By ERIC SCHELKOPF
Let's hope that Mark Vickery doesn't wait another 20 years to release his next album.
And given the excitement that this album has been generating, no one will allow him to do that. Vickery, who releases music and performs under the stage name Cosmic Bull, recently released the 6-song EP "27x2," his first volume of new music that he has released in 20 years.
To mark the release of the EP, he will perform a 45-minute solo acoustic show at 7 p.m. Wednesday at Montrose Saloon, 2933 W. Montrose Ave., Chicago. Discoveries of the American Scientific will follow at 8 p.m., with The Thin Cherries closing out the night at 9 p.m.
There is a $5 suggested donation at the door. I had the chance to interview Vickery about the new EP and his music career.
Q – Great talking to you. "27x2" is your first volume of new music that you have released in 20 years. Was that by choice?
If you mean did I wait 20 years
because it’s a nice, round number, absolutely not. When I stopped
releasing new music back then, I felt I was done for good — I was never
planning to return.
At the time, it was a matter of how relevant I saw
myself and what I was writing about. Looking back, the full Mark
Vickery CD I released 20 years ago was all about leaving the scene,
even though I didn’t recognize it as such at the time.
The choice to come back felt more like
being compelled emotionally than anything I consciously thought about.
As I see it these few months later, I felt a sudden pang that what I had
to say about what’s going on in this crazy world right now did have
relevance, especially compared to what I was hearing coming out
elsewhere. So I pulled the trigger.
Q – It
seems like there is a meaning behind the album's name. Is there? Does
it have anything to do with the meaning behind the number 54?
Very good — 54 is how old I am right
now. So 27x2=54, with 27 being the number of rock star lore at the age so
many people died, from Brian Jones and Jimi Hendrix, etc. to Kurt Cobain and
Amy Winehouse. So it’s a joke, or at least it represents my sense of
humor, to suggest that I’ve already lived the life of two dead rock
stars.
Q – What is the meaning behind the name Cosmic Bull?
I like the fact that Cosmic Bull can
mean so many things: heaven and earth — a variation on the "light" and
"heavy" theme Jimmy Page talks about with the name Led Zeppelin, and he
got the idea from Iron Butterfly (and whoever said the New Yardbirds
would go over like a...).
The "bull in the cosmos" idea also suggests
the Zodiac sign Taurus, which I am. And more than one person has told me
"Cosmic Bull" translates into this intimidating mythological figure in
Islam, which I was not aware of.
But the real answer behind the name
came to me in a flash: the bull stands for my creative endeavors — not
that they are "bull," but that they potentially represent an
intemperate animal — and "cosmic" represents where I sense my ideas come
from.
And it’s not easy to stay on a creative endeavor without getting
thrown off. Despite how difficult it is — to gain people’s attention, or
to even embark on something you still find worthwhile after working on
it for a time — "Cosmic Bull" is a symbol and a motto for me: to always
get back on that artistic pursuit. It’s what makes me me, and keeps me a
happy camper.
Q – What were your goals for the album and do you think you accomplished them? Do you have any favorite tracks on the album?
I think the jury’s still out on the
"fulfilling my goals" thing. Some of this has to do with how it’s
received as a body of work, and as listenable music.
Right now I’m still
in the "'atta boy" stage: where my friends and associates acknowledge
I’ve accomplished something concrete and vaguely admirable. It’s making
playlists around the country and, in some cases, internationally, which
is great.
Now I’m waiting to see if any of these seeds grow into
anything.
I wrote "27x2" as a song cycle
with a general narrative, and four of the songs’ lyrics were written to
establish and advance that narrative. However, two of the songs came
from earlier, and one of those, "The Sweet Art of Holding On," I wrote a
couple years ago.
It’s me offering advice to those feeling overwhelmed
by the world, and my "secret" for dealing with it, which is to place
your existence in a broader context. Joni Mitchell sang, "We are
stardust."
This is sort of my take on that, and it’s one of my favorite
songs I’ve ever written.
Q – I know you released a couple of songs
last year, including the song "Holding My Breath 'Til The End Of Time."
Did the pandemic provide you with the inspiration for that song? It
seems like the song could take on even more significance these days,
given that everybody is holding their breath to see what happens next in
Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
Oh, that’s really great. And I don’t
want to keep anyone from believing what they wish about this or any
other song of mine. But I’m pretty sure that one was written a few
months before the pandemic even materialized; it deals with my
frustrations getting into political arguments on social media.
And just
frustrations with trying to make a difference and not being heard in
general. True story, too.
The bad thing about writing songs
about current events is that they are necessarily reactive to the facts
on the ground. One of the more recent songs I wrote is about the Jan.
6 insurrection, with a verse dedicated to Jeffrey Epstein.
I wrote it
a few days after Ghislaine Maxwell got convicted — nothing else about
what happened got any notice from that moment on — and the scumbags got
away with it. So the song has a refrain: "Pins in your soul," because
that’s how this injustice made me feel.
But now it feels like all this
happened two years ago.
My Putin/Ukraine songs have yet to
materialize. When they do, I’m sure there will be another
as-yet-unforeseen atrocity beyond that that I don’t address in real
time.
Those songs are still worth making, I think, because they stick a
flag of outrage in them, regardless how many people hear them when the
outrage is still fresh. I suppose it’s nice to know the emotional
content of songs I’ve written previously might still have application
beyond where I intended them to go.
