“There’s nothing sexy about it, money-wise. You just have to want to do it. And I mean, it’s true, I could make that same middle-class income doing something that I hated or I could do this, where I get to be drunk at my job if I want to and my job starts at 10pm, and I get to go to Europe.”
Those are the words of Mark Stepro in reference to his job. Maybe you’re not familiar with Mark yet. If not, shame on you. The Ohio native has played with some of the best of ’em, from Ben Kweller to BP Fallon, to Tim Easton or Aaron Tasjan and the rest of his pals in the Madison Square Gardeners, to Taurus, and now he’s on tour with the legendary Butch Walker.
On Saturday evening before the soundcheck for the Cleveland show at the Beachland Ballroom, I had the opportunity to chat with Mark about growing up in a conservative home, pissing off his folks with Nirvana, touring, and the benefits of vinyl.
Alright, Mark, well, you’re from Ohio, so we have to talk about Ohio a little bit.
I love talking about Ohio.
That’s good, Ohio’s a good place to talk about. So, why don’t you tell me who you grew up listening to.
Um…like at a young age? Church music, low country, Protestant hymns. My mom was and is a church organist so that was what she was playing at the house when I grew up. My parents weren’t really into rock and roll at all, so it was old person music.
And then the town that I grew up in is really small, so the music that I heard when I listened to the radio was the music that I still listen to now, which was Neil Young, Tom Petty, basically any sort of 70s super hit band or whatever.
I listened to a lot of that when I was a kid, played a lot of that when I was a kid, and then grunge in the mid-nineties. Nirvana and then after that I started listening to all kinds of shit. But yeah, that was the formative stuff, Kurt Cobain, Neil Young, Petty, Springsteen, obviously the Beatles. Shit like that. Standard midwestern seventies rock, I guess.
So those are the musicians you’d say inspire you the most? Or would you say it’s changed over the years?
Yeah, I still love that stuff, it’s different as I get older. It’s like some of those Crazy Horse records, it’s like some sloppy shit. It’s sort of like when you grow up and you learn how to play and you listen to some of those records, I still love them and they’re very near and dear to my heart, but it’s sort of like the time in your life when you figure out that you can beat your dad at sports.
You know what I mean? It’s like, oh, these guys are actually kinda shitty, but it’s still amazing music and they’re amazing records, but yeah I listen to a lot of other stuff now. We had a lot of ZZ Top going on the bus last night, a lot of Thin Lizzy on the bus, so it’s still a big part of my thing.
And you went to Capital while you were here.
Mhm.
What’d you study while you were there?
I studied music for a year and then quit and then went to England and did philosophy and English literature, and then went back to Capital and finished, I got a degree from there in English lit and philosophy.
So what would you say is the reason that you quit?
Um, a couple reasons. Number one, the main reason, music school for me was very similar to what my jock friends were going through when they would play sports in high school and really like it and then go to college and all of a sudden it’s like eight hours a day of hardcore getting yelled at and it’s not fun anymore.
I knew I’m definitely gonna do this for the rest of my life, I’ll figure out a way for this to be my job, but if I stay here and keep doing this I’m going to fucking hate it and I’m going to be miserable. And there was some great instruction there but some of the guys- and it’s kind of embarrassing to say- but kinda mean, you know, grumpy disgruntled jazz professors.
And I didn’t want to get burned out on it, and I also didn’t want to play like, for me to get a degree in jazz music which is about the stupidest fucking thing you can do, I mean it’s like,I like that music, but I don’t bleed for that stuff, I didn’t grow up listening to McCoy Tiner for eight hours a day, I still appreciate that music as a fan, but it didn’t make sense for the biggest part of my study to be that.
And the other thing too, that program, not just Capital, but Ohio music schools in general it’s like they’re gearing you up to be a band director or a jazz professor and basically just spread the disease further. A big part of college, I think, is learning what you don’t want to do as much as learning what you do want to do.
And after doing a year at the music school I was like, this sucks I don’t want to keep doing this. I also knew there were a lot of books I hadn’t read and a lot of intellectual development that I hadn’t undergone because I was in a practice room all day, and I thought I don’t want to be one of those kids that graduates with a degree in music but doesn’t know anything about anything. Not that I do now, but I’m just saying that I was able to get out of the monolithic headspace of practicing snare drum etudes for five hours.
