ABOUT MARK GROWDEN
- “Mark is a Bay Area treasure..” – Bay Abridged
- “from foot-stomping banjo tunes to crooning ballads to sing-alongs with the band walking out amongst the delighted audience.” – Bay Abridged
- “…a little cabaret, a bit New Orleans brass, a pinch Appalachian folk with a spicy edge,… but hard to pin down, stirred with the gentleness of trees whispering on an easy summer day.” – The Taos News
- “rich, haunting and personal song cycles that incorporate avant-garde, rock, cabaret, blues, country, contemporary classical and Tin Pan Alley.” – Tucson Weekly
- “Gritty, soothing, mesmerizing, and exuberant, Growden’s musical style is other-worldly.” – Taos News
- “his soundtrack-moody music ricochets from hell to the stars above.” – SF Weekly
- “Fiery, earthy and sublimely sensual.” – Comet Magazine
- “His music combines elements from classical jazz ensembles, New Orleans-style brass bands, cabaret fanfare, and circus troupes with the stark honesty of Appalachian folk ballads and African-American prison songs.” – Taos News
- “It’s really refreshing to hear an artist who completely pours himself into every note.” – Please Tell me You’re Human
- “as though Harry Smith, Kurt Weill, and John Cage had been reincarnated in a single body” – Stash Dauber
- “A sight and sound you don’t want to miss.” – S.F. Bay Guardian
- “An unusual and voracious talent.” – Willamette Week
- “Theatrical, dark and sexy.” – West Coast Performer
- “Mark Growden has to be one of California’s most colorful and intriguing musicians…. Growden is a genius.” – Albuquerque Alibi
- “He writes songs that pulse with drama, songs that slide with grace.” – Tucson Weekly
- “Part singer-songwriter, part bluesman, part avant-gardist, he’s an avatar of bohemian weirdness on a par with Tom Waits or Joe Henry.” – Fort Worth Weekly
- “Torrid lyricism and fierce accordion rascality. His live shows are becoming the stuff of legend.” – East Bay Express
- “Growden’s voice is bigger than a 10-story building, and when he clacks his cowboy boots on a hollow patch of floor along to some of his tunes, the sound seems to reverberate across the globe.” – Laura Casey, Contra Costa Times
- “This fella tells stories like Tom Waits, but without sounding like he eats cigarettes.” – the Houstonist
- “Mark Growden’s delivery is direct — powerful and precise as a street fighter. He simply knocks you out.” – Taos News
- “He gave us a heartfelt cover of Leonard Cohen’s I’m Your Man that made every woman in the audience squirm. By the time the handsome Irishman was done, as the old saying goes—there wasn’t a dry seat in the house.” – Music Union
- “Mark’s musical approach is novel—not novelty. He’s innovative.” – Music Union
- “Mark Growden possesses the same raw passion and fury seen in Van Morrison, Tom Waits, and Old Red but also the compositional finesse of Chris Rea, Robert Wyatt, and The Woes” – Folk & Acoustic Music Exchange
- “Though Growden captures the sorrow and sincerity of a high lonesome crooner, his unique instrumental blend of Dixieland, Frontierland, and gypsy caravan band inhabits a genre all its own.” – SF Bay Guardian
- “a strong, sensitive, and passionate stage presence that the audience could not help but connect with.” – Tucson Examiner
- “Growden’s untrammeled voice, a stage player in itself, dives and rises animatedly around his songs, teasing the tremor and tempo of his crackerjack band.” – North Bay Bohemian
- “tightly-controlled, richly inflected, and subtly expressive vocals.” – Flavorpill LA
- “Big, deep, passionate…” – The Register Guard
- “Growden is an accomplished a multi-instrumentalist and a skilled showman, but it’s his voice that sets him apart. It is big and, if not operatic, commanding.” – The Register Guard
- “If you’re ready for some depth — and something different — catch Mark Growden.” – Humboldt County Journal
- “think Bertolt Brecht meets Blind Willie Johnson.” – I-94 Bar
- “Recently I had the great pleasure of seeing Mark Growden perform in Austin, Texas. His lyrics are intelligent, sensual and naughty, and his voice has this incredible ache to it that literally gave me goosebumps. As a visual artist I was particularly struck by the emotional intensity evidenced on his face and form, while he played. There was also something about how he carried himself, which reminded me of a matador. The flair with which he plays his shiny black accordion, made me think of a bullfighter displaying his cape in the ring.” – Emily Painton, Librarian and Artist
- “His captivating performance that night was the talk of the town for weeks afterwards” – kulone.com
- If you’re going to be playing mournful New Orleans jazz, you better have a broken heart, a gritty voice and a talented band. Mark Growden has all three of those things, and he’ll bring his earthy, darkly religious tunes to OKC on 8 p.m. Saturday at a house concert (friend “Blue Moon House Concerts” on Facebook if you’re interested in attending) and 8 p.m. Sunday at Istvan Gallery, 1218 N. Western. —Stephen Carradini – Oklahoma Gazette
- “Growden isn’t your usual songwriter” – East Bay Express
- “dark, angular, and introspective” – East Bay Express
- “Growden is a serious musician and his music stirs those who listen. He can take a crowd from laughter to tears, and back again in a few moments, and often in one song.” – The Taos News
- “Influenced by Aretha Franklin, Otis Redding, Igor Stravinsky, Claude Debussy, Aaron Copeland, John Coltrane, Townes Van Zandt and Alan Lomax’s field recordings of African- American prison work songs, Growden cooks his compositions from his own recipes. The taste is a little cabaret, a bit New Orleans brass, a pinch Appalachian folk with a spicy edge,… but hard to pin down, stirred with the gentleness of trees whispering on an easy summer day.” – The Taos News
