photo credit: Ron Vaugh
Linda Marks’ entire life has been a profound personal and musical journey. The Boston area singer-songwriter-pianist has released what many area folkies and singer-songwriters are saying is her best work yet. Her new CD, titled Moments, is racking up favorable notices with a momentum as strong as the emotional force of nature that make up the originals and standards she’s recorded on it. Yet, her Moments album came after many years of hard work and personal struggle.
Straddling the worlds of jazz music and folk, pop, and other modern genres, the Yale University graduate is difficult to pigeonhole. “I’m a singer-songwriter and that’s what I identify with. I love saxophone and my arrangements are more in the jazz but I also integrate jazz and contemporary pop and folks. That’s the best way to describe it.”
Her latest album Moments was something she focused on after losing three of her closest friends within a year. That made her appreciate time, realizing how precious our time is and how we never know when people will be there. As a singer-songwriter Marks thought about how life is made up of a series of moments.”
“Some of them are wonderful. Some of them are painful,” she said. “But, the whole tapestry of our lives is shaped by a series of moments.”
In addition to her title track, a third of her Moments album is original music. Most of the songs came to her when she was in the process of putting the Moments album together. Marks’ plan and vision going into the studio, her fifth time with producer Doug Hammer, was, for Marks, reminiscent of Mark Ruffalo’s character in Begin Again. In that movie that character could see in his mind the instruments he wanted to use for an arrangement.
photo credit: Bob Bond
“Any time I hear a song, I’m like Mark Ruffalo,” Marks said. “I have that kind of mind where I start to envision how I’m going to arrange it. A perfectly good example (from her new Moments album) is the song ‘Into Your Heart’ which was written by Pat Humphries. It’s a song very few people have heard of. When I heard that song, I immediately heard how I wanted to do it. It has a saxophone solo. Even the way I arranged it is a little bit different from the way she has it. I put cello on it.”
Finding the right sound for a song is another important mission for Marks. On her song “Living On The Dark Side Of The Moon” she wrote a violin part for Jackie Damsky and cellist Valerie Thompson harmonized on cello with the violin line. “That’s the whole tone and feel and quality of that song,” Marks said. “I call it ‘Torch Song To A Narcissist’ which is sort of like the modern day version of ‘I Will Survive.’ There’s a darkish color. It has a gypsy feel to it. It’s jazzy and it has saxophone on it too. But, I basically heard the violin and the cello together as a team.”
photo credit: Bob Bond
Marks’ upcoming September 27 CD Release Party, to be held at Club Passim in Cambridge, Massachusetts, will feature her seven piece band and three back up singers. Marks will be able to then recreate her arrangements as they are heard on her Moments album. “My singer-songwriter colleague Rick Drost, who is a sweetheart, is going to open for me,” she said. “Rick will open then my full band will be there to play. I’m throwing in a few songs that are going to be on my 2019 In Grace album. I like things to be fresh.”
Creating the Moments album and having it sound the way she wanted, Marks relied heavily on the judgment of her producer Doug Hammer. A strong sound engineer, Hammer knew exactly which tools to use to get what Marks was hearing in her head onto her disc. “His bar is really high,” Marks said. “He’s an award winning sound engineer, composer, and pianist. He has really high standards, as I do. In the end I want my album to be first rate in terms of quality of production. Doug is able to help me obtain that.”
Marks’ earliest album, Dreams And Themes, released in 1983, featured all original music, which in those days was on a tape. The singer-songwriter-pianist was playing at Club Passim at the time and she often worked with singer-songwriter Lisa Wexler. That duo got a career boost opening for Buskin and Batteau at Club Passim. Marks fist album received fantastic reviews on radio shows. WGBH’s on air personality Ron Della Chiesa loved her song “Boston Driver Blues.” She got to play her music on all the folky local station. Yet, raising her son as a single mom while taking care of her elderly, Alzheimer’s stricken mother didn’t leave Marks any time to play out while earning a living. By the end of the 80s, she had left the music scene, not returning in a major way until the middle of this current decade.
“I call this my second time around,” Marks said. “The music bug, which had been calling me for about ten years, the music inside was bursting. For about five years I’d go sing at the Acton Jazz Café. I’m very grateful to Rebecca Parris who did a lot to help me get back on the horse. “People say ‘How can I put out five albums since 2015. That’s because it was pent up inside me for years.”
Marks has grown quite a bit as an artist since she began releasing music in 2015. “The more I immersed myself in the music, and the more I worked with my own ghosts, the more I really came out,” she said. “I think one of things that stood out for me in the journey is how much I love to arrange, and I get a lot of good feedback on what a good arranger I am.”
Returning to the scene a few years ago, she hit the ground running, playing coveted venues like Scullers Jazz Club, Amazing Things Arts Center, Club Café, and Newton Festival of the Arts. She didn’t rely on an agent. She didn’t get pushy and overwhelming. She didn’t even have a strategy. “I showed them my music, and they booked me,” Marks said. “I work very, very hard. I’ve always worked with Boston musicians. I always bring really, really good people with me.”
One musical associate of Marks is saxophonist Dave Birkin, who she’s known for six years and features prominently on her albums. She met Birkin at Brighton’s now defunct Smoken’ Joe’s. “That where I first heard him play, and I really loved the way he played. Saxophone is my favorite instrument that I haven’t learned to play. When I heard him play, I just really liked what he was playing and I needed a saxophonist and he became my saxophonist. He also plays flute so the combination of playing saxophone and flute made him more valuable.”
Marks is passionate about music because it is who she is at the core of her being. Marks has had several purpose threads in her life, being a mom, being a healer, and being a musician. She came into her own as a spiritual person through trial, tribulation, and crisis. Years ago, a stranger tried to rape and murder her. Only 16 at the time, she responded to the attack by turning to the God she never believed in for help. “When I told God I wanted to live, a little voice said I had to commit to a sense of mission. Then, a voice came through my heart that said ‘Forgive the man’ who was beating me and pounding my face in. I said ‘I forgive you,’ and he burst into tears and stopped beating me, and, metaphorically, was my first therapy client.” Marks went on to establish a day job career as a body therapist, a healer who looks at the relationship between the physical heart and the emotional heart.
From this point Marks would like to play out more often with a full band at larger venues. She likes to unfold her music at rooms like Scullers Jazz Club, Club Passim, The Spire Center, Amazing Things Arts Center, and City Winery, with The Spire and Winery being on her wish list for future gigs. “I basically like very serious listening rooms,” Marks said. “People come because they want to hear the message of the songs and be touched by what you have to say.”
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