On Friday, August 16, 2002, some 35,000 fans from across the world gathered in Memphis, Tenn., to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the death of Elvis Aaron Presley. The following night, Pierce Pettis reminded a much smaller crowd at Eddie's Attic in Decatur, Ga. (some 390 miles southeast) that Friday was also the 10th anniversary of singer-songwriter Mark Heard's death. "Mark would have loved that he died on the same day as Elvis," he added with a chuckle.
Outside of Pettis' covers, most of the crowd knew of neither the prolific and stellar work of Heard nor his perverse sense of humor. The obscurity of Mark's legacy persists despite the best efforts of Pettis, who has vowed to include a Mark Heard cover on every one of his albums, and a handful of other supporters. World Café contributed to the cause with an hour devoted to Heard on the fifth anniversary of his passing. Critic Chris Willman selected a Mark Heard song for Entertainment Weekly's post-9/11 Songs of Solace. Also included was Emmylou Harris' cover of Julie Miller's «All My Tears», written as a tribute to Heard. Acclaimed songwriter Bruce Cockburn, who penned his own tribute in «Closer to the Light», has gone on record as calling Heard 'America´s best songwriter.'
In 1996, the two-disc Orphans of God sought to further recognition (and to raise money for Heard's widow, Janet) with covers from Pettis, Cockburn, Buddy & Julie Miller, Michael Been (of The Call), Vigilantes of Love, Victoria Williams (with Mark Olson, Tammy Rogers, and the Millers), Tom Prasada-Rao, Olivia Newton John, The Williams Brothers, Chagall Guevara, John Austin, Tonio K., Colin Linden, Marvin Etzioni (of Lone Justice), Brooks Williams, Kate Taylor (James Taylor's sister) and many others. (Strong Hand of Love, the 1994 single-disc precursor to this expanded compilation, was nominated for a Grammy.)
Mark Heard left behind 16 albums and more than 90 unreleased songs. His earliest work suffered from unevenness in the lyrics and derivative (and consequently dated) music. However, he did display signs of lyrical acumen, and over the course of 20 years, Heard's songcraft steadily improved. The release of a trilogy of records in the early '90s on Fingerprint Records, a tiny label created specifically for Heard, heralded the arrival of an artist at his peak - a challenger for the title of poet laureate of American music - joining the pantheon that includes Dylan, Cohen, Guthrie and Townes Van Zandt. Arguably, no artist has crafted three consecutive albums with both the lyrical radiance and the musical vibrancy to rival Dry Bones Dance, Second Hand, and Satellite Sky.
Sadly, the Fingerprint trilogy was to be Heard's last original work. While performing onstage with Pettis at the Cornerstone Festival in Illinois, Mark suffered a heart attack. Undaunted, he finished his set. Elated at having seen my new musical hero, I went back to my campsite unaware of the unfolding drama. The crowd on hand to talk with him afterwards suspected Heard was being moody in refusing to come out - until the ambulance arrived. Heard recovered enough over the next two weeks to leave the Springfield hospital in order to fly back to his hometown of Montrose, Calif., for further procedures. He was in his hotel room with his wife, waiting for a flight the next day, when he suffered a second heart attack and entered into a coma. Six weeks after that ill-fated performance, Mark Heard breathed his last. His words from Second Hand («I Just Wanna Get Warm») gained new meaning:
The mouths of the best poets / Speak but a few words
And then lay down / Stone cold in forgotten fields
Life goes on in this ant farm town / Cold to the lifeblood underfoot
In his later work, Heard became a master of language, of imagery and meaning. He could fashion effortless stanzas of beauty and precision: "You see me like a prism sees a candle," "Penniless at the wishing-well," "Paper fills the cracks of the Wailing Wall," "You smear the blame on me like cheap cosmetics." He could also assault with fervor and density: "Grey dawn filters through steel stalagmites," "Like the wind-burst of birdwings taking flight in a hard rain / Or like a mad dog on the far side of Dante's Door," "Ribbon of road hazy ahead in taillight red / Radio on weaving a memory with musical thread."