- “Growden’s music is truly original — familiar flavors blended in surprising combinations. He has been compared to Leonard Cohen, Kurt Weill and Joni Mitchell for his creative capacity. His songs comment on the times, without rubbing it in. The insights slip in strategically to hit you in the gut.” – The Taos News
- “As always, Growden sings with physical power, emotive force, and visceral impact in a voice equally tinged with desire and regret (and occasionally, more than a dash of humor)” – The Stash Dauber
- “Mark Growden reminds us that here in the 21st century’s second decade, we’re a lot closer to the “old, weird America” than we might like to think.” – The Stash Dauber
- “Mark’s live performances are legendary for their combination of incredible musicianship and raw emotional honesty. Whether playing fiercely spirited bluegrass, or dark, impassioned songs of desire, the experience is unforgettable; an intense, alchemical communion, in which both audience and performer alike leave spent and exhilarated. Heart, soul, blood and bone, Mark is a true artist. Or, as another Bay Area musician succinctly put it, “he’s the best of us.”” – Laughing Squid
- “Existing somewhere within the loosely defined realm of Americana, Growden’s musical creations emerge from a transcendental place where disparate sounds co-exist, everything is an instrument and music is a shifting sea.” – Sanjose.com
- “Where the well-traveled musician will find his next source of inspiration is anyone’s guess, but one thing seems clear: He’s going places.” Monterey County Weekly
ABOUT LOSE ME IN THE SAND
- “There’s not a song on here that doesn’t have some kind of down-home goodness to offer. “ – humana, KFJC 89.7 FM
- “heartbreaking, crazy, and wickedly smart” – Flavorpill LA
- “Lose Me in the Sand, my friends, is NOT a reprise of Saint Judas at all but rather the last gasp of perforated humanity well before the Stygian gates open wide. There are pains and there are pleasures, but mostly there’s Mark Growden’s distinctive troubadoric artistry in a reflective/warning oracle of caution, regret, and memory.” – Folk & Acoustic Music Exchange
- “…on Lose Me, Growden delves into the history of American song, going full circle, connecting the events and emotions of what was to what is and likely will be.” SFWeekly
- “…combines oddments of philosophy, romance, humor, and reminiscence, covering familiar tunes in startlingly unfamiliar ways…” – SF Bay Guardian
- “…Mark offers up a spirited, eclectic reinterpretation of American traditionalism.” – Laughing Squid
- “…a tribute to both his personal roots in the rural mountain ranges and to the spirit of those that mined music roots while carving out an American folk tradition.” – The Alternate Root
- “The album occupies a valley where old and new meet, whether in retooled interpretations of a songbook with long and tangled roots (“Lovin’ Emma,” “John Hardy,” “Shady Grove”), ruminations on a recent hit-parade past (“I’m on Fire”), a careful collision of the two (“Star Spangled Benz”), or original reflections (“Settle in a Little While,” “Bones,” “Killing Time,” “Takin’ My Time”) dressed in timeless threads, all delivered in a timbre that’s equal parts devilish, lustful, boastful and true.” – The Entertainer
ABOUT SAINT JUDAS
- “Growden has crafted a tour de force full-length that sonically burrows under your skin and finds its way up the spine to lodge permanently in the cortex.” – BLURT
- “St. Judas was recorded live, like a 50’s jazz album, giving his music the quality of a lovingly, painstakingly handmade gift.” – Music Union
- “Saint Judas” is a strong, deep, and mature album for fans of blues that bleed realism, loss, sorrow, and redemption. Superb.” – Thee Goatsden
- “This isn’t a CD as such but rather a cabaret of the rings of a very humanized hell located somewhere in the boggy depths of the deep South, not Birmingham, not New Orleans, not Atlanta but the shadowy bastard offspring of them all.” – Folk & Acoustic Music Exchange
- “Listen to merely a minute of this masterpiece, and you’re as helpless as bird before snake, fascinated, terrified, seduced.” – Folk & Acoustic Music Exchange
- “for an album so intimately acquainted with woe, the real connective thread throughout is not one of pain, but one of love. Hurt love hopeful love, dashed love, and eternal love, each facet of the ever-abiding emotion has its own moment to shine in the flickering glow of the Mark Growden ensemble’s warm strings, hot licks, and sizzling horns.” – SF Bay Guardian
- “Part chamber music, part High Noon…” SF Bay Guardian
- “a homegrown affair all the way through.” – SF Bay Guardian
- “a dark journey that finds Kurt Weil’s twisted drama, Alan Lomax’s primitive field recordings, and the dry deliberation of Leonard Cohen and Tom Waits all held in a common bond.” – Amplifier
- “a strangely fascinating and compelling glimpse into a netherworld of shadowy late night cabaret and smoky barroom intimacy.” – Amplifier
- “A must listen for fans of the genre. Hell, it’s a must listen for anyone who loves music.” – Synthesis
- “A gritty treasure of urban romanticism.” – Flavorpill LA
- “a lusty, somewhat loosely presented collection of poems set to disjointed waltzes and dark ballads of biblical proportion.” – Chico News and Review
- “a genre all its own” – SF Bay Guardian
- “Homespun and honest.” – KFJC
- “gestural and hypnotic.” – The Rumpus
- “It sounds like America’s Great Depression took a trip to New Orleans, Broadway and Vegas and then tumbled into the post-industrial underground — swallowed in city sewers, scuffed under construction worker’s boots, pierced by punk rock attitude — to come out in an exquisite, visionary place.” – Taos News
- “stirring ballads, rousing narratives of love and loss, and raucous marches” – Taos News
