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Mark Lemhouse is no stranger to the Blues music scene here in Oregon, although his absence over the past few years may have been overlooked. When he left the area to seek acceptance in the heart of America's music history, there may have been a slight edge of contempt for the land of his youth. But, such feelings fade over time and the longings for home begin to overtake any other emotions one may have felt. Mark returned to Oregon last fall, and like the biblical prodigal son, he found himself accepted with open arms within a community that just may have the strongest Blues atmosphere in the nation today. Now, not only in Oregon, but throughout the country, the name Mark Lemhouse is about to take its place among the future stars of the Blues.
Growing up in the small Salem suburb of Keizer may not seem the most likeliest of places to find exposure to Blues music. And, it wasn't necessarily the case with Mark Lemhouse either. But, he had a musical tradition already embedded within his family. His grandmother on his father's side was a guitarist who played with little groups of friends in Montana, working through numbers by Country artists such as Jimmie Rodgers and The Carter Family. On his mother's side, his grandfather worked as a guitarist in a swing band that performed throughout Texas and New Mexico. So there should be no surprise that each of these grandparents offered Mark tips on playing the instrument.
"I received my first guitar when I was about 11," Mark quips. "One would show me how to tune it and the other taught me to play the old man G chord with the thumb hanging over the top."
Another early influence came from the '70s television sitcom, "Happy Days." It was the theme song, Bill Haley's "Rock Around The Clock," with its strong Rockabilly rhythm, that made Mark perk up and realize that he liked music! To this day, Mark still cites Haley's classic as being his favorite piece of all time.
From there his tastes became a little more heavy. Popular bands such as Guns N' Roses dominated the radio during Mark's teen years in the late 1980s, but he found himself drawn more toward older Rock bands such as Cream and Led Zeppelin. He didn't know what it was called, but he knew that the songs he preferred all had the same basic feel. He later discovered that it was their base in the Blues. Like a whole different generation of music fans in the 1960s and '70s, hearing this music for the first time, Mark began scanning liner notes. Finding recurring names such as Willie Dixon and Chester Burnette caused him to dig deeper into the music's roots. And, it opened a new-found love for the music known as the Blues, making him want to play the guitar with much more vigor than ever before.
In 1989, Mark graduated from high school and began attending classes at Oregon State University in Corvallis. He also started visiting a local club in the college town that offered live music, using a fake ID. Here Mark learned that Blues music was still going strong and he needed to look no further than Portland to find world-class artists in his own midst. Shows by Curtis Salgado, Lloyd Jones and the No Delay Band with Peter Dammann on guitar were personal favorites.
"And Terry Robb!," Mark exclaims. "He'd play finger-picking style and be as fast as anybody else using a pick. He made me say, 'I'm going to throw my pick away now and do that.' Terry has that duality about him. He could play solo and he could play with bands. He could do acoustic or electric. He's at the top, you know. Around here or anywhere! Seeing him play like that made me want to play guitar more than just inside my house."
So, Mark started working in various throw-together bands around Corvallis. Stints with groups that sometimes wouldn't last more than just 10 days. Being in college meant there were other priorities other than music for most and Mark still feels amazed that he was able to graduate on time since music preoccupied his mind so much of the time. Another reason why the bands failed to last was due to his differing tastes. While much of his peers at the time wanted to play contemporary sounds such as Nirvana or Mudhoney, Mark's attention was much more focused on people like Albert King or B.B. King.
"I couldn't do the alternative stuff, because I didn't know it," says Mark. "My head was too far into the Blues at that point."
Frequent travels to Portland or Eugene also allowed Mark to catch performances by nationally-known musicians. People like B.B. King, Little Charlie & The Nightcats and Albert Collins. He continued working with the off-the-cuff groups, playing electric guitar. At least until he was 21, at which point a new outlook took hold on his vision of the Blues.
That revelation was the purchase of an album by Lightnin' Hopkins. It made him dig out his old acoustic guitar. That Hopkins recording led to about 40 more Hopkins albums, and then to Charlie Patton, Bukka White and Fred McDowell. Mark sold all of his electric equipment and began exploring acoustic Blues, exclusively. He stopped going out, locking himself in at home for the next three or four years, listening and practicing. It was a lonely, dateless period of Mark's life, but his obsession was just too strong.
