Midnight Closet Project
Greetings! "Midnight Closet Project" finally came about after years of threatening that one of these days I was going to set up an in house studio and start doing some recording. About a year ago I finally got serious and began putting the project together. Feel free to leave comments, I'm interested in your feedback. Hope you enjoy. - Mark
Tell me about your history? How did you get where you are now?
In my earlier years I played guitar and keyboards in various local bands. Then I went to college and afterwards did the career thing. I kept up with the guitar, but really didn't play much. Then about 10 years ago I decided that I really wanted to play drums all my life so I took some lessons and bought a drumset. But after awhile I realized there was still something missing. What I really missed was being able to play in a band with all of the other instruments playing their parts. So rather than start a band, I did the next best thing - I built a home studio so that I could create compositions and then play and record all of the parts and put them together. That was the beginning of the "Midnight Closet Project".
Have you performed live in front of an audience? Any special memories?
Lately I've been hanging out at a favorite 'open mic' bar in my neighborhood and I end up playing a set and listening to and chatting with the other musicians that come in. But that's about it as far as live performances.
Your musical influences
Beatles, Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix, and the Who were some of my childhood favorites. Also Tom Petty, Jethro Tull, Peter Gabriel, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Police, Bruce Hornsby, Vonda Shepard, Pearl Jam, Warren Zevon, Phil Collins, Sheryl Crow, Alanis Morisette, Cream, and Sarah Mclachlan to name a few more. More recently Oasis, Maroon5, and Verve Pipe. I'm not into crashing guitars. I'm into solid driving real tight rock, where all the instruments are working in tight harmony and synchronization.
What equipment do you use?
Fender Strat modified with a Roland VG-99 sound processing system. Yamaha 12 string acoustic. Taylor 6 string acoustic. Yamaha XS7 Motif synthesizer. Roland TD-8 electronic drumset. Cubase software running on a Dell laptop. Boss RC-50 loop station, Mackie824 studio monitors, Creative 0404 E-MU computer interface.
