Mark Mikel is one of those rare multi-talented musicians who is skilled at songwriting, studio engineering, playing all musical instruments, and live performance.  His vocals are what Alan Parsons has called "Lennon-esq" ... a rare breed for sure.  Mark is good friends with Jeff Kollman and the Edwin Dare family, having written several songs for ED.  I joined Mark in 1994 when he was booked as opening band for Bad Co. at the Toledo Masonic Auditorium and he needed help covering live keyboards.   Soon after that show, I joined his Mark Mikel Hallucination band full time and while I was in the band from 1994- 1997, I provided keyboard support both in the studio and for live performances.  The MMH live shows included material from his LPs "Marikesh", "Sorghum Pudding", "The Idiot Smiles", "Blatant Ripoffs".   Mark Mikel's live shows primarily featured his original music, but he always like to cover one (just 1) somewhat complex track at each show ,.. a deep track that no other bands covered, like: Yours Is No Disgrace (Yes), Make Me Smile (Chicago), and I'm Just A Singer (Moody Blues).  Mark has gone on to a successful professional career in music, performing as a Toledo favorite and also working with well known professionals, such as Corky Laing (Mountain) and Alan Parsons (AP Project, Pink Floyd, Ambrosia) as well as Jeff Kollman and Chris Shutters.  On Alan Parsons' 2019 LP "The Secret", Mark wrote and performed a song called Fly To Me (with Jeff Kollman on guitar).

Mark is a skilled multi-instrumentalist and often records some if not all of the tracks himself.  Even though Mark is an excellent keyboard player, he and I have different styles.  He liked the way I laid down the organ groove to Going To a Love-in, the first track of "The Idiot Smiles" CD, and it made the cut to the LP.  I'm also credited with playing Rhodes on the track, but honestly it was just a piece of ear-candy that Mark came up with.  He told be to play the main riff on the Rhodes, which he had routed through his Wah pedal and a Fuzz box to his Fender guitar amp.  He close-mic'd the distorted amp and I played the riff while he worked the Wah pedal with his hands ... "tiny fingers rubbing your brain ..." about 2:30.

I arrived for a recording session at Mark's studio one day and at some point I shared with with Mark that I had created a new synth program on my VFX.  It was a screaming sawtooth synth I called "Tarkus", because it reminded me of Emerson's synths on the ELP track called Aquatarkus.  I was noodling around with it and Mark, also an ELP fan, liked what I was doing so much that he went to the control booth and started the tape machine recording along with a backing track playing.  I asked "what should I play?".  He said "just play whatever feels right, like what you were doing before [when you were noodling around]."   Mark always liked to have a little ear-candy on his LPs, and my 1-take synth noodling ended up at the end of the LP's final track called Pacificus (Half Man, Half Ocean).  Pacificus is an epic, soaring track on which I had already recorded the piano track and to finish off the song and album in style, Mark added the surprise, ear candy reprise of Bad Mouth.  

Give the whole song a listen because it's still one of my favorite Mark songs.  Go to about 6:00 for the ending and reprise with synth.    

The CD cover was purposely designed to mimic The Beatles white album; a blatant ripoff?  No, just classic Mark Mikel.  You may also notice that "The Idiot Smiles" cover has a similar theme as "A Hard Days Night".   Shout out to The Beatles for sure.  Anyone who knows Mark, knows that The Beatles are a #1 favorite band.   I recorded keys on 2 of the tracks on "Blatant Ripoffs" before moving on to the next chapter in my musical adventures.