I first heard the name Mark Tremalgia when he joined Bang Tango back in 1993 after the departure of guitarist Kyle Stevens. He stayed with the band till 1999 and recorded the classic and criminally overlooked ‘Love after Death.’Mark went on to play with fellow Bang Tango guitarist Mark Knight in the post-Bang Tango band The Worry Beads and currently plays with Mark in Mark Knight and The Unsung Heroes. There are lots of unsung guitarists in Los Angeles but Mark ranks as one of the best playing not only in his own band Disreputable Few but also recently joining Little Caesar.
In between he’s also shared the stage with some of rock’s biggest names from guitarists Billy Gibbons, Slash and Butch Trucks and luminaries Matt Sorum, Daniel Lanois, Jackie DeShannon, Elvin Bishop, John Waits, and Keb Mo, not to mention Warren Zevon, with whom he won a Grammy, as well as Donna Summer and Billy Bob Thornton… The list goes on. We caught up with Mark to talk music and shed some light on a great career that’s still on the rise.
Mark: Hi, it’s Mark from The Rockpit; it’s great to catch up with you again. I guess my first question has to be , where did it all start for you, when did you know you were destined to be a musician?
Mark T: I got my first guitar when I was six, I was pretty obsessed, my sister’s husband at the time, his father played guitar, and I couldn’t get enough of it, and when I was ten, I got Van Halen 1, and Kiss “Double Platinum”, and I don’t think I ever looked back since then, I knew exactly that was all I ever wanted to do. I got lessons from a guy named Jim Shepley, he moved to my small town in Connecticut, he was from Daytona Beach, Florida, it turned out he taught Duane Allman how to play guitar, who oddly enough was my favourite guitar player, and I didn’t even know the connection until years later!
Mark: So what took a boy from Connecticut out to Los Angeles?
Mark T: I was playing with this band in Connecticut, called Mariah, it was a glam rock thing, it was 1986, it was the time when bands like Poison and all that stuff was happening, and we were in that genre, and I had come to LA, just to check it out, as a lot of the bands I loved came from here. So, after I graduated high school, I got in to a band with three other guys, and the four of us drove across the country, and then everyone had moved back by March, and I’m pretty much still here!!
Mark: Yeah, I’ve heard some of the Mariah stuff before back in the day, but I never made the connection! So, when did you become part of Bang Tango?
Mark T: Well, what happened with that was I was playing in a band called, Dox Haus Mob, we were a thirteen piece inter racial, inter gender rap, rock band, we had the girl from Guns ‘n’ Roses, who played trumpet, we had a DJ, we had two rappers, two guitarists, drums, backup vocals, and a full horn section, it was quite a band!! And we won Dick Clark’s “Battle of the Bands” on ABC, and we won a record deal with Mercury, it was kind of my first break in the business. And from that gig we ended up playing a show with Bang Tango, down town, it was a benefit concert, and Christopher Lloyd from Back to the Future was the MC, and he loved our band, and so did Joe and Mark Knight. We hung out after, and I hit it off with Joe, and I said hey, let’s play together some time. I started doing a project with him called The Vagabonds, which had a million musicians through it, from Sean McNabb (Dokken), Chuck Garric, was in the band and Mike Starr (Alice in Chains), at one point was in the band, we had all these really cool configurations of it. And then I think Bang Tango were doing the “Love after Death” album, and Kyle Stevens quit, so Joe said can you play metal? And I said sure, so I joined them for that record, I didn’t play on it, but I did the touring.
Mark: Did you actually come over to the UK for that tour?
Mark T: Yeah, that was my first experience over there. We went to Belgium, France, The Netherlands, it was a quick tour!
Mark: Yes, that would’ve been the first time I saw you on stage! It sounds like over the years you’ve played in a number of different bands, with a number of different styles, where do your main influences come from?
