At the age of seventeen, Mark Williams has already lived several musical lifetimes. From playing with B.B. King to becoming a virtuoso guitarist and budding singer and songwriter in his own right, the Pennsylvania native is one of those special musicians that emerges only once in a great while. Equally at home and expert in rock, jazz, and punk, he may be the only teenager in the world who can expertly play Hendrix, Coltrane, and Taking Back Sunday. His new EP, Shallow Eyes is the next compelling step in a career that incredibly, is only just getting started.
When seeing Williams play, what comes across first are his incredible skills as a guitarist. That shouldn’t be a surprise, given that he’s been playing since he was four years old. Originally inspired by, of all things, seeing the Lawrence Welk band on TV, and then by his parents Elvis and Beatles’ albums, Mark yelled, “Mommy, I want a guitar,” continuously until he parents relented and started him with lessons at the age of five. Williams took to the instrument like a savant – and hasn’t let up since.
At ten, he enrolled at the Manhattan School of Music, which faced a special challenge for him. He recounts, “I was with a bunch of kids who were seventeen and eighteen and I had to really push myself to play at their level. It really made me step up.” By the age of twelve, he had enough jazz expertise to begin playing at the Deerhead Inn, the longest running jazz club in the world. And during the summers, his father, a big country music lover, took Mark down to Nashville, and guitar in tow, began sitting in at various clubs. “B.B. King’s Blues Club really embraced me,” says Mark. “The summer after seventh grade I played there three to five nights a week, and even got to play with B.B. himself!” B.B. was not the only legend that Mark earned the right to play with – others included Les Paul, Phil Woods, and Will Lee.
At fourteen, with years of playing jazz and blues under his belt, Mark rekindled his love of rock, taking to the progressive, post-emo music of artists like Taking Back Sunday, Thursday, and Alkaline Trio. Newly inspired, he formed a band with friends that he had known for years, and they began doing shows, opening up for such artists as John McLaughlin, Michael McDonald and Little River Band. Entering the studio, Mark released his first CD, Reckless, co-producing it himself and playing all of the guitars, keyboards and bass. The album was well received and as Williams says now, “It was my first real recording experience. I learned a lot about music as a whole, and having been playing jazz for years, I realized that while I love rock, my background in other kinds of music is there too – Reckless was the first step in developing my own musical style.”
Now Mark has released Shallow Eyes, an EP that reflects his enormous leap forward in his skills as a songwriter, producer and player. Mark may call the music “radio friendly progressive indie rock,” but with its nods to modern rock, Hendrix, jazz and progressive metal, what it really is is Mark Williams music. You can hear it in the opening track, “Giving Up” – incorporating a catchy and punchy riff, the song explodes into an unforgettable chorus – and then Mark brings an immense solo that only he can. There’s nothing self indulgent – it’s just three minutes of rock heaven and the sound of someone coming into his own. “Secrets,” dealing with a friend who got into heavy drug use, displays a level of insight and maturity that is both incisive and compassionate – and the passion with which the song is played and sung is overwhelming. And “Airwaves,” featuring Mark’s favorite guitar playing on the album, is immense in the variety of styles it successfully weaves. Taking in all of Mark’s influences, it portends to his development as not just a virtuoso, but an innovator.
Mark spent this summer playing on the Warped Tour and the experience left him with the desire to “get on a bus and play all the time.” As he says, “Whatever it takes for me to be a lifetime musician, that’s what I’m going to do.” But even at the age of seventeen, a time that many teenagers are just picking up a guitar, Mark Williams has proven that he is in it for the long haul. What music lovers are about to witness is the unfolding of a story that is sure to be a thrilling one – the Mark Williams story.
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