 by ANDREA MYERS
It’s a sunny afternoon in the Seward neighborhood, and I’m checking my watch and looking up and down the street, waiting for my interviewee to arrive. From down the street, I see a minivan careening my way, and in the least likely entrance possible local rock icon Mark Mallman pulls up next to me on the street, leans out of his van, and greets me sheepishly.
“I just woke up,” he says quietly. “Can we find some coffee?”
 Mallman
and I navigate our way through the neighborhood streets to the Cliquot Club,
and he excitedly picks out a scone and orders a cup of joe as I find a quiet
area for us to chat. Unlike the wild rock persona he is known for on stage,
the Mallman (or the Mall Man, as he is known to friends) I am meeting with today
is polite, reserved and charming.
It takes a while to wind into a serious conversation about his new album, Between
the Devil and Middle C, which hit stores last week. When asked about a typical
day in the life of Mallman, he deadpans, “Skydiving in the morning. I
skydive to my office that’s in a cave.”
I study his face, squinting through his sunglasses to see if he will burst out
laughing, but he continues. “And I get in the cave, and then I go on the
internet for about two hours and do my
MySpace page, and update the website, and I talk to the booking agent and
the label and then talk to the publicist. And then I go to a deeper level of
the cave, and I work on an army of robots.”
We chat about his love affair with the piano, taking lessons as a kid (which
he hated), and learning to write songs. “I’ve played piano almost
every day of my life,” he says. “But I’m not good. I’m
not good at it.” In the past year I have seen Mallman perform live a handful
of times, and the gap between his obvious technical abilities and his modest
assessment of his abilities is astonishing. “The keyboard generally has
a stigma against being particularly sexy, and I don’t think I do a tremendous
job of advancing that cause,” he says, laughing. “You know, unless
maybe I’m a sexual predator compared to the keyboard.
“I wrote The Tourist on my guitar, which is my first record,”
he explains between nibbles of scone. “And Travis Ramin from the Short
Fuses was living here, and he said, ‘Mall Man, why are you playing guitar?’
And I said, well this is Minneapolis, this is a guitar town, you gotta play
guitar. He said, ‘First of all, you’re not very good at guitar.
And secondly you play keyboard. No one plays keyboards. So you should do that.’
And that was really smart on his part to say that, because, god, I’m not
a very good guitarist at all.”
Since his first solo record in 1998, Mallman has continued to develop his signature
style of piano-driven, late ’70s pop/rock. Rather than continuing a search
for the newest, most buzzworthy sound, Mallman endeavors to refine his skills
and perfect the style that he loves. When talking about his new record, he explains
that “those tunes, in one part, are a search to challenge myself to write
tighter and tighter and tighter. To reach the pinnacle of the form, the ’70s
rock form, ’80s, whatever. It seems like a lot of music is always advancing,
advancing, advancing, as opposed to striving for higher levels of the same form.”
 Despite
his earlier accomplishments and marathons, Devil and Middle C is one
of the high points of Mallman’s career. The album is a collection of slick,
hook-laden pop songs that demand to be played on repeat at high volume, and
preferably for crowded rooms of people. At first listen, the record is significantly
lighter than his previous work, if only for the fact that every song references
drinking and partying at least once. But deeper ideas brew just beneath the
surface, hinting at more complex ideas like depression, insecurity and romantic
failure.
Mallman talks about his new songs intelligently and excitedly.
“This album was like a movie,” he explains. “There’s
a character in this movie, Devil and Middle C. And it’s based on
existential philosophy, which all of my albums hinge on. A Herman Hesse concept
that the steppenwolf is caught—” he pauses and studies me, as if
trying to determine whether I believe him. “This is all heavy shit,”
he apologizes, and then continues. “You know the concept that there is
this steppenwolf—are you a man or an animal—and he is caught on
these steps. Between the devil and Middle C. I’m trying to find my rock
thing, so it’s between the spiritual and the music. There’s this
existential crisis ... there’s this question of death. The question of
death. The question of God. And it’s kind of interwoven.”
We both laugh a little, breaking up the seriousness for a moment, and he stares
off in the distance, deep in thought. “This is really weird,” he
continues. “Because I’m trying to figure out what I really think
is cool and take that concept—questioning where we fit in the whole scheme
of nature—and apply it to this dumb thing, which is jumping up and down.
Being a fucking asshole in a bar.”
“In songwriting, it’s better to leave the heavy stuff in between,”
he says, “and then let it all be implied. Just because of the nature of
the form, I think. It’s played in the dentist’s office, you know,
or when you’re out partying, seeing a band. So you have to be sneaky.”
In “Tell Me How a Man Gets Close to You,” Mallman uses geographic
metaphors to a story about a girl just out of his reach, and the radio-ready
“Substances” uses, well, lists of substances to contemplate the
complexity of his personal relationships and place in society, lamenting, “Now
I’m looking for substance / but all I found is substances.” Continuing
on the theme of his dichotomous life, Mallman remarks at the end of a verse,
“I’ve read about about a thousand books on metamorphosis”—a
seemingly passive line that hints at a deeper confusion about his persona.
I ask Mallman if he feels shy when interacting with people socially. “I
just don’t feel like I’m part of the world,” he says reflectively.
“And I never did. I mean, when I lived in Milwaukee, the concept of home—I
never had that feeling in my heart. Home, where I belonged ... it just never
felt like it. I feel more comfortable when I’m on stage because that makes
sense to me.
 “I
feel really comfortable when I’m in the studio, I feel really comfortable
watching a movie or reading a book, but being social I just—there’s
a certain way when you’re being social that you have to confront your
ego, you have to face your ego. And I’m not talking about the rock star
ego. That’s easy to hide behind. It’s real easy to hide behind.
But I do like talking to people. I like listening to people, I like making jokes.
Talking about movies. Getting deep.” After a solemn moment he bursts out
laughing. “You’re like Barbara Walters,” he says. “You
should write that in there. ‘Then Mark started crying.’”
A few days later, just a few blocks away from where we met for our interview,
I am still thinking about our discussion as I wait for Mallman to take the stage
at the Hexagon Bar for a brief appearance at a birthday show for Christy Hunt
of Ouija Radio. Mallman sits down at his keyboard with just Sean Hoffman on
drums and a CD of recorded backup music to accompany him, the configuration
he uses while on tour. With his eyes closed, Mallman pummels through “Tell
Me How a Man Gets Close to You” and “Substances,” and a small
group of avid fans push closer to the little stage. It’s hard to believe,
while watching him live, that a man so captivating could seem so uncertain about
his talents. “I’m not good at it,” I can hear him say in the
back of my mind as he hammers out octave piano chords with both hands at breakneck
speed. I just don’t feel like I’m part of the world, I recall him
saying as a row of women shriek “Mall Man!” at the top of their
lungs.
In a rock and roll world where ego is king, Mark Mallman stands out in every
way possible. And for a guy who “isn’t very good,” Mallman
sure knows how to write one hell of a pop song and play the life out of his
beat up old digital piano. ||
Mark Mallman plays the release show for his new disc on Sat., Sept. 9 at
First Avenue with Maritime, Thunder
in the Valley and Brad Cassetto. 8 p.m. $8/$10. 18+. 701 First Ave. N, Mpls.
612-338-8388. For more info on Mark Mallman, visit mallman.com.
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