Moving to Portland around 1995, Mark started sitting in with various bands at a number of venues like Parchman Farm and Bojangles. But at the time, Portland's scene was not very acoustic-minded. For a young man in his mid-20s it was hard to find peers his own age who played acoustic guitar. So his early stint on Portland's music scene was sadly short-lived.
At this point, Mark took on a two-week job which took him to North Carolina. On his return trip home, he decided to drive across the country and see what was happening in several different cities. He visited places like New Orleans and St. Louis, but the one city which stood out in his mind was Memphis. There seemed to be clubs everywhere, not only on Beale Street, but in the neighborhoods, too. He felt that he could continue his musical career there: making money, paying his bills and getting work. Another appeal to that city was the people he encountered playing in Memphis all seemed to be his age.
Another reason for Mark's sudden decision to move half way across the country to Tennessee is a common reaction made by people as young adults. After living in one locale for so long in life, it's common to develop a disdain for the region. You reach a point in your life where you just want to get away, and that was the feeling that Mark had at the time.
Mark moved to Memphis and began settling himself into the music scene. He started out working solo in smaller acoustic venues like the Java Cabana, Master Bakers and the P & H Cafe. Somewhere along the way, he met up with traditional player Jason Freeman, and the two hit it off on a long-term friendship. Mark would eventually join the latter's band The Bluff City Backsliders, as a lap steel player to great local success. Jason was also the individual who introduced Mark to the incredible local Bluesman, Robert "Wolfman" Belfour.
At this point in his career, Robert Belfour had not yet been "rediscovered" by the folks at Fat Possum Records. He had recorded an album many years earlier in Germany with David Evans, but at this period he was working Sundays at a club on Madison Avenue called Murphy's for a typical audience of about nine people. Mark was stunned when he first heard Belfour's North Mississippi-style trance, one-and-two-chord guitar style. When he learned that Belfour was considering adding a drummer to work with him, Mark quickly volunteered for the position, having played drums a bit when he was 12 or 13.
"When 'Wolfman' played, Mark studied what he was doing," notes Robert Gordon, the acclaimed author of the Muddy Waters biography, "Can't Be Satisfied." "Then Mark would go home and try it himself." (Robert Gordon also happened to be Mark's landlord while he lived in Memphis.)
Because he had been watching the elder Bluesman, Mark was already familiar with Belfour's material and knew when the changes were coming up. Mark played with the elder Bluesman as a duo as often as he could, while at the same time, he pieced together his own outfits that embellished the same basic combination of guitar, drums and often bass. As he became better known in Memphis, he worked less and less with Belfour.
"I should've stuck that out for about another six months. I'd be in Paris now!" he laughs.
"By the time he left, Belfour was letting Mark set his amps, a sure indication that Mark understood the sound," remarks Robert Gordon.
He was able to find work quite easily in Memphis. Playing on Beale Street taught him how to get his stage show up, how to be scrappy and how to win over a crowd. They call the clubs on Beale "fish bowls," because they're all fairly small rooms with the stage in the back facing the open door to the street. People walking on the street would stop at the door, look inside and listen to a few verses. If they didn't like what they heard, then they move onto the next club. Mark knew that if he wanted to work, he had to be at his best every night. And, Mark worked a lot.
Through playing with Belfour, Mark was able to meet musicians in the city quickly. He spent time with guitarist Calvin Newborn, pianist Mose Vinson, North Mississippi fife player Othar Turner and The Fieldstones, one of Mark's favorite straight, 12-bar Blues bands.
"The musicians in Memphis were really, really open," Mark recalls. "If you could play, then it's okay. They didn't care where you were from, though they would call me 'Left Coast' sometimes. I had this open mind and everybody has a clean slate to me. I was up for anything and I would play with anybody."
And, he did, too. He'd work with so many different combinations that it wasn't uncommon for Mark to work within five different forms of American Roots music in a single week, playing everything from North Mississippi Hill Country Blues to Bluegrass to Rockabilly. He even had the opportunity to play with Sun Records' legendary artist, Billy Lee Riley at the famed studio. Mark still feels funny about performing the song "Red Hot" with Riley, having to fill in the familiar answering chorus, "Your girl ain't doodley-squat" to Riley's "My girl is red hot!" It was such a high moment for Mark that he cannot even recall whether he messed up on his guitar part or not. It was all part of a learning experience that paid off in big ways for Mark's musical credibility.
"Moving to Memphis gave Mark incredible opportunities," states Yellow Dog Records owner Michael Powers. "He was immersed in those roots and was able to learn from musicians like Robert Belfour, who are connected back to them."
