RockOm

Mark Karan’s long anticipated debut album Walk Through the Fire is out today on Quacktone Records. Four years in the making, Walk Through the Fire is a testament to Mark Karan's dauntless musical spirit which shines through brilliantly on each track of this remarkable album.

Since 1998 Mark has been performing with the extended Grateful Dead family (The Other Ones, Mickey Hart's Planet Drum, and Bob Weir & RatDog). He has anchored the lead guitar slot in RatDog for the last eleven years, touring the US year round. Before crossing over into the land of the Dead, Mark worked his guitar and vocal voodoo for the likes of Dave Mason, Delaney Bramlett, the Rembrandts, Paul Carrack, Huey Lewis, Jesse Colin Young and Sophie B. Hawkins.

Mark is a musician's musician. In recent years, Mark has performed with The Allman Brothers, Trey Anastasio, Joan Baez, Dickey Betts, Delaney Bramlett, Larry Campbell, Clarence Clemons, Michael Franti & Spearhead, Galactic, Gov’t Mule, Jackie Greene, Sammy Hagar, Levon Helm, Bill Kirchen, Chuck Leavell, Little Feat, New Riders of the Purple Sage, Phil Lesh & Friends, John Popper, String Cheese Incident, Derek Trucks, Narada Michael Walden and others. Mark also tours with his band, “Jemimah Puddleduck”, with John Molo on drums, JT Thomas on keys, and Bob Gross on bass. Mark offers his soulful blues-based vocal styling and inspired guitar work with a remarkably tight rhythm section in a passionate delivery of the sounds of Americana.

RockOm caught up with Mark Karan recently to discuss Walk Through the Fire, as well as his time with RatDog and how he healed from throat cancer with the power of optimism and by "walking through the fire."

RockOm: Your new CD Walk Through the Fire is fantastic. You must be proud of it.

Mark Karan: I feel really lucky. I can say that I am.  You get so close to a record when you’re making it- you can hear every bleep, fart and wart. A lot of people that I know who have made records by the time they get to the end of it they’ve put a lot of work in it and they hate it. Everybody else loves it, but they hate their own record. I’m not having that experience at all. I feel really lucky.

RockOm: Tell us how Walk Through the Fire came about.

Mark Karan: This CD came into being at the end of my little stint with cancer. I just kinda had an internal directive to get some work done.  I’ve never made a solo record; I’ve been involved with a lot of record making through the years, but generally speaking it’s either been as a band concept or it was in support of a solo artist.

The song “Annie Don't Lie” is one of my favorite songs to sing it’s just a fun party song, a good chance for the audience to sing along.

“Love in Vain" features Delaney Bramlett. Delaney Bramlett and I go way back. He and I were pretty close friends.  I was selected to do a track on this soundtrack for a movie that's going to be coming out for Sundance next year called Guitar Man. The movie features everyone from Stevie Wonder to Lenny Kravitz to Sting to Neal Shon to Ronnie Montrose. The producer gave me a track and I saw that "Love In Vain" was one of the songs licensed and I said, “I’ll have that one please!” I actually produced the whole track with me singing it all the way through. Michael, the producer, brought Delaney up to interview for the movie, and I got this wild idea and thought why don’t we wipe half of my vocals of this track, and put Delaney on it and have him put some dobro on it and we’ll have it as a duet. It just kinda all fell together naturally.

RockOm: Tell us about your cancer and how did you go about the healing process?

Mark Karan: You got a few hours? It’s kind of a hard story to reign in. I was diagnosed in the summer of 2007. As far as what happened- I don’t know. The doctors don’t know what caused this cancer so I sure as heck don’t. I got diagnosed with throat cancer and had to go through about half a year’s worth of treatment and a bit of recovery time after that. I got the all clear in February of '08 and went back out on tour with RatDog.

I was really, really blessed in the way, for a lack of a better term, the universe sorta presented me the cancer and then allowed me to respond to it. I think it’s very natural for us to go into fear or anger or resentment around a diagnosis like that. I had a sense very immediately that the cancer was here to teach me something.

