Marc Evans
It’s midday on a Saturday and over a Transatlantic line from Baltimore, stellar vocalist Marc Evans is poised to give us the lowdown on his forthcoming album for Defected. It’s a deep, soulful, sexy, 13 track collaboration between the singer and DJ Spen’s globally celebrated Muthafunkas production set up. Marc Evans is clearly excited.
Some of you will already be familiar with this man’s vocals. Back in 2005, on the back of ‘The Way You Love’, he flew in from the States to perform at a Southport Weekender.
“It was incredible,” he reflects. “I’ve had a band for 15 years and I’m used to maybe 100 or 200 people in a club singing my songs but to have 5000 people singing the words, that was, ‘WOW!... they are singing MY words’. It was a very emotional encounter with people who’d been touched by a song I’d sung and written.”
While Marc hold currently holds down a regular day job he also functions as a working musician. Despite having a mother who is a painter and a violinist and a father who is a soul/jazz saxophonist, this man didn’t discover his own voice until he joined the choir at Morgan State University. That was back in 1989. He was a Chemistry pre-med but as voices swam around him and his head filled with the sounds of spirituals, gospel and classical music he dropped out and decided to pursue a career in jazz music.
“ Jazz… scat…doo wop…. improv… I was listening to Bobby McFerrin, Nat King Cole and George Benson… he was respected in both jazz and R&B. I started a band playing electric soul stuff, 70s soul pop, Parliament, Commodores… a kind of corporate party band!”
In fact, Marc has had bands ever since and today he holds down three residences in the Baltimore area. He is good friends with the amazing Vinx, who he met in Nineties, and regularly does gigs with him. Marc is also a longstanding member of Kevin Robinson’s KRE-ation, an out-there, totally improvised live eight piece outfit, who regularly play in NYC, Maryland and Virginia.
“That band is totally spiritual”, he declares. “It’s totally free flowing, a god given gift… we play a few times a month and it all about energy and vibration. It’s definitely one of my favourite things.”
As a recording artist Marc has recorded and released two independent albums – ‘First 7 Years’ and ‘Intervention’. While the first LP ventured into the R&B/Soul market, ‘Intervention’ explored a stronger lyrical content and touched down on hip hop influenced Neo Soul scene.
Marc was introduced to fellow Baltimore resident DJ Spen by his bass player, Irven Madden, who is also one of the Muthafunkas. The result was an invitation to do some session work with Code Red and provide backing vocals for Byron Stingley and Biblical Jones.
“Spen is a couple of years older than me. He was part of this group Numarx. You know that Milli Vanilli song ‘Girl You Know It’s True’. He wrote that song. Every Sunday I would tune in the radio to listen to Spen and four other DJs including Kevin Lyles who now works with Jay-Z and Soulchilde.”
“Lyrics are important to me,” stresses Marc. “I’ve been writing them since grade school but it was the three years I spent working as a performance poet that really helped me with meaning and colour. It was during a session with Spen that I suggested they let me write something ‘cause I felt the stuff had potential and I had something to offer. They gave me the track, Spen gave me the hook, and I wrote ‘The Way We Love’ in around 20 minutes. It’s often the case that the best songs come real quick. We got a huge response to ‘The Way We Love’. Even as far away as London.
“ My own songs are often taken from my own life experience. The follow up to ‘The Way We Love’ was ‘I Don’t Want You Anymore’, which emerged from me breaking up with my wife. It was part of the cleansing process. The process of letting go.”
According to Marc the production sound of Muthafunkas is the real sound of Baltimore.
“I listen to a lot of house and we have a unique sound at Code Red. Our sound is the sound of the South but not too South. It’s not like Chicago and it’s not like Baltimore Club which is a bit left of house, more break beats, chants and phrases relevant to the area. Spen is a veteran DJ and producer, Madden is a master of Seventies funk bass from Zappa to Bootsy and Gary Hudgins also played with George Clinton. What Spen does is bring together house with authentic funk.”
“We took our time with this album and the end result is well worth the long nights and the heated discussions. I have a chemistry with Spen but we were working to build a working relationship and produce something we were all happy with. As producers they were able to take me to that place. Just listen to ‘Heartbeat’ with Irven on guitar and bass and that Afro Cuban rhythm with congas and cowbells.”
Along with the funk, this album possesses a cathartic, uplifting quality that is rooted in the gospel experience. The positive affirmations of house music allows both the artists and the dancers to express that deeper spiritual side and Marc’s declares, “I am spiritual person. I’m not a religious person. I believe in the healing power of music. Universal beings…all cultures together… Christian folk with Gay folk… this music is an embrace.”
Convinced that the music on the Defected album is destined to travel, Marc is poised to quit the day job and explore the potential a live performance that meshes his soulful vocal with live instrumentation and electronica.
“I want to be recognised as an artist. I don’t want to be categorised!” he maintains and it’s clear that this brother from Baltimore is part of an African American continuum that spans the gospel tradition, the spirit of Trane, the wayward funk of Parliament, the deeper soul of Donnie Hathaway and Marvin Gaye and that deep devotion to hard wired pumping beats that unites the Windy City and the Motor City.
