Fifteen minutes with: Mark Sholtez

Mark Sholtez speaks to yourGigs ahead of the release of his latest album The Distance Between Two Truths, recorded with Larry Klein in the legendary Sunset Studios in LA.

yG: So you are just on the promo circuit waiting for  the album to come out?

MS: It is weird and equally exciting part of it where you do have to go around and tell the story a thousand times, but I’m also incredibly excited that the record is going to come out so the two things kind of counter each other out.

yG: Is actually good having the actual physical product out?

MS: I got a coy of the physical record last week, so it all kind of becomes real then. Once it’s out – the week it is out there is a measurable thing there, people either bought it or they didn’t, but before that happens there is that whole ‘anything can happen from here’ moment, that is the exciting part for me.

yG: How closely does the finished product resemble what you first had in mind for the album?

MS: I think the actual finished album really closely resembles what I had in mind. Because the way that the songs were written, they were all acoustic guitar vocal things and I didn’t do any demos beyond just playing the songs once or twice through acoustically. Then when we built the album up around that, what I wanted was for those acoustic performances to really be at the heart of everything and for the album to feel the way those songs did acoustically, and I think it does.

yG:  Everything really seemed to fall in place for you and happened quite quickly for your debut album – how was that for you and did it affect how you approached this album?

NS: It was a bit of a whirlwind around the first thing, I sent off a demo and ten days later I had a record deal and was in new York, which was just nuts. Then it was four weeks later and I was back in New York actually recording the album, an all of that opportunity just came rushing past me so quickly that I feel like I’m sort of floating around in it a little bit, on that first record. But on this album I really carefully considered exactly what I wanted to do with the album and with the time and how I wanted everything to feel  and really trusted my instincts and was more in the drivers seat this time around.

yG: Do you think there was any added expectation or pressure because of the success of the first album?

MS: you do feel it a little bit, but I’ve just let the song writing and what I want to do as an artist really guide me, and once the record was made then its kind of up to the music to connect so I don’t feel any great pressure in that respect. I’ve always just subscribed to making music that I wanted to listen to.  That I honestly connect with Then if other people can connect to that then that’s a great bonus.

yG: You wrote something like 80 songs in between this album and the last one – was it hard to cut down the ones that made the album?

MS There’s a few songs that wont go away – that are kinda hanging around saying ‘what about me?’ and I may start to fold those into the live show. And I’m sure a few of those tunes will turn up in a little side project, or bonus tracks of even the next album that I do. The core of the album when it came time to cut it back about 30 of them made it to the shortlist and when I got together with Larry Klein and we talked about what we wanted to do and we both made lists of 15 that we wanted to do and we both had exactly the same lists. So from there it was the fact that we realised we were both making the same album so we just set about getting down and doing it.

yG: What influence was Larry Klein on the album and was it hard to find someone who was on the same wavelength as you for the album?

MS: It was a huge leap of faith with Larry, although I am a huge fan of his work and I targeted him to do this for very specific reasons. I spoke to him once on the phone and we had about an hours phone conversation and I’d never met him and decided to make an album together. And when I got to LA day one of pre-production was the first day I’d ever met him, so we sat down and had a drink and I started playing him the songs acoustically and we started to shape the record. What surprised me was how quickly he got to the heart of what I was all about, having never met me before never seen me play live, he had heard some demos and that’s it and he knew more about me than I knew about me. Its testimony to how musical he is and how quickly he picked up the influences and where he heard I should be. I was really open to what he thought and he’d r challenge me about a lot of the song writing. We’d have a look at a couple of songs every day and we’d challenge everything lyrically to make sure very line needed to be there and every chord change was serving the song and then I’d go away and re-write and some times we’d keep the changes and sometimes we’d keep it where it was at the start and it was a very open exchange of ideas and I just immediately trusted him with this music, which is great.

yG: Did you enjoy the history of Sunset Sounds studios?

MS: Yeah that was really cool for me. As a kid I was a huge Van Halen fan and the first two Van Halen records were recorded in hat room that I was in, and the Doors and the Beach Boys, Lennon & McCartney, Zeppelin. There’s definitely a feeling in there. You walk along the hallways and there are all these gold records and you definitely think, man some serious music has been made in here, so if any of that rubs off at all we’re in great shape.

yG: You have moved from writing songs on piano to now writing on guitar – what bought that about and how has it affected your song writing processes?

MS: With the first record I kind of played almost no guitar, just a few monkey chords to entertain myself, so when I went to promo that first record I couldn’t do any of those little acoustic things, because there are never pianos anywhere and also you don’t get to write on the road, because there wouldn’t be anywhere to play.  So I would unravel the guitar more and more, and started to do a bunch of acoustic performances. So when I actually heavily into to writing this album it was all written on guitar, and most of it was written in hotel rooms, or at least started and finished at home. That was a huge catalyst for that change, just not being in a room that ahs a piano in it and wanting to play music.

yG: Have you become a bit of a guitar nerd now?

MS: There’s something about old guitars that when you get bitten by it, you just cant get enough of it, I already own about ten guitars now and being in LA there so much great old stuff around so every time you walk into a pawn shop or a second hand guitar store there’s an old sixties Gibson or something that you just have to have, so I’ve definitely started to get into a bit of guitar nerdery. I like to travel light, so I still throw one guitar in a case and throw it under the plane, but if I could justify it, I’d love to have a truckload of stuff and play a different guitar for each song.

yG: What was the reaction to the recent Lost in the City tour?

MS: The idea behind the Lost in the City tour was to go out and reconnect with the fan base from the first record and introduce them to these new songs, so I purposely did the shows acoustically, so no ones heard the record, I just wanted to present the songs in their most basic form and be able to tell a few stories about what the songs were written about and put some perspective about how the album was recorded and all that kind of stuff and also by stripping away the stylistic off the first album – I probably played half the first record and all the new album. So it just built a bridge between the two works. People are probably hearing the songs in their rawest form, that was a really cool thing to do initially, and now when these people buy the record, they’ll have that perspective and those stories that I told and those acoustic performances to reference back to. When the new album comes out we are going to be playing a full band tour now. I’ve just been rehearsing and auditioning some new dudes for the new live band and yeah, its sounding great.

yG: Do you think that gigs should be more than just playing the songs and it should be a chance to delve more into the songs as well?

MS: Yeah, I go to shows wanting to learn more about the artist or songwriter and just be invited into the back-story of all that stuff. Those classic singer songwriters like Dylan and Springsteen you get all these amazing stories along with the songs and you go home feeling like you have seen something unique and not just the band recreating the album they have just made. And that’s really what I try to being to the live thing, to mix things up just doing different versions of stuff and just do different cover versions of things so that people just to hear new music or things that have influenced me in some way, just to put a whole other level of detail on things.

 yG: Do you remember your first time on stage?

MS: I would have been early high school being in a hair metal band, so probably better not to remember that.

yG: Best gig you’ve played?

MS: It was a pretty cool feeling when I had just finished recording the Real Street album, and I went straight on the road with Dina Kroll and about three gigs in we played the Sydney Opera House. So I went from playing sort of local cover gigs around Brisbane or being in some lobby doing jazz standards to be standing onstage at the Sydney Opera House, that was pretty amazing.

yG: Worst on stage moment?

MS: I’ve been on stage a few times when the monitors have stopped working, I think I’ve played about 3,000 gigs over the years, I think once when I was younger and in a band, we’d arranged for a camera crew to follow us along and record everything, and I came off stage and realised I’d had my fly undone the whole time.

yG: One gig at history you wish you were at?

MS: Woodstock

YG: One artist you would most like to share a stage with?

MS: Lyle Lovett.