I grew up in Oreland, PA, a small town outside of the city.Growing up, I listened to a variety of music, mostly Motown, The Four Tops, Marvin Gaye, The Temptations, and of course, Michael Jackson! I think, just like everyone else, Michael Jackson had huge influences on my life and my musical ear and direction. My favorite thing about MJ was not the dancing but more of the way he used his tones...; his harmonies were always the best. The dancing - I used to be able to dance just like him - the slides, the hand and neck movements, but my moonwalk was suspect! LOL! After high school, I moved to Cocoa Beach, Florida, where I did some singing and dancing in a group I started with some neighborhood guys. We did a couple of house parties and football games but that was it. That was during the year 2000. Wow! I can't believe it's been 11 years! I returned from Florida and took a few years off. I eventually moved downtown with a good friend of mine, Matt Kauderer (you can check out his blog radio on: www.ocradion.com). He and I started working on some guitar songs, then he started his own studio and we started recording songs. We had a whole crew down there: Sleeze, Twin, Comp, Shanks, City, Rugg, and Exquisite Live. Great time and place to be growing up and learning at 23rd and Spruce! That's when and where I started to realize that I had some natural talents. They were stewing and I was inspired.
Things started to get rough down there as time went on; people's egos, nothing getting moving, being broke, you know. It was just time for a change. I think one of the last songs I wrote downtown was a song called Drowning. After the situation downtown faded, I moved back to Montgomery County, and wanted to do my first "real" record and re-record my album that I made downtown with live instruments. This is in 2005. A good friend of mine introduced me to a young producer/engineer named Michael Birchard. He is in the cover band called Split Decision and had a studio inside his home. Mike and I quickly became great friends and business partners. When I returned to Montgomery County, I realized that the only way to get myself onstage was to promote the party myself. I did a few successful shows and then teamed up with Forge Recording and we started Forge Promotions. I was promoting Whiskey Tango every Friday for a few months until the club decided to go into another direction. Which brings me to the here and now. In July, 2010, I began recording my new album entitled Love's Music. The title, if you break it down, says: Love Is Music, and if you read it the way it is written, it says: Mark Gaines Love's Music! LOL! Both true statements that I thought were pretty clever! I finished recording on my birthday this year, January 19th, and the record is scheduled to be released on February 25th. It will be available on ITunes, Amazon and Rhapsody.