Mark Baughman Of Mark Baughman’s Working Theory

Interview With Mark Baughman Of Mark Baughman’s Working Theory

SBS:  Welcome to our pages!  Whether you’ve been here with us in some way before, or you’re brand-new to the site, it’s probably best to get an introduction from you so that we get everyone on the same page to start.  Tell us a little bit about the history of your music, and what’s happening with it lately!?!

Mark Baughman:  While in college in Boston many years ago, I was playing the circuit of coffeehouses and bars where a lot of exceptional singer-songwriters older than me were playing and it hit me that you had to be very lucky to make a living this way.  So I gave up on my music career, focused on architecture school and I stayed away until about 10 years ago.  For all those years it was painful even to see live bands or keep up with music, because that was my real love.  I never stopped playing completely, but I was down to my old ’74 Strat (bought new) and a Martin D28 my wife bought me to try to get me playing again.  A client asked me to play guitar in a Christmas show he was putting on at his company and while working to get my chops up to do this gig I realized I was much better than I was as a kid.  Something was way different.  I started playing in cover bands and one wanted to do original music.  I figured I’d try writing again and quickly found it was more interesting to write about other people than myself.  After a few songs I started writing a Rock Opera which I called 99 and eventually produced it on stage with a filmmaker friend.  Then I wrote another r’opera called Release and produced that to a local stage.  Then there were more.

Writing songs this way released me from having to stick to one musical genre and liberated me from my own thoughts and feelings.  My skill as a guitarist developed quickly and I worked hard to be a good recording engineer so I could keep control of the creative process rather than try to express myself through other engineers, producers or musicians.

I discovered a website called Airgigs.com and over time developed my recording band of a drummer in Louisiana, keyboardist in Italy, saxophonist in Denver, female vocalist in New York and several specialists around the world.  I write as I record, send them scratch tracks with some discussion and let them run.  I engineer the recordings, and while I know others could do it technically better, I know I got what I wanted to hear.

I have a live band here in the Washington, DC area, and the guys honor me with a true devotion to performing these songs as I conceived them, although we do work up the occasional alternate arrangement.  We would play out a lot more but I have multiple sclerosis, a big fucking nuisance that has me struggling to feel my arms and legs much of the time.  Friends and I call it “Brain Thing.”

Despite, or because of, Brain Thing, I know I’m the luckiest man alive to be doing this at this time in my life.

SBS:  Let’s talk about the before and after of where you’re currently at.  What’s something about the music that you’re making now that you don’t think you could have done five years ago, and what’s something you think you’ll be able to do with your music five years from now that you can’t do today?  How have you grown as an artist/band, and what steps do you take to continue your artistic evolution?

Mark:  During the first few years I was consciously using specific genres to advance the story being told.  In a way it was an internship with a lot of musicians I admired – Floyd, Suzanne Vega, Who, Tull, CSN, Neal Diamond (yes, ND).  With my 6^th album – Divided by Zero https://www.workingtheoryband.com/divided-by-zero I felt like I was writing songs the way I sounded, not trying to sound like anyone else.  So I think I’ve solidly found my musical voice.

The challenge from here is how to grow and mature and be fresh.  Five years from now I want to hear real innovation, whatever that might mean.

SBS:  If you were to assess the overall health of the independent music scene right now, what would you say?  What are the positives and the negatives about the current state of independent music, and what do you feel like artists & bands can do to contribute to the community & help it grow beyond the music being made?  If you’re not actively looking to listen to the music of other independent artists/bands, is it really all that fair to expect anyone would listen to yours?  How do you help the scene around you grow?

Mark:  I thought music was a hard way to make a living when I stepped away in the early 1980’s.  Now I see that those were the salad days – it is incredibly hard to be a working musician now.  There are so many outlets and you have to work so hard to get the attention of an influencer who, in my case, is very unlikely to have anything in common with me.

But I think the biggest negative is that most venues look to the musicians to do their work for them: promote the shows, bring the crowd, sell the booze.  My natural audience tends to be over 40, so they’re not at the places we play, nor are they listening to the stations that would naturally have us.  I wish there were more managers and promoters out there who knew how to help me reach my audience.

SBS:  What do you consider to be the biggest accomplishment or achievement you’ve had with your music to-date?  How do you personally measure your own success – is that something that even can be measured?  Is it awards, accolades, chart position…or is your definition of success based on something entirely different?  Should success, however you define it, be something that artists are continually focused on – or is success something that naturally occurs in the course of doing what you love to do?