Walk Through the Fire is available in stores, on iTunes, Amazon.com, and his website, markkaran.com. The entire audio interview with Mark Karan will be featured on Thursday's RockOm.net podcast. You don't want to miss this podcast and the remarkable story of how Walk Through the Fire came into being.

A very special thanks to Dennis McNally for being such a friend to us here at RockOm.

We couldn’t let the week go by without briefly mentioning that it’s RockOm’s first anniversary. A year ago we set out with an intention to serve others through music and along the way we discovered something extraordinary - the music we were presenting began serving us, changing us for the better in ways far beyond our wildest expectations.

Our very first interview was with bluegrass legend Ricky Skaggs wherein he spoke about the power of music to change people. There is no other force like music that can reach out, create unity among different people and cultures, and heal souls as music does. In that way, music is quite literally prayer. Thousands of years ago prayers were sung so they would be remembered and passed along to future generations. The music we’ve been fortunate enough to present to you over the last year has found its way into our being and has become part of our prayer and our meditation.

We want to thank the many gifted musicians and artists we’ve worked with over the past year. To those artists such as Ricky Skaggs, Zakir Hussain, Abigail Washburn, Ram Dass, Krishna Das, The Blind Boys of Alabama, Steven Halpern, Futureman (Roy Wooten), Chuck Leavell of The Rolling Stones, Trevor Hall, Jai Uttal, David Newman (Durga Das), the late Ms. Odetta, The Wailers’ Aston "Family Man" Barrett and so many others who have opened their homes and their hearts to us we say thank you. To each of the "break-out" artists we've help introduce in our Featured Track of the Week spot, we say thank you. We also want to acknowledge the support and management as well as the PR people behind the artists who allow us to connect and bring each new feature and interview to you. Finally, we can’t leave out the many guest writers who have lent us their reviews, interviews and stories making for compelling reading on matters of music and spirituality each week. We want to thank our families as well for supporting our many long hours of work and believing in our love of the power of music.

Lastly, we want to thank you - you who are reading these words right now. We created RockOm for you and we hope, perhaps in some small way, you have been blessed and changed for the better through the power of music.

Thank you for being here now,

The RockOm team

By Tom Crenshaw, tom@rockom.net

There are only six musicians in the world whose email signature includes the iconic lips and tongue logo of The Rolling Stones. Keyboardist Chuck Leavell is one of those six. As a member of the Rolling Stones for the past twenty-seven years Chuck Leavell has played an integral part in shaping the music of the Stones since joining the band (on suggestion to The Stones by Bill Graham) on the 1982 European tour for the album Tattoo You. He has since gone on to contribute to the songwriting team of Jagger-Richards and in assisting in the arranging of their last umpteen albums since 1983’s album Under Cover.

Chuck Leavell may be a Rolling Stone but he’s getting used to playing a role much more influential and rewarding than being a member of the world’s greatest rock band through his work as a conservationist, environmentalist and founding board member (and Director of Environmental Affairs) of the Mother Nature Network (www.mnn.com). In addition, he and his wife Rose Lane were named National Outstanding Tree Farmers of the Year in 1999 for their management of Charlane Plantation in Macon, GA. He is also a board member of the U.S. Endowment for Forest Communities and was the keynote speaker at The Presidential Seminar and Fortune Magazine’s Green Summit.

Chuck Leavell is one of the most sought-after keyboard players in all of rock and roll. Before joining the Rolling Stones, Chuck was a member of the Allman Brothers Band and Sea Level. He has performed and recorded with the likes of George Harrison, Eric Clapton, Aretha Franklin, The Black Crowes, Widespread Panic, The Indigo Girls, Blues Traveler, Train, Rod Stewart, Steve Winwood, Seal, Robert Palmer, Chaka Kahn, Mary J. Blige, Toni Braxton, Montgomery Gentry, Lee Ann Womack... (ok, you get the drift here - who HASN’T Chuck collaborated with?)  He has recorded and released four solo albums with his latest double disc release being 2008’s Live in Germany. Chuck has also authored several books including an autobiography entitled Between a Rock and a Home Place and a children’s book on environmentalism entitled The Tree Farmer.

