Opening for Mark Schwaber & Sara Gomes this Friday at the Black Moon!
Posted By matthewlarsen ~ 17th November 2008
This Friday, I have the opportunity to open for Western Massachusetts singer/songwriter, Mark Schwaber. I’ve known Mark for a long time now as most musicians in the valley do, having common friends and acquaintances. Mark writes a great music blog called Feedback for MassLive (where I work), he ran Night Owl Records in Easthampton where I purchased many a cd, and over the twenty or some odd years we’ve both been making music in the valley, we’ve been on the same bill a few times and attended many of the same shows. Aside from my normal appreciation that Mark is a ‘valley musician’, I can honestly say that Mark Schwaber is one of my favorite musicians anywhere. There are some of his songs that just absolutely floor me every time I hear them… ‘Dignity in Death’ for example.
Mark has been performing with Sara Gomes lately, and from what I hear, it’s nothing short of magic. Sara Gomes is the wife of Tom Gomes, who who used to play drums in a band called Killswitch Engage (and now owns his own drum company). The main guitar dudes in Killswitch are Adam Dutkiewicz and Joel Stroetzel.
Adam and I got together when Killswitch was still in its infancy to record the Smokejumpers album. At the time, I was going through some medical bullshit and Adam would come over with an 8-track ADAT and record in my crappy Easthampton apartment. It’s funny to think that, while Adam was concurrently working hard to develop the metal band that would ultimately launch his successful music career, he was also writing sappy folk songs on acoustic guitar and recording my mellow piano stuff. One song in particular we wound up recording at Zing Studio in Westfield, which is where I met Joel Stroetzel for the first time– he was hanging out with Adam and at Zing a lot.
Fast forward a number of years, and it turns out that Joel played guitar on Mark’s last record, The Killing Card, and the two of them are good friends. Joel and his wife lived in my former apartment in Easthampton after I moved out.
You have to love Western Massachusetts. It’s like we have our own version of Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon. And, in fact, anyone who has ever played the Iron Horse or knows someone who has is separated only by only a few degrees from Kevin Bacon, since The Bacon Brothers have been booked there on numerous occasions.
Anyway, like Adam D. or Joel or Matt Bachand from Shadows Fall, it’s fitting that Mark Schwaber is one of those people who loves metal but can also tear your heart out with a simple sweet quiet melody. I think it’s this dichotomy that keeps things interesting in Mark’s music, and I am genuinely excited to hear him and Sara together on Friday night at The Black Moon.