Mark:  I produced 3 rock operas on stage with dancers and singers and a real paying audience, and that was an absolutely amazing experience to have all those talented people working with my material, interpreting it as they thought best.  I wish everyone could have an experience in life like that.

In my mind, “success” is actually doing what I do at the level I do it, regardless of sales or plays.  The usual metrics seem so far out of reach now, I don’t even try.  I want people to come see us play because when they do they’re hooked and that is a tremendous feeling.

SBS:  When you’re working on something brand-new, and something about it just doesn’t feel like it’s coming together the way that you think it should, how do you know when it’s time to give up on it, or how do you know that it’s time to dig in even harder and find a way to make it work?  Are there distinct red flags you can hear when something’s not working?  What are the signs you look for that tell you to stop forcing the material?  What would actually encourage you to keep going with the process instead?

Mark:  My regular job is as an architect and interior designer, and effective self-critique and methodically refining the idea are essential skills one must develop to do it well.  That training helps me a lot as a musician.  When I fall in love with the song I know I can’t hear it right.  I normally let something sit for a day or week while my enthusiasm dies down a little and I can listen with less emotion.

It sounds silly but if a song brings me to tears, I know it’s working.  99% of my songs brought out a strong emotional response from me as they started to come together.  I often write with a 12 string acoustic and if the chord progression doesn’t sound beautiful on that thing, it’s never going to.  I’ve had a few songs that my gut said it just wasn’t working, so I just set them aside for later.  Sometimes I scavenged ideas in another song.

SBS:  One of the points of general consensus in the art of making music, is that we all get our sound from somewhere…we hear what we like, then more often than not, we take tiny pieces of what we love to find our own voice & approach to go on and make music in our own way.  Essentially, what I’m saying is that it’s absolutely natural to be inspired by other artists/bands, and almost every artist/band ends up having that inspiration show up in their own work in some way, shape, or form.  What the real key is though, is retaining your own organic perspective – you still wanna be original too, right?  So how do you go about doing that?  Are there artists or bands that you know have been an influence on your style & sound?  How were you able to incorporate that influence without becoming too noticeably derivative and still be yourself?  Should we embrace and celebrate our influences more than we do?  It’s almost like we try not to admit influences exist in the pursuit of being original, but it’s like, bruh…if it’s there, we can hear it.  We all borrow something from those that came before us to some extent, don’t we?

Mark:  I am from the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper / White Album generation.  Their wide variety of influences were obvious but I don’t think they were ever derivative.  The Stones were like that until Exile on Main St, and since they’ve been doing the same song over and over.

It’s the same way with movies:  John Ford told dramatically different stories with the same lead actor in the same location in the same genre – I’m talking Stagecoach, Fort Apache and The Searchers, all with John Wayne and Monument Valley.

I want to use my influences to help bring the listener to hear what I have to say as a lyricist, and I want to work those genres to be fresh for the new song.

SBS:  Has there ever been a time where you wrote something inside one of your songs…maybe it’s a lyrical line, or maybe it’s a riff of some kind…something that you did, where you surprised yourself?  I like to think we all have a moment or two where we can stand back and be amazed by something we created, and appreciate the fact that maybe, just maybe, we exceeded our own expectations of what we thought we could accomplish – you know what I mean?  Get as specific as you can so the fans out there know what they should be paying attention to when they hear it – what’s your favorite thing that you’ve written on the inside of one of your songs, and why does this particular piece resonate so much to you?

Mark:  While I think I am extremely deliberate as a lyricist, I do often wonder where the hell this or that line came from or how a dope like me came up with it.  The last two songs of Divided by Zero (“Cut Throat Razor” and “Get Me Back to Birmingham”) are alternatively about love abandoned and love realized.  Despair and hope.  They are about the same still-unresolved relationship.  We play these two songs live together and every time I look around at my bandmates after “Birmingham,” even at practice, everyone’s eyes are watering.  I am stunned that I could write something that evoked this kind of response from others.