I totally understand that. I have that problem with music school which is why I like to ask that question. I’ve probably almost quit five times, like seriously almost quit, and every time I’ve come back to it is because of some musician that I hear playing…
I got good instruction there and some of the teachers there were brilliant, it was a fun little environment to be in for a year. I guess if it were in a place like Berklee or the New School in Manhattan, like those are where the kids go who are really really gonna be doing that.
So it’s sorta similar to like if you want to be a kinda waspy, white corporate big wig or something and you go to Yale or something, you meet all these kids that ten years from now are gonna be really running the show and you establish a network then. And my Berklee friends, they’re not really any better or worse musicians, but they definitely met all the heavy dudes when everybody was there. So there would probably be a good place to make alliances and contacts early in your career before you really have a career. But it wasn’t really like that for me.
How’d you know that music was what you wanted to do with your life?
I don’t know how to answer that. I’ve always done it. My mom’s a church organ player, my grandpa’s a banjo player, there was just always music in the house growing up. I listened to Kurt Cobain when I was a kid to piss my parents off, which worked, ’cause they’re pretty conservative, but they’re into now.
I mean, I spent a couple years trying to convince them that what I was doing wasn’t a total was of time, I’m not sure I’m convinced of that honestly, but I can’t not do it. Every once and a while, some kid will ask me, what do I have to do to be a professional musician and I always say, look if there’s anything else that you can do or that you feel like you might want to do or explore professionally, just do that because to do this you just have to be so singular minded and refuse to take no for an answer and just keep going until it works.
Let’s talk a little bit about the bands you’ve played with. Starting out, you backed Ben Kweller, you’ve played in the Madison Square Gardeners, Taurus, and now you’re touring with Butch. What do you think has been the most memorable tour you’ve been a part of so far?
Oh, gosh. I don’t know. They all run together. I still play with those bands, I still play with Kweller. I wouldn’t say there are more memorable tours, necessarily just because it’s what I’ve been doing year round for the last six years, but there are definitely memorable gigs, memorable shows. Late night shows are always memorable because they’re scary, you know, you meet Jennifer Love Hewitt.
The big festivals, Austin City Limits with Bob Dylan, ’cause we played and the National played and I got to see a bunch of bands that are my friends. We did a tour with John Mayer in Australia one time, which don’t hold that against me, it was a support tour for Kweller, but it was like ‘wow, we’re like rockstars, with like 20,000 people there’ and that was pretty memorable and it was Australia. With Kweller’s band, we’ve been there five times. We’ve played Australia a lot.
So I’d say those bands are pretty diverse, like in the sounds that they generate. Do you feel like you need to play with all these diverse musicians or is it more about making music with your friends?
Well, I might contest you on the idea that they’re that diverse because I think that Kweller, Madison Square Gardeners, and Butch operate out of the same playbook- which is like the Cheap Trick/Neil Young/Tom Petty playbook, you know the classic rock thing.
There are subtle differences, stylistically and whatever. There are other projects that I play in too that are definitely different. You know, when you’re a drummer, like every style of music has drums, so I wouldn’t just want to be in one band. I have a bunch of itches that need to get scratched, I guess.
Well, you’re known for your prowess on the drums, but I’ve seen you play guitar with the Madison Square Gardeners. How long have you been playing each of those?
I play bass in the Madison Square Gardeners, I’ve done that since I was a kid off and on just for fun. I mean, I’m not like a professional bass player or anything like that, but the Madison Square Gardeners just started for fun, sort of a garage band, and we already had a drummer who’s really good so it was just like, well what am I gonna do? I don’t know, I’ll fucking play bass, how hard can it be? Turns out, it’s really hard.
I’m like a fake on those instruments, I mean, I’m a drummer, that’s my day job. That’s like my thing that I do. I can still fake it on guitar, though, and I do in this band every once and a while. There’s a few tunes in this band that we all switch instruments on and it’s fun.
So, let’s talk specifically about touring with Butch. I remember the day I saw on Facebook that you announced that you would be touring with him. How’d you feel when you got tapped to do this?
The way that happened is we have a super fan in common and after a gig one time with the Gardeners, she was like, so, hey, Butch Walker needs a drummer and I know his manager, do you want me to give him your number? And that stuff happens all the time, and I didn’t really know who he was, so I was like, yeah, sure whatever, I don’t know who that is and you probably don’t really know that manager so I’m just gonna forget about this.
