Mark from a very early age showed massive potential.
At school he excelled in music, and from as early as six years old was getting to grips with the piano.
Born into a household that loved the popular tunes of the day his parents encouraged Mark to play music on the piano and were happy for him to play the tunes he had made up and were laying dormant in his head.
It was that time !! With Bill Haley been and gone, Gene Vincent all in leather, The Shadows with their cool guitars and moves, and then The Beatles, there was only one thing to do, buy a guitar.
With his cap in hand, he approached his parents and asked them if they would consider buying him a guitar. He knew they wanted him to continue playing piano, with the promise that he would continue his piano studies and that he would pay his parents back, from his meagre paper round money, they agreed.
Now at Secondary Grammar School in Stafford Mark was in the starting blocks and away.
All around him were people with similar interests, POP music. It didn't take him long to team up with one of his friends and at the age of 12 he formed a duo and was playing his own songs to anyone that would listen. Music Folk music nights were popular in the late sixties, and it was here that Mark honed his newly found talent at writing and performing his own songs.
This new experience of playing to an audience was to set the scene for the next few years. He formed a band with friends from school called Axis, and started to play larger and more diverse venues. Pubs, Clubs, Village Halls and Parties and Studio work kept this by now, accomplished songwriter and guitarist very busy in the early Seventies, he was by now the guitarist of choice for the many bands in Staffordshire, until that fateful day when that thing called Love took over.
Although music was never far away it would be a few years later when with the children more grown up it was decided to move house to one a little larger.
It was here that Mark met his then new neighbour, Steve Renyard.
Like Mark, Steve was also a keen keyboard and guitar player, and it was that common interest in music that started them off on the journey of playing and performing once more. The pair performed at Parties, Pubs, Open Mic nights and just about anywhere that a music starved audience could be found. The word soon spread that this new duo were a forced to be reckoned with. Their own produced backing tracks filling out the sound, but something was missing a drummer and a bass player.
With the word out that this talented duo were looking for band members it wasn't long before the band Urban Dreamer materialised. These very accomplished musicians performed all around Shropshire, Staffordshire and The West Midlands, and always got the return gig. Gigging as well as the time taken practicing new material can take it's toll however and so it was that business and working hard to earn money to put food on the table, left Mark at a loose end.
Mark continued with his own music and grabbed himself a publishing deal with Vertigo films, but it was his love of performing that was missing from his life.
It was a fateful day in 2009 that at a loose end Mark attended the Newport Open Mic evening and after a chat with Merv Williams the band that is now Newport Super-group Bang To Rights was created.
Mark continues to write and record own material in his home studio.
His weapons of choice are:-
A Pink Fender Stratocaster, A lovely Green Yamaha SG, A Hohner L59, A immaculate Hohner L90 Goldtop, 1972 Epiphone
acoustic, and a Fender Hot Rod Deluxe amp.
