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His novelty dance routine blew me away - the gold thong was a stroke of genius

Country Music People

David Allan

Good to hear again from Mike Hyland former Nashville correspondent for BBC Radio 2's Country Club, and now running a new publishing company. He tells me he's just signed up the singer-songwriter from Cambridge, Mark Evans, and I reckon he's made a very wise move.

Mark received what was nothing short of a rave review from our editor Craig Baguley when he did a showcase at Taylor's club in Soho a few years back. After noting the brilliance of Mark's writing, Craig urged him to head for Nashville and parade his wares there. Mark did just that and it seems to be paying off.

Mark's debut album, I Crawl Out, (recorded in Music City with the likes of the wonderful Kathy Chiavola helping out) is a classy affair indeed. Mark may not make the vocalist of the year short list but the 12 songs - all original compositions - are stunning.

This is British country music talent at its finest and at least half a dozen songs have "hit" stamped all over them. I confidently expect a couple of the songs to be picked
up by a major artist. Watch this space.

Mark, who describes himself as a grumpy old geezer from England, tells me that it's been a bizarre year for him so far and if it continues this way he'll "have to consider giving up moaning or at least taking it to a new level!

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Classic American

Douglas McPherson

Mark's blurry, slurry voice, delivered with idiosyncratic timing aver a loosely strummed acoustic guitar lets us know from the off that people like Guy Clark, John Prine, Billy Joe Shaver and maybe David Allan Coe and Steve Earle are influences.

But Evans is more than a mere copyist. By the second track it’s clear he has a nicely off-kilter view of the world as he regales us with the tale of a man whose wife walks out and leaves him with a video diary of her adultery.

'I'm bluer than the movie you left playing in the VCR,’ sings Mark an a track that shames today’s sanitised Country music industry with a timely reminder that the genre has always been at its best when cracking sick jokes in the gutter of human behaviour.

And Mark certainly plumbs the depths, from drug abuse to domestic violence, an album that's not far the faint hearted, but certainly worth investigating if you like a walk on the dark side of life.

Indeed, Mark could almost be singing about Country’s new breed of shiny, happy singers when, on another track, he addresses an. ex with the words, 'If ever you get tired of that horse’s ass you’re kissing, came back and see what you been missing.'

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www.altcountry.nl

John Gjaltema

Mark Evans has a problem. Because there’s no escaping the fact that his voice is almost identical to that of Billy Joe Shaver. The danger
exists that readers knowing this fact will drop out and will think beforehand that this album won’t be very original. Which would be completely unjustified, since the opposite is true.

Because Mark Evans writes excellent songs. I Crawl Out (own management) is an outstanding debut record. Twelve numbers he wrote and there’s not one flop among them.

Last year Mark Evans did a song writing course in Oxford under the guidance of Darrell Scott; three months later he got on an airplane for the first time and flew to Nashville.

There his qualities were recognised and soon Evans found himself in a studio recording his songs. With a couple of excellent accompanists as well. Darrell Scott (dobro) was there of course and also Mike Daly (pedal steel), Tim Lorsch (fiddle) and Rick Gordon (mandolin, dobro). Because of that sparse accompaniment and the great lyrics this album reminds a bit of Mercy by Sam Baker, also one of those debuts that cannot be praised enough.

With lyrics like “I’m bluer than the movie you left playing in the VCR”,
Evans proves his capability as a writer of a good country song. And that voice is, in all honesty, nothing other than convincing.

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Country Music People

Douglas McPherson

Mark Evans hails from the flatlands ... of Cambridgeshire, but it could just as easily be the dusty plains of Texas. Steve Earle is a clear influence on Mark's blurry, slurry delivery which often sounds like the whine of a man in real pain.

The loosely finger picked acoustic guitar accompaniment and intensely dark lyrics, meanwhile, are frequently reminiscent of David Allan Coe, especially on the snail's pace laments of I Was A Drunk and If I Only Knew Where To Start, which wallow in the deepest depths of despair. But, although the opening Pass On By owes a distinct melodic debt to Guy Clark's L.A. Freeway, it quickly becomes clear that Evans is more than a mere copyist.

Having swept floors, built roads and worked in factories while completing a degree in
psychology over 13 years, Evans has been both homeless and worked with the homeless as a social worker. Along the way he has seen as much of the dirty side of life as anyone deserves to and he pours his experiences into a series of songs that, while not for the fainthearted, certainly have a ring of truth about them.

Better still, Evans lights up the darkest recesses of human behaviour with a sense of humour that reminds us of the days when singers like Johnny Paycheck regularly sang of scenarios so sick and tragic that the choice was either laugh or go mad.

In the sprightly second track, for instance, the protagonist's ex walks out on him, not with a Dear John letter but a video of her countless sexual infidelities, leaving him, "Bluer than the movie you left playing in the VCR."

By that point, Mark had won me over, and the rest of the album didn't disappoint, in terms of either the funny songs or the slow, fragile and achingly intense tracks.

Cleanly recorded in Nashville, with the vocal help of Kathy Chiavola and the musical support of Darrell Scott, this is a powerful debut with the depths to withstand an awful lot of listening.

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