However, Heard's magic was much more than facility with words. It encompassed an unrelenting introspection, an uncompromising social criticism, and an unmasked vulnerability that did more than speak from deep wells of universal experience - it encapsulated that experience and gave it a fresh, vital and prescient voice. His work recalls the experience of a previous generation in its first encounter with the early lyrics of Dylan - that of someone who captured how everyone was feeling but couldn't articulate.
Further, the consistent intensity of these qualities distinguishes Heard's work. Cockburn asserts, "That vulnerability really set him apart from listening to a whole bunch of Bob Dylan records, for instance, where you get flashes of brilliance but you don't get the sense that you're being invited into a person's intimate thoughts and feelings."
"In a perfect world Mark Heard would be mentioned alongside such influential songwriters as John Hiatt, Tom Waits, Leonard Cohen, Richard Thompson and Steve Earle." [AMG]
On World Café, David Dye described Heard as "an unassuming man whose unflinching songs illuminated the beauty in our day to day lives." His power to unearth from the mundane that beauty along with bittersweet longing and sorrow elevates his music to landmark status. Pettis attributes such timelessness to his emulation of the Platonic model of art: beauty, truth and goodness. As his friend and manager, Dan Russell, told me, "There's something very special when you discover an artist like Mark that touches you deeply because pop culture seldom gives you that opportunity."
The brilliance and intensity of Heard's lyrics sometimes obscures the magnificence of the music. Whether playing and producing his own work or others, he had a knack for knowing the exact variety of sounds called for by a song. "He could play just about anything that moved and ran that studio just like flying a plane," says Tonio K.
Mark loved instrumental variety and old recording equipment that captured human warmth over technical exactness. He recorded vocals with WWII-era tube mikes and preferred to use complete takes (of which he'd allow no more than four) in the final mix. The centerpiece of Satellite Sky was the distinctive sound of a 1939 National Steel mandolin with the resonator replaced by National's Silvo pick-up and played like an electric guitar. Always placed in service of his own modern pop-folk-rock sound, instruments used included a variety of mandolins and guitars, accordion, hammered and mountain dulcimers, Hammond organ, harmonica, Chapman stick, fiddle, kalimba, dobro, standup bass and others.
From the Cajun/Appalachian stomp of «Rise From the Ruins» to the doleful strumming of «Look Over Your Shoulder» to the blistering rock of «Tip of My Tongue», Mark mingled many influences - from Gram Parsons, Ralph Stanley and Graceland-era Paul Simon to The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and Peter Gabriel - into a sound all his own. As Paste editor Josh Jackson has written, "Handling his guitar, accordion and electric mandolin like they were his last hope for redemption, he developed a sound that matched his frenetic lyrics."
Part of tragedy of Heard's death - beyond the personal impact on family and friends - is that he appeared poised to finally break through into wider recognition. After playing with Sam Phillips on tour with the Cowboy Junkies, Heard was set to open for Bruce Cockburn (and play in Cockburn's band) on his 1991 tour. When Mark's father died just before the tour began, the slot fell to Phillips. In 1992, High Street / Windham Hill placed «Look Over Your Shoulder» on its Legacy II: A Collection of Singer-Songwriters that included Greg Brown, Patty Griffin, Patty Larkin, Ellis Paul, and Jonatha Brooke. Fingerprint was close to finalizing a contract with either High Street / Windham Hill, True North / Columbia, or Epic when Heard gave his all on that stage in Illinois.
Ten years after his death, Mark's faithful continue to discuss his life and music. Lyrical phrases and meanings continue to surprise, and the music sounds as vital as ever. I fervently hope that 50 years from now, new fans will continue the dialogue, just as new fans of Woody Guthrie are doing today. Maybe it will take a 21st-century musicologist or a Coen/Burnett-like collaboration for a wider audience to rediscover Heard's genius, but surely quality of this magnitude will not continue unnoticed forever.
First published in PASTE Magazine, VOL1 issue2, 2002
Copyright © Tim Porter for Paste Magazine 2002