I still think that the best song I ever wrote was “Your True Face,” from the Charmed Life album.  I wrote the main chord progression on my 12 string and soon I had the whole song arranged and thought it was really special.  I was so scared I would screw it up that I let it sit for 2 weeks before trying the lyrics, which came together in less than an hour.  As a genre of song, it is what it is and I was not all that keen on writing an epic love song.  But I don’t think I can write anything better.

https://www.workingtheoryband.com/charmed-life

SBS:  I’ve been having a lot of great debates lately about whether or not everybody that’s making music has the right to be heard…and you’d probably be surprised by how different people seem to feel about this issue.  I know where I stand on it, and I think you can all probably get an idea of what my position would be from this free interview we’re doing here & the way we run things at sleepingbagstudios…but regardless, I’m putting this question out there to you, because I’m interested in YOUR perspective.  Just because you’ve made a song, does that mean people should listen?  If your answer is yes, do your best to explain why you feel that way & why we should make a sincere effort to listen to the music of others.  If your answer is no, explain why you feel that way, but also explain why people should still be listening to your music if that’s the case – what would make your music the exception, and not follow the rule?  Is there any value to an idea that’s not finished, or a song in its demo stages, or maybe something that’s not recorded in a top-shelf studio or with good equipment – somebody still took the time to make that song to the best of their ability with the means they had to create it – should that be listened to, or not?

Mark:  Interesting how the first and last question tie together.

I have seen a lot of musicians present half-baked songs at open mics, usually presented as complete.  I think while there might be some charm to this, it really is disrespectful to the audience to demand they listen to something that you threw together and don’t believe in.  I don’t believe I have the right to be heard, but if I did it would only be because I put in the time and talent to make my very best effort for the song’s sake.

SBS:  There are ups and downs in the dynamics of almost every album we listen to, with very few exceptions.  Even those exceptions, probably still come down to more of a personal preference about what we enjoy about music and how we personally hear it, rather than anything being completely and totally “perfect” – you know what I mean?  Does an album actually need to have some kind of up/down dynamics in terms of what’s appealing to the masses in order for the best of the best songs in a lineup to be fully appreciated?  Wouldn’t every artist & band avoid the ‘down’ side (less accessible/less popular for example) if they could?  Does the ‘down’ side represent something else perhaps, like the story of an album or journey of an artist?  Is the ‘up’ side of a record as potent or noticeable if it doesn’t have a ‘down’ side to go with it?  Would a completely balanced album somehow be boring if it didn’t have the ups/downs that most have?  Do we HAVE to like every single song on a record for it to be considered complete?  Are the dynamics of an album something anyone can really steer in the direction they want to, or are all artists & bands simply going with the strongest material they have created at the time?

Mark:  I write albums, totally old-school, and I strongly believe that an album is an art form that is best when there is a dynamic quality to it.  I normally write my songs in the same order they appear in the album, meaning that I will think to myself “I need to go here or there next to make this journey interesting.”  Like writing a book.  I want the listener to feel like they’ve had a real experience with ups and downs and humor and pathos.  If I can’t write a collection of songs and do this, maybe I’m not that good a songwriter, or maybe I need to work at it harder.  It forces me to try different things and expand my horizons.  With few exceptions, most albums I buy of popular bands are 15 versions of the same song.

The downside is that people don’t listen to albums anymore, and it is very hard to describe my music to a stranger.

SBS:  I wanna send out a shout-out to YOU from me personally – I appreciate everyone that has taken the time to talk tunes with me throughout the years, and I appreciate the time YOU have taken with this interview too.  Because this one’s a little different in the sense that it’s been sent out to multiple people and is a little more generic in that regard, I have no doubt whatsoever that we probably didn’t get to talk to you about something you wanted to talk about – so let’s fix that!  This final space is what we call the SBS Open Floor – a spot where you can say anything else you want to say to the people out there.  It can be anything at all…your main websites…something else you want them to know about you and/or your music…your favorite bands in the scene right now…the secret 11 herbs and spices to the Colonel’s secret recipe – you get the idea, and it’s probably best you choose something that suits you rather than take any of my suggestions, but feel free to take the SBS Open Floor for a ride.  Whatever it is you want the people to know, now is the prime time for you to tell’em!  Thanks again for everything – keep in touch!

Mark:  First, I want to thank you very much for this opportunity and for the very kind words you’ve written about my music.

Mark Baughman’s Working Theory performs original music written by lyricist, composer and musician Mark Baughman.  The music played by the band is characterized by well-crafted, tight lyrics addressing contemporary personal and social issues, and whose sound falls broadly into the rock music genre.  Baughman belongs to a tradition of artists such as The Who, Jethro Tull, Pink Floyd and Joni Mitchell.  Those artists focus on stories and music that support those stories, rather than sticking to the classic format of a particular genre of music.

Baughman’s story-telling-through music talents took off with the formation of Working Theory to produce and perform his rock operas, 99: A Rock Opera, Release, Energie and Victoria Falls.

Mark performs, records and produces the music first in his studio with the help of musicians from around the world collaborating online.

MBWT can be heard in its entirety at www.workingtheoryband.com.  Albums are on iTunes, Spotify and all the other mainline streaming places.

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