Badass Band 47- MAKAR

Badass Band 47- MAKAR (hps://badassbandsblog.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/makar.jpg) Jonesing for a dynamic guy/girl duo to add to your music repertoire? Look no further music lovers. Not only is this duo talented musically, they are after this music fiend’s own heart considering that the members are writers aside from their songwriting, Andrea is even a published poet. They are quite out of the ordinary as you will find in listening to their tunes, and their range is broad which offers ear solace to any kind of music lover. Badass Band 47 is New York’s MAKAR. MAKAR is another band that found me, and once their tunes hit my ears, I had a hard time deciding which of them I liked best. It was almost as if I went into super ADD mode, I was clicking on all their tracks trying to decide which I liked best right off the bat and they were all so different I couldn’t sele on one. I ended up forcing myself to just download them all and listen to them in order from start to finish. So, that being said, let’s start by talking about the vocals. Andrea’s vocals I can really only describe as light and refreshing. They have power, but not in the traditional sense, in the sense that they are so soft and singsongy that you just can help but listen. For me this is especially exemplified on songs like ‘I Wanna Know What I Don’t Know’ or ‘Belong Here’ As for Mark, his voice is deep but also keeps the more light, singsongy quality that Andrea’s has. His voice almost reminds me of vocals that were more prevalent in 50’s tunes. A great example of this would be on the track ‘Show Me That Look in Your Eyes’. Their voices seem to be the male and female counterparts of each other, and they combine gloriously. Music and lyrics wise, MAKAR is a band that you won’t be bored of. I remember thinking they we probably just going to be a folksy band, but they can’t be categorized. They have slower folksy tunes, upbeat 50’s style tunes, old school Southern country type songs (Think O Brother Where Art Thou) and even some that lean towards punk. They describe themselves a guitar and piano driven indie-rock band that makes Punk and Poet rejoice and dance together. That sounds prey damn accurate to me. Lyrically, their songs are beautiful. Their topics are broad, ranging from dark to humorous, love to hate, social commentary, etc. Again their versatility musically and lyrically is their strong suit. This is definitely a band you want to listen to. Mark and Andrea were kind enough to talk with BBB and below you will find the answers to your burning questions about MAKAR like: What does the name mean? How does their creative process work? Why do they think I should listen to them? What are their ‘day jobs’? Etc. So read on music lovers, and be dazzled by this radical musical duo. When and why did each of you start playing? Mark: My first memory of playing an instrument is probably the same as everyone else’s, a brown recorder in elementary school. But God was that thing magical to me. Then I sang for my all boy school’s choir and we would sing at stores like Lord & Taylors during Christmas time. I played a fake French horn in a school production of the Music Man as a kid. We marched down the aisle of the theater past the people to the stage fake playing our instruments and I thought it was the coolest thing I’d ever done, but it wasn’t until High School that I started taking lessons; first guitar, then piano, then voice. I found learning an instrument prey boring unless I was playing the blues and being able to improvise around a scale. That was the fun part. But learning scales, chords and music theory put me to sleep. I minored in music in college and really focused on my singing and a lile bit more on my piano playing. It wasn’t until I was writing songs that I became more interested in becoming a beer piano player, which I still need to become. It’s a long journey, but each breakthrough allows me to express my musical ideas more fully, more maturely. How each musician gets to the point of musical mastery is totally individual, a lifelong pursuit. Andrea: Sorry Mark. The recorder was never magical to me. I was like how can I stop making this thing sound worse?! I started playing guitar because my older brother started taking lessons and I wanted to learn. At nine years old, he was already writing songs and it was magical to see and hear his long fingers work out melodies that didn’t exist before. I still remember one of his songs. It was about running away, of course, because don’t all kids want to run away? This wanting to do what your older sibling is doing is prey common. However, it all turned prey gothic. My older brother Chris’ first guitar teacher was this nice hippyish guy in town. Sadly he was going through a severe depression and hung himself. I remember my dad and us driving into our small Americana town as usual parking near the barbershop, Chris geing out with his cardboard guitar case and troing up the stone path to the door. He rang the bell but no one answered. Chris returned to the Avanti and my father got out and tried the door, knocking. Nothing. It was several days later that we heard Chris’ teacher took his own life. It’s unbelievable to this day, that my parents told me what happened. “He hated his father so much that he hung himself.” That’s what my dad said. I don’t know if he said it right after it happened or years later but it became some kind of mantra. Timing memory always seems to get compressed. Understandably, my first guitar lesson didn’t come until over a year later. Our new teacher, Rocco, was a forty minute car drive away – an eternity for kids. Rocco was an elderly classical guitarist and even as a lile kid, I knew that children weren’t his first choice as students or at least I wasn’t, being one of the least malleable and disciplined students he’d ever had. He wanted me to learn to play like Django Reinhardt but I just wanted to learn how to play the Yellow Submarine. Out of the two of use, Rocco preferred Chris, his lesson was always first, which was painful if you had to pee since you had to go through the lesson room to get to the bathroom and you weren’t allowed to interrupt a lesson in process. My bladder hurts just thinking about it. Rocco also had the largest naivety scene I’d ever seen, circling the perimeter of the lesson room like a toy train set. He had everyone ever mentioned in the Bible in the miniature menacing figurine form. It was both creepy and fascinating. So music has always held a bit of darkness for me. Rocco wasn’t a well man, perhaps due to the fact he lived near a sewage processing plant. He frequently coughed into a blood-splaered handkerchief especially when he was angry and I tended to piss him off quite often. I didn’t last that long with Rocco, my parents eventually found much more suitable guitar teachers for us a year or so later, but by then I had lost interest in practicing. My guitar often sat in the hallway for a week and half before my bi-monthly lesson even though this new guitar teacher, Walt, promised me he’d teach all the Beatles songs I wanted to learn. My earlier experiences had muted my desire so at twelve I gave up playing. I always regreed it, but it wasn’t until Mark that I was persuaded to take my guitar out of the close and play it again and for that I’m forever thankful. What kind of music did you listen to growing up? How does that differ from what you listen to now? Mark: I remember my friend Marcus Cederquist introducing me to The Who in the third grade and being completely obsessed with Who’s Next. What an amazing album. I remember playing it on a hand held cassee player during a car ride with the family and my sister’s friend Stephanie, who I had a lile crush on and was trying to impress with my musical taste. The Who’s music is so powerful. And of course the Beatles, especially Hey Jude, which always reminds me of my childhood best friend Ali Theodore who went on to become a rap artist. His mother, Lee Theodore, was the dance choreographer for the American Dance Machine and I remember her always playing the Beatles whenever I was hanging out with Ali at their house. The White Album was my favorite. Now I listen to everything and anything, mainly because Andrea opened my mind to how great current music is. I was a bit of a classic rock snob, not thinking anything could be beer or comparable, which is ironic because I make current music and also loved many 80s bands, but there is so much wonderful music being made every day.

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