The ever youthful Mark Lizotte aka Diesel has been a very productive man of late. It was seven years between 2013’s ‘Let It Fly’ and his 2020 release, ‘Sunset Suburbia’ but since then multi-instrumentalist Diesel has continued to drop new music at a steady rate, with ‘Alone with Blues’, his reimaging of some old bluesy classics along with a few originals, and then his 2023 album ‘Bootleg Melancholy’.
Armed with an ever-increasing back catalogue to pick from, from his ‘Injector’ days to the present, Lizotte has hit the road for a nationwide tour, swinging in to WA in less than a week. We thought it was about time we caught back up with one of the country’s finest and much-loved musician/singer/songwriters to find where this creativity comes from, how he puts it all together and his remarkable love for the cello.
Sean: Hi, Mark. How are you?
Mark: I’m good Sean. Sorry, I went over with the last one.
Sean: That’s all good. That’s no worries at all. I appreciate your time. I was so lucky to see you recently down at the Ravenswood Blues Fest.
Mark: Yeah that was a great event. We love that one, when we get the chance.
Sean: I got to watch your set from the side of the stage but I noticed straight away that the opening song of the set was ‘Forever’ from ‘Bootleg Melancholy’. What a great way to kick things off.
Mark: Yeah, it’s nice to open with. It’s a good one. It just has that nice intro, and my drummer’s like, you’ve got to start with that one. He’s usually got a nose. I just listen to him [laughs].
Sean: You got to pick a perfect time of the day, and you avoided the two 45 degree days either side, and you got to play the Sunset Set as well, which was beautiful.
Mark: Oh, I love the Sunset Sets. That’s great. They’re my fave. When I see that we’re going on at sunset, I always rub my hands like, yeah.
Sean: With these short of shows is it literally fly in and fly out?
Mark: Yeah, it really is. You know, it’s not like a glamorous life when you do that, but I’ve got my MO. You know, I always take the earliest flight I can, which is crazy because people would think, why would you want to be there longer and make you more tired? But no, I want to get there early. So then I can just sort of climatize. I go for a run, I go for a swim if I can, and I use the adrenaline to keep me awake because at that time of the day, it’s like getting late here (Sydney). So, you know, the stupid old jet lag kind of starts kicking in, but there’s nothing like a gig to kind of like push over the top of that.
Sean: Well, I know we’re late to say this, but congratulations on ‘Bootleg Melancholy’. It’s been out for a while now. How has it been because you’ve been quite active of late with releases and writing in the last couple of years or the last three or four years since ‘Sunset Suburbia’. There was a bit of a gap between the original albums, but you’ve popped out another one.
Mark: So, it’s been good after the ‘Greatest Hits’ and then before that it was ‘Americana’, I think I was kind of itching to kind of make, I think, ‘Let It Fly’ was the last one before that. So it was. Yeah, they were all like really great projects and the Greatest Hits was, you know, that was a good project to work on with all the B-sides and things that I dug out of drawers but I was, yeah, itching and ‘Sunset Suburbia’ was supposed to kind of be that album where I could get my teeth into. But I had to cancel all the tour dates. It was the beginning of the pandemic. So it was kind of all bets are off. I just had to kind of wave goodbye to that one and just go, oh well. And I was told just start working on something else because there’s no point by the time like we’re up and running again. It’s like you can’t like sort of reignite a release once it’s been done. So sadly, it slipped away but I have been known to play songs off that record live and people love them. So that’s the consolation is, you know, record whatever. But the songs can kind of keep living, which is great.
Sean: I loved the way you drip fed those singles and where those lovely vinyl’s were released to collect, which was just so nice because anyone who has vinyl had some lovely bits to add.
Mark: We’ve still got a few I think… of volumes one or two. I’m not sure which volumes actually, but there’s some stuff to get to be had in 10-inch vinyl on the web store. So people are interested.
Sean: Fantastic. So ‘Bootleg Melancholy’, what was the writing process like for that? Did it all come pretty smoothly? Or was it a long process?
Mark: It kind of came in and drips and drabs. It was kind of pretty constant drip and constant drab but it was helped by the fact that I didn’t have to pack a bag and run off to the airport at any time. It was just day after day after day after day. Yeah, I mean, I got to know what kind of the Groundhog Day thing means and had to have a bit of a sense of humour about it. I was up here in my studio and downstairs, my family and friends, there was a friend of ours who was locked in lockdown with us because she didn’t want to be by herself in her apartment. And they were playing an Italian card game every night called Scala. And I would go down and put this Dolly Parton CD on it. And this first song… here it comes again. And it was just like that. [laughs] And it was just like, same song, same day, you know, it was just kind of like, I’d play a lot of other music as well. But that was just always like, right. Another day playing cards, with Dolly. [laughs] I’ll go upstairs, make music. It was just this kind of almost there’s something blissful about it, too. I mean, in all respect of all the people that like New York was going through absolute hell, you know, parts of Italy, there was parts of the world that were just horrific, you know. But I mean, in our little thing, we was all safe and warm and, you know, not getting sick. And yeah, and I just took advantage of it, felt really grateful and being in that family.
Sean: Did that togetherness give you a lot of positivity in the writing? Because I was always fearful that with what happened, we’d get suddenly this doom and gloom music coming out. But I’ve actually found the opposite. The music I’ve been listening to the last seven or eight months that has been sent into us (at The Rockpit) has been some of the best music I’ve heard for a long time across many genres. Almost like the reset button’s been hit.
