Paul Mark and The Van Dorens come to dinner

The blues has become too
derivative. It’s a lampoon. But Paul Mark isn’t mad about that, he’s just a
little sick and tired.

            “One of the reasons I got into this to begin with was to
build little stories, not just mimic old acts,” Mark says via Bat-phone from
Gotham. “There has to be something about it that goes beyond ‘Sweet Home
Chicago’ or ‘Stormy Monday.'”

            Paul Mark and The Van Dorens play relentless, salacious
roots music befitting their B-movie floozy moniker and Mark’s lyrical
strato-vision. On their new, fourth release, Indigo Vertigo (Radiation), this New York City trio dives face-first
into the roots-rock mêlée where it all began.

            “People have said to me, ‘Your records don’t always sound
like what you sound like live,'” says Mark. “They miss that raucous barroom
thing, the ambiance. I tried to hone in on that a little more this time. This
truly is straight-ahead barroom music.”

            It’s Mark’s guitar that keeps the band rooted where his
descriptive, story-like lyrics don’t. The blues is about innuendo and
intangible emotion. His music pulls at heartstrings scarred by timeless wounds,
while the pulp-poetic lyrics unfold as if subtitled on a drive-in movie screen.
It’s like a book on tape full of cads, cats, cons, cuties, Cadillacs, and
card-sharks, all parading out in Mark’s trademark monster baritone and into the
ears of John Q. Rockfan.

            The Van Dorens are essentially a rhythm and blues outfit,
with the blues simply serving as a launch pad. Destination: dance floor.

            And they ain’t nice.

            “I think the worst thing to happen to blues/roots music
in the last 25 years is that it became dignified,” Mark says. “You go to these
blues festivals where people are there with baby carriages and balloons, and
they say, ‘Isn’t this nice music?'” This cuts Mark deep. “I was always drawn to
this music because it wasn’t nice,” he says in a raised voice. “It was
subversive, and the people who played it — well, you didn’t want to have them
to your place for dinner.”

            You can have dinner with Paul Mark and The Van Dorens on
Friday, October 18, at Dinosaur Bar-B-Que, 99 Court Street, at 10 p.m. 325-7090
or www.paulmark.com.

— Frank De Blase

This article appears in Oct 16-22, 2002.