hat pull on tight at this event Sean Orr, one of the longest collaborators I have in the music business, and I just released a CD of our collective Texas/Oklahoma traditions called "Texas Fiddle - Okie Guitar." 

KITHFOLK said "Texas fiddler Sean Orr and Texas-based, Okie guitarist Mark Rubin say there's no "right" way to play Texas fiddle, but they're wrong. THIS is the right way to play Texas fiddle. Full of heart, brimming over with camaraderie, rough-hewn and rowdy, dusty as hell, and beholden to no man. There's a freedom in this music and a powerful sense of love. All the things that make Texas great." 

I'll let Howard Rains tell you himself how he came to his calling. 

Howard Rains

I will say it involved my apartment, his artwork, a really nice Tonk Bros. Guitar, a few glasses of Portuguese Absenthe and quite a bit of yelling and screaming. It did however lead to a controversy involving the New York Times and a series of delusional and public tirades by a very well known one-time Contest winning violinist. Really, its a great story. Ask him when you see him. Seriously.

These are just the guys I've been working with for many year however and there are plenty of mighty fine fiddlers to be heard there as well. Follow this link for more info.

In Yiddish we call the feeling I have about this event as "kvelling."

Please thing about coming out and seeing what all the hub bub is about!

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The Peon and the Patron

I've been thinking a lot about patronage and peonage these days. Times are such that the arts are required to make their own way or simply go away. Everyday someone tells me how they heard my music on Spotify, and I guess that's cool. But they used to say that they bought my CD and enjoyed it. Now the trend is to not buy anything and just stream it all. Great for the listener, but it begs the question: Why should the artists continue to create content for a community that doesn't value it, even when they claim they enjoy it? Are we only to enjoy art made by the idle rich, the only people who can afford to produce it? I spent over $3000 on my last CD release and have to date recouped less than $500. Are my releases simply vanities? Dynamic conversations on every end of the question.

But frankly, I'm too old to get into all the arguments. All I can do is say "Here's my catalog."  If you like what I've been putting down all these years, then let me know the only meaningful way you can in our present society and buy something. Anything. Every little bit counts, even the .0057 cents I received from a years worth of my music streaming on Spotify: