This interview was conducted in early 2005 near the release of Mark Mulcahy’s In Pursuit Of Your Happiness. Special thanks to Mark, Elsa from Mezzotint, and Robert from Loose.

Speaking with Mark Mulcahy solidified him as a hero in my book. He came off as friendly, articulate, and very cool. The former Miracle Legion frontman just released his third solo album, and also one of the best records of 2005, In Pursuit Of Your Happiness. You may recognize Mulcahy from his appearances on The Adventures Of Pete & Pete. He scored the popular early 90’s program, which will see the release of its first season on DVD May 17th. I spoke with Mark about his new album, the ups and downs of technology, his upcoming tour itinerary, playing Allman Brothers covers with J Mascis, writing theater productions with cartoonist Ben Katchor, his love for pigs, and more.

Hugh: You had a show at the Bishop’s Lounge last night. How was it?

Mark Mulcahy: We played a pretty long set, and then Ray…you know Miracle Legion? Ray and the old drummer [Jeff Weiderschall] were there, so we played one song at the end. That was a treat.

H: How would you compare the recording process of In Pursuit Of Your Happiness to Fathering & SmileSunset?

MM: On Fathering, I played everything. It was completely in a vacuum. I really liked doing it that way. SmileSunset was a lot of that, but I got just a few people. I had a drummer, a guy that I work with a lot. This one was the exact opposite of all that. I had the songs, and some of them were more finished than others. I didn’t play much of anything, just the rhythm guitar, and concentrated on the thing I’m most comfortable with, which is the vocals. I had a whole bunch of different people do the extra stuff and write down most of the basic tracks as a trio, which is sort of the normal way you make a record. Pull a basic track, and then add to it. It was completely different, and I’m very happy doing it that way. I really liked it.

H: I read that SmileSunset took nearly a year to record.

MM: SmileSunset, strangely enough, took exactly a year. This one took more time, but most of the excess was due to the technology, not so much the product part of it. It was done digitally as opposed to with tape. Once you do that you can spend forever. You could be doing it as long or as short as you want because you can always go back and add or change a little thing. Its always right there, like its just waiting for you to come back to it. Technology saves a lot of time on one end, but on the other end, it gives you this idea that you’re never finished. You have to say, “Ok, I’m finished. You have to actually decide you’re done.”

H: J Mascis of Dinosaur Jr. and Joey Santiago of The Pixies appear on the new record. Have you been friends with both of them for a long time? MM: J lives around where I live, Massachusetts, and I played a gig with him in London when he was playing as J Mascis + The Fog. We had a good time playing that gig. They do this thing up here every year called Transperformance, where a lot of the bands from Northhampton pick a theme and everybody imitiates a band. A couple of years ago it was southern bands, so me, him, and three or four other guys did The Allman Brothers.

We had never played together, but we had a great time. I said to him, “Dude, I’m making a record if you want to play on it.” He’s like, [Mark proceeds to do a funny J Mascis impersonation] “Yeah, you know I’m around,” or some vague answer. It was just real organic. He came in and played for the day. You know, he’s great. Joey, I don’t really know him too well. Myles [Mangino], the guy that produced the record with me, is the lighting man for The Pixies. Miracle Legion played a few times with The Pixies, and his family is from around here. He didn’t actually ever come to the studio. Again, with the technology, you can do it anywhere, so he did it at his studio in California. It was real easy to do, but Myles facilitated the whole thing.

H: Over the last few years, you’ve done some theater work with Ben Katchor, including your latest project, The Rosenbach Company. How did you jump into this field? What made you want to get into that?

MM: Ben is a really well known cartoonist, however well known a cartoonist can be. He came to a couple Miracle Legion shows a long time ago, and we met eachother, and sort of became friends. I’m not sure why he started talking about doing an opera. Its a little restrictive to do a comic strip that has six panels and still gets the point across. Somehow, he imagined me singing and he had this idea that I’m real good at putting text to music. Things like that, which are complicated because there’s a lot of people, and because it takes a lot to be able to put it on, require grants from somebody. But he was to get a grant, and once we had that, we were off to the races. I didn’t know what it would be like, but writing it was really fun, and I was also in both of them. That’s kind of weird, I think, for the composer of something to be in it too.

H: Whatever works.

MM: Yeah, so I dug it. I had a great time. We had an awesome group. The band was amazing. The people that were in it were really cool. We’re trying to stage those things again if we can, but its not anything like what I normally do, where you can pretty much book a show and go play.

H: How large a tour are you planning to promote the new record?

MM: I’m willing to play as much as I can. I’m gonna have a band. Most of the tours I’ve done since I’ve gone on my own have been just me, or maybe one other person I’ll meet in the town or something. Since I’m going to have some kind of band, I’m more eager to go out and play a lot. I guess I came up playing with a band, so it doesn’t feel as satisfying to play a lot of shows on the road by yourself. Its fun, and its cool, and I like doing it, but all the traveling is very lonely, and musically, its a little bit lonely as well.

I try to book as many shows as I can. At the moment, I’m gonna go play about a week of shows in England, but they are mainly promotional, and I think I’m gonna play a couple of shows in Los Angeles, which is also kind of promotional. Once that’s all done, I’m hoping that over the summer and fall that I’ll play a regular full-on tour. Hopefully, a lot in America because I haven’t really done that on my own. Miracle Legion was a band that was on the road all the time, so I haven’t kept up with that.

MM: Where do you live?

H: I’m in Virginia.

MM: Which town?

H: Northern part, probably about 45 minutes outside of D.C.

MM: Is that anywhere near Charleston, West Virginia?

H: Probably about an hour from there.

MM: So, you’re an hour from places where people play gigs.

H: Pretty much.

MM: Do you go to any gigs much?

H: Yeah, I try to get into D.C. every now and then to see some bands. I have yet to see you live, but I was wondering what kind of crowds would you say your concerts attract, I guess in terms of demographics.

MM: Aliens.

{Laughter}

MM: I’m sure its people that liked Miracle Legion, although, since its been a while since that was actually a living thing, I don’t know how many people are still in that circuit of going out to shows. At this point, I have three records of my own. I have this history with Miracle Legion, and then I did this little Polaris/Pete & Pete thing in the middle there, and they all have their own little place. There’s this great group of people that have embraced all three, and that’s what I dig, somebody that can come into it through Polaris, and then you find your way to the other things. I think that’s great because, in my head, they’re really different.

H: I think they all stand out on their own.

MM: I went at them differently, so they feel really different to me, but I’m singing them all. The same with the opera. I think those will be records one day. They all have this different place or musical approach, but since I’m singing them all they have this one thing in common.

H: What was your experience doing Pete & Pete like?

MM: Even though we were on it once, and we’re in the credits, that was the extent of being involved with it as part of the production. The rest of it was just recording and writing music. I don’t know if you know the name Will McRobb or Chris Viscardi. Those guys are the writers and producers. I didn’t deal with Chris as much, but Will was the producer of that music by phone in a weird way. It was me doing it, but plenty of stuff got rejected because it just didn’t seem to fit his sensibility. It was a different thing to write music and have somebody go, “Nah, that’s no good.” He has great taste, and also knew what he wanted. I think he could get involved in making music for TV, or movies, or Hollywood, or whatever.

I did some music for a movie called Spring Forward. Its Ned Beatty, Liev Schrieber, and a whole bunch of cool actors. My friend [Tom Gilroy] was the director, so I did the credits song. Its a track off of SmileSunset called “A Cup Of Tea & Your Insights.” That’s how that whole album got started. I did that song, and I was working with a guy that I did that record with, and we kept going. Tom Gilroy is the guy who did that movie, and he came into the studio with us, and he also knows what he wants. It seems weird to work with somebody that’s telling you “No” and “Yes” about what your doing with your music, but when they know what they want, and you understand each other, that’s a great collaboration. It would be like those Paul Thomas Anderson movies with Jon Brion’s music. Those are great. Wes Anderson always gets to have the great music, and I picture him being really into music and knowing what he wants.

H: Mezzotint is the label that puts out your stuff. How did it originate?

MM: Its pretty much my label with a couple of people that help me run it. There’s a publicist, Robert, and then there’s a distribution company. There’s Elsa, who takes all the phone calls, or mostly the emails these days, and Tommy, who basically does the shipping part of it. Its pretty small, and we haven’t put anything out that I’m not on yet. I’d kind of like to do that, even though I don’t want to get a bunch of records and tapes. Not many people approach us, but sometimes they do, and usually we just can’t. Its not a judgement of talent, but we have a hard enough time getting any records out. We almost put out a Butterflies Of Love record once. It wouldn’t have satisfied me not being on it totally because I did play drums on that, but it would have been cool to put it out. I would highly recommend them. Super great band.

H: Do you have a favorite song on the new record?

MM: There’s a song called “A World Away From This One.” That turned out great, but I’m pretty happy with the whole thing.

H: There’s so many good songs on it. One of them is “He Vanished.” Is there a particular story behind it?

MM: Not to pull that cheesy answer of, “I’d rather people figure it out themselves,” but I would rather. Sometimes, its great to say, “That’s totally about Fidel Castro or something.” The last few gigs I’ve played, we did a couple Miracle Legion songs and I had a few drinks, and I was like, “This song is about this…” As the years go by, its cool to explain it, but generally, people have their own idea, and I kind of like that. Somebody once said you just want to be 50% of the equation, and get people started thinking, and let the other 50% be their own idea.

H: Do you still enjoy performing the Miracle Legion stuff live?

MM: The other night when Ray & Jeff were there, its cool to play that way sometimes, but there are songs I would love to play that I can’t play if its just me playing guitar. There are some songs I would really enjoy playing. To use the FM term, its like a deeper cut. There’s certain ones that are the hit songs, and there’s like ten that are the main tunes, but there’s a bunch of other ones that we probably didn’t even play as Miracle Legion, or that we did once in a while that I would like to play.

H: You’ve been on a couple compilations recently. You had a song called “Part Of The Show” in the last issue of Comes With A Smile, there’s a love songs album you were on, and also something called the Sigmatropic International Project. Can you explain that?

MM: The record was originally all done in Greek from these haiku poems by George Seferis. Robert Wyatt is one of the people on it. I can’t think of all of the people, but they did it in English. Its probably a little bit lost in the English translation of those haikus, but its like techno music. I’m not sure if that’s the right word anymore. I just had to sing over it. I didn’t have any other involvement. You could choose three or four of them. It wasn’t too hard. You just make up your own melody or approach to it, so I sent it in, and I think they used one or two of them. I’ve been in Comes With A Smile a couple times. I think its just beautiful. They demand/request a track that isn’t on anything else, so that was no problem to do. What was the other one?

H: Isn’t It Romantic: 100 Love Poems By Younger American Poets. It was a book of love poems accompanied by a CD containing exclusive tracks.

MM: I recorded that song ["Don't Talk Crazy"] really great, but when I turned it in, it had some weird buzz on it. I had to do it again, and it was a deadline thing, so I’m not happy with that version of it. That’s such a great book, and its a cool record. I’m not usually that hung up on the audio end of something, but that one in particular, I did it at home, and I didn’t nail it as much as I wish I had. Still, I love it, and people seem to like that song. I’ll probably re-record it sometime, and do something else with it.

H: Do you have a favorite artist that you have performed with?

MM: I did some shows with Mary Margaret O’Hara. She only made one record in her life. Five or six years ago, maybe longer, I was playing solo, and she came to New York. I opened for her and I played drums with her. That was the most unlikely, incredible thing for me. I’ve played with Pere Ubu a lot, and I’ve always been a big fan of them. Probably, the coolest thing was playing with The Sugarcubes, which was a long time ago. That was when Ray & I made this record called Me & Mr. Ray, and we were a two-piece. We opened for them for a month, and they were like the new thing, and every gig was completely packed and sold out. We were new to being a two-piece, and it was kind of out of body. Even though it involved a lot of drinking, it was probably the most memorable tour.

H: Is Me & Mr. Ray being re-issued?

MM: I don’t think so. Most of our records are in some legal space. The first record I put out with Mezzotint was called Portrait Of A Damaged Family.

H: Is that the one being re-issued?

MM: That’s gonna be re-issued. Its been out of print. We added a couple songs to it, and re-did the artwork. It was mainly the artwork that was the stumbling block because we put it out in this strange packaging that we ran out of. Its gonna be a little different, but essentially the same.

H: The album art for the new record has a pig theme, and there’s a video on it that features you hanging out in a pig pen. Are those your pigs?

MM: No, they’re not my pigs, but I did spend a lot of time with them over that summer. They were just great. They were really funny. Pigs are very smart. They are like land dolphins. They were fun to hang around with.

H: Where was that?

MM: At this farm outside of Northhampton. You know how I’m sort of running around with them? I did that one day, and they were just so funny. Zeke Fiddler came down one day, and I just re-enacted it. He filmed it, and it was mostly him. I was in it, but it was mainly his thing to turn it in. That was just going to be the video, but he sent me a bunch of stills, which we used as the pictures. Somehow, things accidentally made sense. The whole thing worked perfectly. It felt political, but it felt beautiful, and everything felt right about it.

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