Mark Mallet

Mark was six when his parents enrolled him in piano lessons. "Boring," recalls Mark "I remember waiting for my older brother and sister to finish their lesson first. It was like watching a cribbage tournament. The lesson was no better."

Then one day at the age of nine, Mark picked up his father's guitar and a simple chord book. Within an hour, he'd learned how to play a song, and within a month wrote his first tune. "I still remember it," says Mark shaking his head, "'Rain, rain, I love the rain, it makes things grow....' The irony is, I ended up having to sing it at my old piano teacher's recital!"

Mark continued to play guitar feverishly, wearing out a patch of wood on his dad's guitar. "My arm was too short to reach over dad's guitar, so I had to play in front of the sound hole. He never got mad, but he did go and buy me my own guitar." Mark took a year of classical guitar in the back room of a corner store when his family lived on the flat prairies of Saskatchewan. But his passion for guitar really took off when he met Greg Funke, who became a close family friend. "Greg taught my brother Rick and I a few Chet Atkins' licks and how to play "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star" in three part harmony. Greg made guitar fun. He lit a fire in me for guitar that's never gone out."

Mark comes from a family of entertainers. His baba and dido were both actors in their youth, as was Mark, who won several awards for acting throughout school. Grampa Mallett played in a big band. "He used to sit on the front lawn at the farm and play his trumpet. The neighbours a mile away would sit on their lawn and listen.... Grampa's band (in Forestburg, Alberta) cut several records. He's the reason I love jazz and big band music so much."

"Grampa gave me my first harmonica when I was a boy. I still have it." Mark admits he couldn't play it very well, until one day he watched an episode of Different Strokes with special guest Clarence Clemons (Bruce Springsteen's sax player). "I was so moved by Clemons' melodies, that I went downstairs, plugged into my P.A., and started bending notes and playing the blues on my harmonica like there was no tomorrow. I was so stunned, because I know some guys who've worked months to bend notes." Ironically, Mark learned to play piano (this time with an interest) much the same way while an engineering student at the University of Alberta. "I sat down at a piano one day and thought, 'The notes of a guitar chord must be the same on a piano...' and within minutes I was playing. Someone walked in the room and asked me how long I've played piano. I looked up and said, 'Oh, about twenty minutes!'"

Mark's music has been influenced by a wide range of artists and styles, from one of the first contemporary Christian bands Love Song, to secular bands like The Eagles, Alabama, and Restless Heart. "My family listened to a lot of Don Williams music when I lived at home. When I go back, he's still playing, and I still love it." James Taylor, Bruce Springsteen, Glen Miller, and Steve Wariner also made up Mark's music collection when he left home. "I think I've bought all of Steve's stuff. His music is what made me say "Yes!" and helped me draw out the melodies I could hear in my head." More recently, Billy Dean, John Berry, and Collin Raye line Mark's CD shelf. "Alison Krauss is the new queen, though. Her style of music is re-defining bluegrass, and I love it." Mark's new CD "Deliver Me From Me" echoes those sentiments with haunting dobro and fiddle solos.

But the artist to hold the most albums in Mark's collection is John Michael Talbot. "My dear friend Guy Trudel, now a priest, gave me a recording of Talbot's music. When I heard the harmonies on "Behold Now the Kingdom" from one of his earlier recordings, I couldn't write another song from that day on without hearing a harmony. John made the mystical--modern, Catholicism--contemporary, at least for me."

And what would you be most likely to hear if you walked into Mark's house? "Probably Gregorian chant or the Tallis Scholars. I must be getting older."