And then he called up while I was walking the dog and was just said, hey do you want to come out to the studio and hang out? And I was like, oh yeah, you’re the guy that the lady was talking about. And I knew his name and I knew he was a producer, but I didn’t know about his solo career, I didn’t know the music very much. So I listened to the tunes a little bit, I just quick Youtubed it before I left the house, and I was like oh, this is awesome!
And then as I was driving on my way up there, I was like, I hope this isn’t an audition because A, I don’t know how to play any of these songs, and B, maybe I’m a crab or like an old man, but I don’t want to audition. The gigs that I’ve gotten don’t come from random auditions. And I said to myself as I was driving out there, if I get there and there’s like a bunch of dudes in a hallway, waiting to go in and take their turn, I’m just going to fucking leave ’cause I don’t wanna do that. But fortunately that’s not how Butch rolls.
The good thing about Youtube, for better or worse, you can do all the auditioning by just looking, and I assumed he just probably looked at all my shit on Youtube and was like, this is fine, this is for better or worse what I’m looking for. So we met up and just talked for an hour or two because the reality is, we don’t play music together 22 hours a day and we live in a submarine. You know, we’re like in this bus, so there needs to be a personal compatibility. So I just came back the next week and we started practice for the tour.
Are you having a good time on tour so far?
Oh, so much. So much fun. Such a good time. Great band. Everybody in this band is an all-star, everybody in this band is an artist and has their own songs, everybody in this band was like the best guy in all their bands before joining this band.
There’s not that much direction from Butch, I can count on one hand the number of notes he has given me about how to play, which is great because he’s really good at just finding people that he wants to have them do that thing, and just let them do it. I’ve worked with some folks, not the people that we’ve been talking about, but I’ve worked with some artists who are just super finicky, micro-managey, and man, can you play that one BPM faster, and can you do this and can you do that, and you’re like, fuck man, you hired me, why don’t you just do it?
Clearly, I’m playing, there’s no cloning, why don’t you just let me do the job so that it’s easier for you, that’s why you hire people. So you don’t have to do it. But this is not that. And I take that stuff very seriously, I’m not just up there dicking around, like I learn that material very specifically but it’s really fun to get to kind of cut loose in this band really.
Would you say that’s one of the best parts of working with Butch, that he leaves it up to you to kind of figure out what to do with your part?
Yeah, and that they’re such nice guys. They’re fun people to hang out with. And that goes for the crew, and the TM, and everybody, it’s just a very happy bus. Everybody’s very high functioning, very good at their job. Super super fun.
What music are you listening to right now that you can’t get enough of?
Dawes, Blitzentrapper album I love, slowly getting into the new Wilco record. I was just next door at Music Saves and I basically stood there for a half hour because the guy was playing the new M83. And this from Brooklyn called Neon Indian, I like him a lot.
Yeah! He’s playing tonight.
In town? No shit.
At Grog Shop.
That’s stuff that I don’t know how to make, that kind of music like that “Polish Girl”, electro-dance trendy hipster shit, I don’t know how to make records like that because like what I told you about, I grew up listening to way different stuff than that. So it’s fun to listen to a record like that and be like, I have no idea what’s going on here, i’m a complete kid when i’m listening to that stuff.
How do you feel about the shift back to pressing vinyl?
Gosh, I have vinyl. I have a record player. It’s a little bit less portable, for someone like myself, I can’t really carry a fucking record player around…
You could if you worked out a little bit, Mark.
What I do like about vinyl is the package is bigger and I feel like I have something, I own a product as opposed to a set of files in my hard drive. And number two, it’s fun to listen to because you put the thing on and you have to just sit there and listen to it. On this thing ( he tapped my Mac) you can listen to a record, and then you’re like, hm, better check my email, I’m gonna get on Facebook for a while, and then all of a sudden four songs have gone by and you’re like, I didn’t really listen to this. So it sort of forces you to pay attention.
So you think there’s a noticeable quality difference between say, MP3’s or vinyl?
Stuff that’s mastered for vinyl was recorded on two-inch tape is like the optimum sound. I’m not enough of a head, like a nerd, to really worry about that. I mean, on the bus, we run it through speakers and plug the iPod in, and that’s fine. But yeah, there’s an obvious fidelity difference between the two. The MP3 and the iPod are just sort of a necessity with the way I live.
If you’re curious about Butch Walker’s live performance, look for the show review from TVD- Cleveland, coming soon!