Chuck Leavell has carved a legacy for himself that few could ever imagine creating. His contributions to the annuals of music and to the preservation of our world for future generations aren’t fully appreciated at this moment in time. But that’s probably just fine for Chuck Leavell.  After all, as you'll soon learn, he’s got a grandbaby to play with now. One must remember to tend to the truly important things in life.
____________________________________

RockOm: Thanks, Chuck for allowing RockOm the opportunity to spend some time with you. It’s a great honor. What are your earliest musical memories growing up and what first inspired you and made you aware that you wanted to be a professional musician?

Chuck Leavell: It was my mother that inspired me to play the piano. She played, just for family enjoyment, and I was the youngest of three siblings. So often it was just my mom and me in the house together, especially when I was just a child - five, six, seven years old. I would tug on her skirt and ask her to play and she would usually oblige if she wasn’t too busy. I loved hearing her play and watching her hands going up and down the keyboard. It was a huge thrill for me.

RockOm: Did you ever in your wildest dreams imagine that music would take you from Alabama to see the world and collaborate with the greatest musicians in the industry?

Chuck Leavell: No. All of that came in due course, but when I started, it was really just for the love of doing it. Although I must say that in my first band when I was 13, The Misfitz, we were doing quite well. We played the YMCA every Friday night and on Saturday mornings we had a TV show called Tuscaloosa Bandstand. Between those two gigs we were bringing down something like $45 each a week, which was pretty substantial for the mid 60’s. So it became an enterprise as well as a joy very early on for me.

RockOm: To say you’re a staunch conservationist is an understatement. You’re an avid environmentalist, preservationist, a board member on the U.S. Endowment for Forest Communities, author of several books, owner and operator of Charlane Plantation, which is a 2200 acre pine forest and farm outside Macon, GA. Now you’ve developed and launched a very exciting and important new project, the Mother Nature Network (www.mnn.com) and are the project’s Director of Environmental Affairs. Some social and political leaders have stated recently that conservationism and environmentalism are indeed spiritual matters that the church and religious institutions need to address. Do you agree with their assessment?

Chuck Leavell: I think all of us have to address our environmental challenges. Our churches and spiritual institutions, sure, but also our government, businesses, schools, universities, nongovernmental organizations, non-profits and other groups - and of course as individuals. Theodore Roosevelt said over 100 years ago at a conference on water issues in Memphis, Tennessee that if we don’t address the challenges that face our natural lands we stand little chance of solving other problems. I think he was right then and he’s right now. I do think that now the “sleeping giant” (America) is finally awakening to these challenges. Maybe not everyone, but I think enough of us now see that it’s inevitable we make changes in our lives, our energy sources and energy consumption, our development models and methodologies and so forth if we want to have a beautiful and safe world to live in. I believe we also have to face some realities in population growth. It seems to me that the Europeans and some other countries have made more strides in all these matters than we have. But with the new Administration now in place, I’m confident that we will do better. Hey, I’m a grandparent now and I worry about the world our future generations will have to deal with.

RockOm: As a “Carolina boy” I grew up enjoying time in the woods, the countryside and mountains and understand it when you said that, “There's nothing like being next to nature and the feeling of spirituality that comes with that."  When you’re out walking Charlane Plantation is there a “natural music” that you hear in the woods, the fields? How have you used your time in mother nature to help you be a better musician?

Chuck Leavell: I like to say that walking in my woods or any beautiful natural setting is, for me, like being in church. I think one can feel a connection to all things when in nature - a connection to wildlife, to plant life, to the Earth itself and even to the universe and beyond. Maybe that sounds a bit extreme or over the top, but it’s true, at least for me. I have a feeling of calm, connection, reverence and spirituality in nature. And yes, sometimes it inspires musical ideas.

RockOm: Why do you think music cuts so easily through cultural, social and religious barriers and has the ability to bring people together unlike any other medium?

