Meet Wilson Marks: Musician and Educator

We had the good fortune of connecting with Wilson Marks and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Wilson, what led you to pursuing a creative path professionally?
I’m a compulsive sound maker – I played instruments growing up and having both my dayjob as an elementary music teacher and my night gig (in non-Covid times) be playing music in a variety of settings feels more natural to me than trying to do anything else. I held a variety of jobs when I was younger but music and art were always how I chose to spend much of my time and energy. The reality of trying to eke out a living as an artist means wearing a lot of different hats but that has meant lots of different flavors of work- as a side-musician for others, doing studio work, leading a band with my original music or being sonic wallpaper, teaching lessons, doing summer music camps with kids, among other things… 

Can you open up a bit about your work and career? We’re big fans and we’d love for our community to learn more about your work.
I studied jazz in New Orleans but grew up playing folk music. I think my latest album, True Beauty is in the Random, is the most unique and genre-crossing batch of tunes that I’ve managed to pull together yet – actually pressing this one to vinyl also feels like having ownership of the material in a concrete way, especially in the age of streaming. Music is so frequently seen as a free flowing commodity like water- shuffled through or played in the background, but the concreteness of putting on a record to listen through is a grounding and centering thing I enjoy doing in my home. Reading the lyrics or liner notes… I am super grateful to have had the help of Justin Douglas at King Electric and my bandmates Aaron Parks and Daniel Durham in actualizing this group of tunes and the way it sounds on record is night and day from streaming. Part autobiographical, part fruit of a few songwriters’ groups I’m in, there was a lot of time and energy and heart put into this latest thing. Putting it out in the midst of a pandemic when I couldn’t promote it or have a release show may have been a questionable idea in all honesty, but there is a beautiful video a friend, Seela, made for one of the tunes and now that it’s out I have been able to focusing on making other things and it feels good to keep moving… This is on top of my day job as an elementary music teacher- energetically the teaching game is very different too at the moment. I’m trying to do it with a modicum of grace and sometimes succeed but it’s been a tough year.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
Probably head out for a bike ride and tacos.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
The ghost of Jacob do Bandolim (no – seriously, listening to his Brazilian choro music while biking trails in my off time throughout the pandemic has been a lifesaver)

Website: www.wilsonmarks.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wilson.marks/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/wilsonmarksmusic/
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtZ9oSFufD-gv9trCmfLEoQ
Other: Video from the latest album: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=puoZqvitIwI Bandcamp: https://wilsonmarks.bandcamp.com/