Mark T: Honestly, music, my family, I have two brothers and two sisters who were much older than me, and my mum was a jazz singer when I was growing up, so I was exposed to Ella Fitzgerald, and Billie Holiday, and my dad loved big bands, so Glenn Miller was in the house, Duke Ellington and Count Basie and things like that were always being played by my mum and dad. Then my two sisters were Beatles maniacs, and liked funky disco music, so, I got that from them, and one of my brothers at the time liked “poppier” music like Chicago and Earth, Wind and Fire, and my elder brother was a Blues guy, he took me to see BB King when I was like eleven years old, and Albert Collins when I was thirteen, I was super exposed to the Blues when I was a young kid, and so I got drawn in to that, but the mish mash of all the music that I was hearing, I just had an affinity for it all, and I wanted to play it all, I never felt comfortable just playing Rock, just playing Funk, just playing Jazz, it’s always fun to do as much as you can. So many styles of music, it touches your heart and your soul, and if it moves you in any way then it’s good!
Mark: That’s fantastic, I’m with you on that one, for me, it all starts with the Blues, but I have a wide taste in music. What excites you about a new project, I mean, the band you’re in at the moment is The Disreputable Few, which we’ll talk about in a minute, but you’ve played with a lot of musicians, and been a big part of the scene over there in LA over the past twenty plus years, what does excite you about a new project? Is it all about the music, or the opportunity to play with new people?
Mark T: A little bit of both. I usually need the music to excite me first, you know, if someone asks me to play in a band, I usually want to hear that first, because if I’m not excited about it, then It’s hard to get excited, I think the music is the first thing that needs to move me. I don’t really care about the style of music, as long as it’s something I can listen to and learn, I can always get better if it’s something I don’t know.
Mark: So, let’s talk about the band you’re in at the moment, The Disreputable Few, I guess not a lot of people over here will know about the band, but we do have more readers in the US, and basically everywhere around the world, except Australia! It’s just one of those things!
Mark T: Really?!! I don’t understand there are tonnes of people there!!
Mark: Yeah, we get around 300,000 hits a month, and I think there are just more people interested in this sort of music elsewhere, than there are here! We do have a pretty big audience across the board! So, tell us how The Disreputable Few came about, and what you’re up to at the moment.
Mark T: Yeah, we’re doing some shows right now; we got together with a bass player named Paul Ill, he and I played in a band with Matt Abts, from Government Mule, and we backed the singer, and we backed Mark Knight. When we were out on the road, Paul and I just connected musically, we had that Allman Brothers connection, and Paul and I wanted to play that kind of really “jammy”, “bluesy” rock, it’s hard to find people who want to do that, so he and I made it our mission to try and put something together. He played with this guy named Randy Ray Mitchell, who is an amazing guitar player, who’s worked with everyone from Donna Summer to Warren Zevon, he was just out with Edgar Winter for the last couple of months. He’s been busy, so he was in to it, and our drummer, Dan Potruch, they both new him mutually, and thought he would fit well musically. So, the first thing we decided to do was plays covers, and play The Allman Brothers, and we did a benefit concert for Adopt the Arts, which is a charity run by Matt Sorum, former Guns ‘n’ Roses drummer, he also played in Velvet Revolver, their aim is to keep musical instruments in schools, so we decided the best thing to do is play the music we love, and raise money for kids to have more instruments in school. My music teacher in elementary school, was amazing, I didn’t realise when he was teaching me to sing “Imagine” or we were playing “Another Brick in the Wall”, I didn’t know how hip he was, I was like, I just thought that was old peoples music, and at that point it was all new stuff, it was a really great education, and I hope kids can get that these days. Basically, it started there, we then played The Mint and what we did, we had guest drummers come out, and we had Carmen Appice, Benny Xylem come and play, and it started to get a little bit of a following with us doing that, so we did a couple more, with Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, we had Stephen Stills son, he came in and filled in for his dad, and it was quite amazing, and then we got Billy Duffy from The Cult, and Matt Sorum. Then we decided to do the big thing, Matt said, hey I got a couple of guys that I want to honour, and even though I love the guys I play with, it’s just not their wheel house, they can play, but I love you guys and you do this for a living, so he hired us to be his backing band. So we did a charity event, a set of Billy Gibbons music, with and for Billy Gibbons and a set of Butch Trucks music from The Allman Brothers, and with guests sitting in, so we got to be house band, and rehearse and sound check, and play with Billy and Butch, and Matt said hey I got guests coming too, so we had Slash come in, Duff, Edgar Winter came out, Damon Fox from The Cult, he played with us and it was a really probably their most successful event, and then we just did Sammy Hagar last night, which we had a big turnout for. So that’s our background, and we decided to start writing music from there after doing those charity events, we decided to do something original and put something out, so we did an EP, and got lots of interest, then we did a full length record and put that together. We then got a call from D’Angelico guitars that Bob Weir was playing and he needed a back-up band, and would we be interested in doing the gig, so we got to go to NAMM were Bob’s band , and we did a set of 12 Dead songs, and it was quite a fun event!
