MP3 Mark Merritt - Peace of Me

Texas rock with americana stories...

12 MP3 Songs
ROCK: Americana, ROCK: Roots Rock



Details:
Singer-songwriter Mark Merrittâs Peace of Me, signals a benchmark occasion in the 20-year history of Fort Worth-based Reload Record Co.

âThe CD is really more of a songwriter showcase for our core bunch of composers,â insists Merritt, artist and singer of immense versatility. âIt happens to have my name on it, out front, but itâs essentially a collaborative effort of Earl Musick, Roy Robinson, John Gomez, and myself.â This hardly obscures the passion or the painstaking balance of spontaneity and perfectionism with which producers Merritt and Earl Musick have approached Peace of Me. The CD-album has been in gradual production at Reload Record Co.âs affiliated RockHouse Studio in Fort Worth, with six yearsâ worth of original compositions by Merritt, Musick, Robinson, and Gomez.

âItâs about cutting loose and doing your own thing, even in the midst of personal turmoil,â Merritt says of one centerpiece song, âGreat Unknown.â He adds: âKind of speaks about how I approached the album as a whole.
âPeace of Me, in addition to being a songwritersâ album, is also a story-telling album,â continues Merritt. âSome of the songs have personal meaning. Others tell their stories through the viewpoints of others. The album, though in more of a Texas roots-oriented groove musically, is definitely Americana, lyrically. I wanted these songs to tell tales of the modern American life.â

Another point of the collection is to provide a showcase for Merrittâs multi-instrumentalist skills, and for his abilities as a recording engineer to make âlayered,â or multi-tracked, ensemble performances sound like the simultaneous and integrated performances of several musicians.

Merrittâs so-called "self-training" in music had evolved into playing the guitar alone as though it were a full stringed-instrument ensemble varying and adjusting his picking-and-fretting styles in a single performance to accommodate lead, rhythm, and bass-line elements. And this understanding of how such elements, plus percussion, fit together has served him well in arranging and performing separate instrumental parts as incremental additions to a recorded performance. Merritt, meanwhile, has served the cooperative Reload Record Co. as a session engineer and a producer/co-producer, with such credentials as Earl Musickâs Privateer album, John Gomezâ Head First debut CD.

Growing up in Duncanville, Texas, Merritt discovered the guitar as a creative outlet at an early age, honoring a family legacy stemming from his grandfatherâs abilities as a mandolinist and his fatherâs guitar-playing skills. Mark took up additional stringed instruments as he progressed into his teens and early twenties. The bass became his primary instrument at the time, Merritt explains, because it was âway more comfortable. However, If it had strings on it, then I would attempt to play it,â Merritt explains. âWith guitars and the mandolin in particular, I found a connection on an emotional level.â He describes two aspects to his playing: âOne is that pure, raw emotionalism, where you can turn off all the stuff youâve learned and play whatever the heart tells your fingers to do,â Merritt says. âThe other is that of striving for a bit of perfectionism, where you hammer at it until you get it just right. The trick is to reconcile those sides with one another."

Over the years, his tastes broadened even as he retreated from the rock-band scene to hone his skills in isolation, picking up a range of additional tastes from Southern gospel, to classical, to eclectic artists, while eventually honing in on Texas music.

âOn Peace of Meâ¦,â he adds, âwe decided to have a grand experiment and have me handle most the instrumentation, as an extension of working all the parts of a song into a single performance on one instrument. This really forced me to do things musically that I hadnât done before. The sense of accomplishment is pretty strong, here, since I do all this primarily for the art of creating music. The greater point is the music itself, and the way we have recorded it, allowing the music to seek its own level rather than as a purely commercial product. Itâs music for musicâs own sake.â

Mark Merrittâs thoughts on highlights of Peace of Me⦠follow:

âWay Past Coolâ pokes fun at fads and trendy things. Itâs a blast to play, and the lyrics are quite funny. Basically, it says to not take yourself too seriously, and we all at one time or another get caught up in the moment. (How else do you explain âDiscoâ?)

âEyes Wide Openâ is a bit of a departure musically from the album. Lyrically, itâs my favorite on the album, as itâs a reminder to look both ways, consider both sides, donât be afraid to take a chance, and if you need to, take a stand.

âDesperate Manâ is about as Americana as you can get, with a blues flair. The song tells the story of someone being pushed to the brink of a criminal life because he just canât get by â¦quot; only to realize that if he takes that path, heâll kill his soul.