Chuck Leavell: It’s simply THE universal language. We can all respond to it. It’s a means of cutting through words - although, of course lyrics can be equally important as melody and rhythm and getting to feeling. It can also be an expression of our culture. Food and music do a lot to define our heritage, who we are, our respective cultures. I think it’s also that music expresses emotions of all kinds: joy, sadness, loneliness, longing, fear, defiance, love and other emotions. It allows us to communicate in a way that sometimes spoken languages can’t.

RockOm: You’ve recorded some righteous gospel tunes and worked with spirited artists on many occasions including Aretha Franklin, Eric Clapton and the late George Harrison, all of whom have openly expressed their spirituality. Can you mention some other songs or artists you’ve written or worked on or with that have a quality that you would call spiritual but aren’t religious at all?

Chuck Leavell: Well, certainly the ones you’ve mentioned were very spiritual, and it was an honor to work with them. My friend Randall Bramblett, who worked with me in Sea Level and who I still work with from time to time is a very interesting spiritual person without necessarily being religious. His music and especially his lyrics reflect that. He goes deep into social issues, moral issues, love, forgiveness, conflict and more. I think he’s one of the greatest songwriters in our country now and much overlooked. I just did a CD with Bonnie Bramblett, a gospel record. I love gospel music, and gospel has been a huge influence on my playing. When you think about it, most rock piano comes from the church; Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis, Aretha and others all started playing in church settings. It’s a stylistic thing, but also a certain feel, a groove. I can think of some bands that have inspired me that come from a spiritual place like The Mahavishnu Orchestra, for instance. Very spiritual. Ravi Shankar is another example in a completely different genre. Keith Jarrett moves me in that way. McCoy Tyner. So do players no longer with us like John Coltrane and Miles Davis.  U2 writes about social issues that get into a degree of spirituality, I think. Joni Mitchell strikes me as spiritual in some of her songs.  Certainly not all music has to be “spiritual”, but I think a lot of those that attempt to be spiritual through their songs and interpretations can be moving and inspiring. It’s part of the magic of music.

RockOm: Would it be fair to say that music is something spiritual for you and if so, can you elaborate, as much as you’re comfortable doing so?

Chuck Leavell: For me, music is sometimes a spiritual exercise, but also an intellectual one, as well as a physical one. I think it’s possible sometimes to reach new heights musically if you are somehow inspired spiritually. As a musician, sometimes when I take a risk, trying to do something that perhaps I have not practiced enough to be confident in doing, yet am willing to try at a certain moment when a certain “spirit” is within me, the spirit seems to take over and make it possible. I guess in part spirituality gives you faith in yourself to go beyond what you may be comfortable trying. It’s sort of like calling on a universal connection that exists between all of us and gaining strength from that to try things you may have some fear or trepidation trying. It’s perhaps a bit like when the adrenaline takes over in an accident and gives someone extraordinary strength to lift a heavy object or perform some other physical feat that you would normally say is impossible or beyond your normal means in order to save a child, or a loved one. Spirituality gives us hope, power, possibility that may not have existed a moment before.

RockOm: What moves you as a songwriter and musician into that space where inspiration flows easiest? How do you best create music?

Chuck Leavell: Well, I have to first of all admit that I am not a prolific songwriter. I enjoy writing, but for whatever reasons, I am more of a player than a writer. As far as inspiration goes, it can come from just about any source. I suppose a good example for me was my Southscape CD. I wanted to pay tribute to my southern heritage. To do a project that expressed musically what the South means to me - the places, the people, even the food. So songs like “Cherokee Wind” pays homage to the Native American influence and heritage of the South. “Tomato Jam” is a nod to a sweet yet spicy condiment that is southern. In “Altamaha”, I try to paint a picture of that very important river in Georgia. I guess I like having a purpose to write music but sometimes things just pop out of the fingers or out of the mind. I’m not so good with lyrics but once in a great while I’ll write them. However, I don’t have near the confidence in my lyrics as I do in my playing.

RockOm: Your style of playing the piano and your contributions to Rock ’n Roll are historic and are still evolving, placing you right there alongside the greats in the industry. How do you maintain the humbleness you’re been noted for?  What keeps you grounded and your name out of negative press when many of your peers have had such difficult times adjusting to fame and fortune?