It’s a sort of back-handed assertion
that what I’m doing does have value.
Q – In
addition to being a musician, you are senior editor at Zacks Investment
Research. Is it hard switching between doing that and writing music?
I tend to find ways to play to my
strengths, and I’ve been with the same firm a long time. My job fits me
like a glove, although instead of writing about the stock market I’d
prefer writing about various forms of artistic expression — particularly
music, and its cultural and historic relevance.
But jobs that pay in
those fields aren’t easy to come by — so many people are willing to
offer their opinions on this kind of thing for free!
I’m obviously less free to say what I
want there than I am in song. But it’s still writing, and writing is
what I’ve always done, even before learning to play an instrument.
Q – As I understand, you also do voice over work. How did you get into that and what kind of projects have you worked on?
I’ve always had one of those voices
that makes people think I do voice over. Eventually it dawned on me to
try it.
Actually, I made friends long ago with a woman named Cathy
Schenkelberg, who at the time was a foremost VO talent in Chicago. I
should have made a stronger effort at it back then, but I wasn’t very
appreciative of the rigors.
I was feckless and lazy. Even now I’m not
very successful at winning VO jobs; this might have something to do with
not being much of a salesman.
That said, I think I sound distinctive
enough that if someone were looking for my peculiar bent on a VO read, I
could knock it out of the park. And a little success there could lead
to bigger things over time.
Q – You do have a very distinctive voice and a unique style. Who are your musical inspirations?
Back when I was younger, there were no
— like, zero — low-voiced singers in popular music. Even guys who sang
in their lower registers, like Dr John and David Bowie, sang higher than
me.
I know why, too: singing low, especially in a live rock band
setting, puts your frequencies in competition with bass notes, floor
toms, kick drums, etc. It always makes more sense to have a high voice
soaring over the rhythms and progressions. But such was not my lot.
So when I heard Gil Scott-Heron for
the first time, and "Step Right Up" by Tom Waits — both on Chicago’s
WXRT, by the way — they really arrested me. Although when I first
started recording, I wasn’t getting the results I desired; my voice
sounded thin compared to how I sounded in my head.
With the "27x2"
EP, as well as the previous singles like the one you mentioned produced
by Paul von Mertens, I have managed to correct this to a certain
extent.
Now I get closer to the mic and let my
throat and sinuses contribute to the sound. And when I want my voice to
take up even more space, I like doing mults, including falsettos,
whispers, etc.
People have compared this approach to Bowie and Matt
Johnson from The The. I have no problem with those comparisons
whatsoever.
Q – A few years ago, I had the honor of
interviewing Mars Williams regarding Liquid Soul's 20th anniversary
show. Of course, Liquid Soul helped pioneer the acid jazz movement in
the '90s. What was it like being a live guest vocalist for the band and
how did that experience shape your musical horizons?
I was flattered and surprised to be
waved onstage by Mars Williams the first time — at Elbo Room in the
mid-90s, when they’d play to packed houses every Sunday night. Liquid
Soul’s keyboardist, Frankie Hill, had played some gigs on sax with the
first band I enjoyed success with in Chicago, Word Bongo.
He told me to
come check out Liquid Soul early on, which I did, and it was already a
sensation then.
It was months later when I finally got
called up. I was playing with the big boys at last, and I was acutely
aware of this. It was too long ago to recall how well I did, but I guess
well enough to go back.
And the improvised groove collective I was
playing with at the time, Zo (later Sumo), was fortunate enough to take
over that Sunday night residency at Elbo Room once Liquid Soul moved to
Double Door.
If you ask me, Mars Williams is living
the dream as much as any musician in Chicago I can name. He plays
whatever he wants and gets booked wherever he wants, his CV is
impeccable and he’s on some of the great New Wave recordings with the
Psychedelic Furs, the Waitresses — that solo on "I Know What Boys Like"
is still fire!
And the
best part is: he doesn’t put on airs. He’s a music dude, and if you can
get with that, you can get with him. Is there a better representative of
the local contemporary music scene?
Q – What plans do you have in the coming months? Will you be performing more this year?
It’s been a very fast realization. When I finished the "27x2"
EP and put it out on all the streaming services, the most common
inquiry I got was, "Are you playing any shows?" I mean, they hadn’t even
heard the music yet and they’re asking what my gig schedule was.
Are
they really so sure what I’m doing was worthwhile? Of course not. What
they were really trying to find out — I later realized — was whether I
was serious about promoting this music. And the answer to that is: of
course I am.
But it wasn’t something I had planned
for. So I’m doing a solo acoustic opening spot at Montrose Saloon here
in Chicago at 8 p.m. March 30 for 45 minutes. It won’t
sound the way the songs are on the recordings, but they should be pretty
easy to discern. Plus, I’ll have a couple surprises, to make sure
people are paying attention.
Beyond that, there are some things in
the works. But it’s helpful to understand that these songs and
recordings did not come from a band setting — they came from one guy who
has friends in music production and decided to release onto streaming
services the fruits of this labor.
I’m in discussions with a
multi-instrumentalist currently who might help flesh out these sounds in
a live setting in the near future, but we’re still a little early yet
to announce a Cosmic Bull world tour. Sorry to disappoint anybody.