"He not only sought to learn the music," adds Robert Gordon, "he actively sought the people who made it. He recognized their lifestyle and music were largely inextricable."
Mark joined up with his friend Jason Freeman's band, The Bluff City Backsliders, a couple years before leaving Memphis. A large band with eight pieces, Mark worked as the band's lap-steel guitarist. Jason's vision was of a new millennium jug band, without the jug. Their timing for the experiment was at the right moment, hitting upon the success of the film, "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" They would also play any type of gig that came their way: weddings, picnics, parties and even small functions in the antebellum mansions in the region.
While working with the Backsliders, Mark also continued playing with his own small groupings. He remembered the duality that Terry Robb possessed and wanted to place himself into that same role of being able to perform in multiple band settings. One such outfit was The Handy Three, which featured Mark on resonator guitar with slap-bass and minimal drums. It was based on a sped-up progressive form of Blues, not unlike Rockabilly. It went over so well that The Handy Three competed in The Blues Foundation's International Blues Challenge in 2001 and went all the way to the finals. Mark's not quite certain what happened at the finals, but believes they probably played longer than the allotted time causing them to lose points, but he was proud of the accomplishment and especially proud of where he had received his start, no longer ashamed of the home of his youth. He told the crowd at the competition at the New Daisy Theater how it felt to be "from the Valley . . . the Willamette Valley, and being from Keizer, Oregon, representing a Memphis band!" To Mark the achievement meant more to him than winning money. It was recognition for doing something new.
The idea for recording an album had been kicking around for awhile, but new thoughts also started coming to Mark's mind. The feeling that Oregon wasn't actually as bad as he had felt before. He missed his family and decided he wanted to return. So, the basis behind the album changed. It was no longer just a selection of the music styles he had developed over his tenure in Memphis. Now it was heartfelt; a chance to put down tracks with some of the special friends he had made in the city. Because they knew he was leaving, those friends wanted to give him something extra special in return.
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Produced by Handy Three bassist Scott Bomar for the Memphis-based Yellow Dog Records label, "Big Lonesome Road" was released toward the end of the year. Blues promoter and former Beale Street Blues Society president Dennis Brooks calls the album. "one of the two best recordings made in Memphis this past year." It continues to garner attention in a big way, debuting in the "Living Blues" Magazine charts at #13 in May. It was a fitting tribute to the time Mark spent in Memphis.
"Mark was only in Memphis for a short time," Brooks states, "but he quickly rose to the top of the list of acoustic players. He left a void when he headed back west. We miss him."
Robert Gordon reflects, "Mark took a lot of Memphis with him. I'm glad that he's still spreading it to others in distant places."
But,
besides the fact that Mark returned to Oregon to be near his family again, there
was also another reason, the vital Blues community of Portland. His perception
is that Portland may be the biggest Blues town in the country at this time,
with numerous Blues musicians and lots of fans to support it. For him, it was
not a big stretch to go from Memphis to Portland and be able to find
work.
Mark explains: "The fellas in Memphis were people I respect so much. I hope they never leave Memphis, because I love the city like my second home town. I love what they're doing there with the music now. It's vibrant and it has a swagger that shows why music in Memphis is still so good. I want it to be that way for my own home town. When somebody comes to Portland and asks, 'What's the genre like out here? Who's the good guy to go see?' I want to be that guy!"
Mark Lemhouse is finding more and more gigs between Portland and Salem, while still being called back to the Mid-South for performances this summer. And, he's building respect as well.
"He's a great Memphis-style player with a genuine foot in the river of music we live within," points out Portland guitarist Joe McMurrian. "He has an eye on progressive change. Acoustic Blues is not easily grasped respectfully by most Blues musicians, but Mark has weaved it up quite well."
Michael Powers continues, "The great Blues players today, people like Alvin Youngblood Hart, can reconcile the tension between two essential, but somewhat contradictory, directions in Blues: the need for authenticity, to stay true to the roots of the music, and the need for originality and innovation. Mark has the rare ability to assimilate Blues roots and make the music his own fresh and distinctive."
The return of Mark Lemhouse lends a great deal of promise on the direction of Portland's Blues music future, as well as that for the entire genre altogether. No longer the shy youngster who sought chances to sit in with the local bands for a chance to learn, he's now the person that the area's new musicians can look to and wish to emulate.
Welcome home, Mark!
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© 2003 Cascade Blues Association