Chuck Leavell: I’m not sure I really know the answer to that. I certainly don’t think I have any special gift that makes me in any way better than anyone else. I am just so grateful for the life I’ve been able to lead, for what talents I’ve been offered. I’m so blessed to get to play music with others, to have a wonderful family, to be able to work in nature and hopefully to appreciate it and help the health of our natural lands, our wildlife and all the bio-diversity that exists in our world. My parents were certainly an influence on me. My dad told me things like, “You make your own luck” and “there is an art to everything.” My mom was such a loving individual and had deep faith. She was also an inspiration in that she had one of the worst cases of rheumatoid arthritis you could imagine, yet hardly ever complained. She lived through a tremendous amount of pain and suffering because of it, yet was grateful for her life, her opportunities, her family, her friends. When I think of any of the problems or challenges I face, I think of her and I think of what she taught all three of her children... to be grateful for what you have, to try and overcome obstacles, to try and make a positive difference in the world, to love your fellow man, to be willing to forgive wrongdoings and to get beyond things like hate, revenge and vengeance. Carrying around excess baggage can drag you down. Not that we need forget things that happen but it’s more about moving forward and trying to help induce positive change.

RockOm: After almost 30 years as a member of The Rolling Stones is it still exciting when you get the call that it’s time to record and tour again?

Chuck Leavell: Absolutely! I love working with the Stones, love all the individuals involved - not just the band, but all the folks that are attached to it. It’s quite a large family and most of the members have been there a long time. It gets in your blood. It’s part of me, of us. I wish we would work more often, record more, try different approaches to touring. But it’s all up to the guys that are in charge, mainly Mick, Keith and Charlie. We’ve been off now since August of 2007, almost two years. We haven’t played in the U.S. Since February of 2006, three years. It’s great for me and all the others to have different things to do, different settings to play music in, but the Stones are, well THE STONES!

RockOm: Who would you most like to collaborate with musically if you had the opportunity?

Chuck Leavell: There are a lot of artists I admire and would love to play with - some established, some new. I like the works of Joni Mitchell, Sting, Ben Harper, U2, Macy Gray, Alison Krauss, Bob Dylan and others. I’ve enjoyed working in the Country genre from time to time. I have worked with Montgomery-Gentry, Miranda Lambert, Lee Ann Womack, and David Nail. I like Taylor Swift’s voice and have never worked with her. I’m sure there are lots of others. Send me a list and I’ll tell you!!

RockOm: What’s next for you? Any projects in the near future that you care to mention?

Chuck Leavell: My next CD will be a tribute to pioneering piano players. Mostly from the 40’s and 50’s, but I’m trying not to be too restrictive. I don’t really want to go past the 50’s era, though. There have been a lot of tributes to guitar players of the era, but very little has been done to pay homage to these piano players such as Little Brother Montgomery, Lee Roy Carr, Amos Milburn, early Ray Charles, Cow Cow Davenport and the like. I want to concentrate mainly on blues players, but maybe a little stride and boogie will edge their way in. I’ve started research for it and I believe it will be a fun project. I don’t know what the Stones have in mind. They have had some meetings, but I don’t think any decisions have been made yet. Of course if the call comes, I want to be there. I mentioned the Bonnie Bramblett sessions and have one coming up with Montgomery-Gentry. I love doing session work and hope there will be more coming my way this year. I’ve started a new book called Smart, Strong and Sustainable that will deal with growth and development issues. And of course I’ll be working quite a bit on The Mother Nature Network project. I’ll certainly be working on Charlane Plantation as much as possible, too. I love working on our land. I’m also involved in some interesting Boards... the U. S. Endowment for Forests and Communities, The American Forest Foundation, The Georgia Land Conservation Council, The Dell Re-Generation Board and some others. These are all wonderful opportunities, and I hope to do them justice.

To learn more about Chuck Leavell please follow these links:

The Mother Nature Network: www.mnn.com

Chuck Leavell’s Homepage on the web: www.chuckleavell.com

Chuck Leavell’s MySpace page: myspace.com/chuckleavell

Chuck Leavell at Amazon.com