Mark Geary
New York -1993
From what I remember…. I had started playing shows - supports, late night gigs, the parks, the subways and even at open mic's. One in particular stands out, in the sidewalk cafe on Avenue A, whose M.C. Latch became a friend and a confidante. My brother Karl was running the Sin-é cafe with Shane Doyle on St. Mark's Place, this helped while I was coming to terms with the enormity of my move from Dublin to New York. Where to live, how one made money, where could I play shows, and all the other questions that needed answering?

You could still play in CBGB's - if you could guarantee you could bring a crowd, or as happens most, you didn't mind playing at 3am on a Monday to no one and with no money to show for it. "The walls, the waitress and the weirdo's" as "Latch" would say.

Giuliani was the mayor of New York, having made a name for himself as a district attorney, prosecuting the likes of John Gotti from the Gambino crime family, who was very much the Godfather of the times.

A pizza slice cost a dollar, which increasingly became the only source of food and nutrition for the hard nights when no money was made. This was also how you could bribe your band mates into playing, you'd buy the pizza on the way home.

There were coffee shops, like Sin-é - that acted more like mini orphanages for the transplanted and the disposed, people writing plays, people nodding out, people hiding from the heat or the cold, from the landlord or the law.

New York somehow offered me a chance to reinvent myself, it offered me shelter if I was willing to work late and hustle, friendship to people on a first name basis but without knowing their details but what I wanted more than anything was to play music, to get these songs out of my head, to record and see where it took me but each door seemed bolted shut; I was at a loss as to how people went about finding a way in.

New York 2009
I sit in a cafe off of 2nd avenue. I always seem to find myself in coffee shops in New York, I know more people through the hours and years I have hung out in them, years can go by and I will walk into one and see someone I know. It’s a feeling that I have just stepped outside for a little and here I am again, seeing the people who had formed my first impressions of New York, all these years later.

We are recording three shows over a week long period; I sit here with a half read book and half written set list, nervous about tonight.

Each show turned out so differently, each live show is so utterly different. The crowd change. The feeling in the room changes, the sound of your foot as you stamp along to the songs, sound different, my voice through the monitor in each club - different,
How does this all work!?

How do you record a show that captures the essences of what it is you do as a musician? The truth is that it's a rare thing; the hope is that you trust yourself enough that you have the tape running while you are on, that it translates unto a CD, that this was a moment. Not just a version of a song, but a feeling and communion between you and your audience. The cynic's will tell you -"it's all been done before" - live performance is a vehicle for your CD sales and you move from town to town hawking your music and climbing the rung of the slippiest ladder you've ever known but tonight at least, I have come here, with a clear idea of what and where I came from, and why I do what I do, New York for all it's madness, for all the pitfalls and crushing defeats, also has a tale to tell and a lesson to teach if you sit and listen long enough and if you remain teachable.
That’s what I've learned
Love Mark Oct 2009