Mark: I mean, there is a bit of, you know, there’s a bit of doom on ‘Bootleg Melancholy’, I guess, with ‘Tambourine Girl’. It sounds like that. Happiest song on the planet but if you listen to the lyrics, it’s, you know, it’s basically like when I was very at a very low point and looking at… I think it was after the insurrection and I just was like, what’s going on? Like it just I felt very sort of like disillusioned with with humankind in general. There’s also a big element in that song talking about the the BLM riots and everything. It’s just like on top of this, this horrible like virus that was like running amok and just ripping the music industry that I’m in to shreds and was like, all right, you know, put that off. It was just overwhelming. So, you know, I write a song like a ‘Tambourine Girl’ where I just had this vision of the most purist of souls, just like shaking a tambourine and kind of like getting a joy out of a tambourine. It’s like I’m not the first to write a song about a tambourine, but, you know, it just it resonated with me.
Sean: What’s been refreshing is to see the response of certainly the Australian music community. Fans are supporting so many festivals & events with everything just selling out across the place – the Red Hot Summers shows are an example – if you don’t get in early there’s no chance of getting tickets. It must be so refreshing for all the artists to see the response the fans have given. Your tour has been the same with a lot of positive response for fans to get out and buy tickets – many of the shows are sold out.
Mark: It’s still tough out there Sean. It really is. In our industry right now it’s very tough. We’re really feeling it and we’re back in business but it’s not without its challenges. It’s very challenging for everyone, so yeah to sell out the Opera House, to sell out Melbourne’s Athenaeum and two shows on the Central Coast at the Avoca Beach Theatre… I’m halfway through the tour and things are selling out so I’m really really grateful. In fact I really can’t say how grateful I am. I’m humbled because it’s tough for everyone right now.
Sean: What can we expect for the shows on the ‘Forever’ Tour? I last saw you a while back at Freo Social when it was just you and your guitars… your beautiful collection of guitars, when you did your one man show.
Mark: Well I’ve got that collection of guitars… Maybe not exactly the same but yeah a lot of different guitars and I’ve also got a double bass this time. I try to bring something different whether it’s a mandolin or a banjo or something but that double bass is a really nice thing actually because you know guitars can be a little scratchy but I love the sound of the double bass. It just gives you a hug and it allows my voice to live in a different kind of way and the way it sits on top yeah, I really dig it. So it’s also part of my journey as a musician. I started on cello, got a bass and then a guitar landed on my Christmas tree but that was kind of years after I was dabbling with bass, well, I say dabbling, playing bass and playing cello. So those are my, those are really my roots and my foundation.
Sean: Wow, I never knew that about you and the cello.
Mark: Yeah. That was my first love and I still love it. I still love the cello. Of course I have a real, real special place for it. It feels so good. You know, I got to use it on ‘Boot Melancholy’. It’s just a piece of me that I still feel very connected to. And I don’t want to like, let it kind of get dusty, but like in the pandemic, I realized that I had instruments in my studio that were like. Had way too much dust on them. It was like time to get them dusted off.I put the studio together, I guess it was like 2016. I’ve recorded a few records in here and it’s been a great place to work and I wouldn’t say I was slowing down and I’m working in here, but then came the pandemic. I was like, wow, I’m really going to spend a lot of time in here now. And I just suddenly felt like I’m so lucky. I put this together and I made this big, big toy room that I can do stuff in and it’s got everything I need, you know, except other people, because we couldn’t have other people in our house. So yeah, that’s why ‘Bootleg Melancholy’ has got very few people on it. Bernie Bremond played some sax because we just finished doing some shows and I said, “Hey man before you fly back to Darwin, you’re coming through Sydney so can you come in and play some sax on a couple of songs?” and you know that was awesome, like the icing on the cake as they as they say.
Sean: Well obviously we’re going to have songs from the new album but there’s over 30 years of music to dig into. It must be so difficult sometimes to pick a set list. It must get so difficult especially those festivals when it’s a shortened set and you’ve got to try and keep everyone happy. There must be times you want to throw something in to keep you and the band on your toes too.
Mark: I think I would I would describe it as a smoke and mirrors exercise because you don’t want to chip them on any thing but the reality is you can’t play everything so you need to kind of like give them the sense the feeling that they’re getting everything but they’re not. It’s unfortunate but technically you’re not giving them everything but you can dance a little here, dance a little there, and just make this really kind of encompassing set that people feel satisfied listening to and I’m lucky – I’ve got you a pile of hits and yeah a pile makes it’s a lot easier to kind of build something when you’re not just like only got that one hit and I’ve got to try to make it go along way like with the fishes and the loaves but yeah I’d say it’s a good problem, having like 16 albums to pick material from.
Sean: Before I lose you, last time we spoke we ran out of time so I couldn’t slip this one in… if you could invite three musicians, dead or alive, to join you for dinner, who would you have sat at your table?
Mark: Oh I’d have to say Jimi Hendrix, Otis Reading… and James Brown just to spice it up because he would really liven the place up I imagine [laughs]
Sean: [laughs] Without doubt. Mark thanks you so much for your time as always. We’ll be catching you at the Regal Theatre before you head down to Margaret River
Mark: I can’t wait. I’ve never been to Margaret River so I’m probably going to ring up my wife and say we need to move here – I’ll have one of those love affairs where you go to somewhere and you just imagine living there… [laughs]
Sean: I love it down there. If I can squeeze the weekend down there I might see you there as well.
Mark: …you have a moment of clarity where you lose your mind and then you realize, no I actually live somewhere else [laughs]
Sean: Margaret River does that to many – John Butler still resides there even now I believe. Thanks for your time Mark and have a safe journey back over to us in WA mate.
Mark: Brilliant. Thanks mate. Take care.
