At the age of eighteen, 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, and his new music reflects the full range of his influences – and much more.
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, and releasing Reckless, an album he co-produced himself, as well as the EP, “Shallow Eyes.”
Currently working with producer Tim Gilles (Thursday & Taking Back Sunday) and Ben Lazar (A&R for Island Def Jam, Elektra, EMI), Mark’s new songs, such as “Lovers Into Liars” and “The Surface,” exhibit an artist that has discovered himself musically, melding his influences into something uniquely his own. Mark says, “These songs are far more organic then anything I’ve ever written. They’re rock songs, but they contain my background in jazz and other styles of music. There’s more of me in the music then there has ever been.”
Mark is currently gigging near his home in the Poconos, and after spending last summer playing on the Warped Tour, he’s clear that his desire is 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 at the age of eighteen, a time that many teenagers are just picking up a guitar, Mark Williams has already accomplished far more then many musicians do in forty years. 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.