Mark: Wow! That’s just blown me away; listening to the guys who you’ve played with, it’s like a who’s who of music over the years! It must be so inspiring to play with some of these guys?
Mark T: Oh my God, absolutely!! When you’re standing next to Slash, and he goes, hey what’s the change in that song again, and I show him, and he goes yeah, that’s right, it’s so funny, I just showed Slash how to play “ Jesus Just Left Chicago” I think he knew already but I got to remind him of how it went (laughs).
Mark: I think the thing that prompted me to give you a call and have a chat, was when I was talking to Ron Young, and we were talking about the new Little Caesar album. He told me I was the first person outside of the band and the record label to get a copy of the album, which I absolutely love, I think it’s the best thing they’ve ever done, and I am a big little Caesar fan!!
Mark T: That was before I was in the band, that’s awesome, I had no idea you had the album!
Mark: For me, back in the day, Little Caesar was one of the great bands of the era, you talked before about all your diverse influences, how you like soul and funk, they were a hard rock band that actually embraced that kind of music as well, and they were always a stand out band for me. How did you originally meet Ron? Was it a Bang Tango Redux show? I know Little Caesar and Redux played The Brixton together a few years back and I remember meeting you at the show at Paladinos.
Mark T: Actually, no, it wasn’t that, it was through Paul Ill, the bass player from Disreputable Few, he and Loren had played together for 30 years, and he told him they’d been having trouble finding a steady guitar player, do you know anybody who’s reliable and interested in being in a band, and Paul said give this guy a call, and Ron actually called me out of the blue one day! We’d crossed paths before, I’d met him at a gig here and there and we shared a studio at one point, but we’d never really had a conversation, so he called and we talked for like an hour and a half, we had so much in common! I’ve really been enjoying playing with Little Caesar; it’s been so much fun!
Mark: I know how you feel when you say you talked for an hour and a half!! I call him up every so often for a 15-20 minute interview, and we end up talking for an hour!
Mark T: Yeah, he is a great conversationalist! He’s a smart guy, and he sings his ass off, I’ve never heard anybody sing like that! Wow!!
Mark: He’s a great guy, and I think when I messaged you a while ago, you said you’d played on about three quarters of the album.
Mark T: Yeah, about that, looking at it now in my hand, I think, I didn’t play on “Time Enough for That” which is the single, and “That’s Alright”, other than that I played on everything else.
Mark: Great and you’re taking the album on tour overseas?
Mark T: Err, no, we’re not, it’s technically not ready yet, it’s not going to be released till March, but the single will be out, “Time Enough for That”
Mark: Little Caesar was always great at that timeless ballad, and when you actually look at the singles they’ve released, back in the day, most of those were ballads, it’s a great song.
Mark T: Oh Yeah, “In Your Arms”, I’d never heard before, and it’s like one of the best songs I’ve ever heard, and I can’t wait to play it!
Mark T: You are touring with them in the UK and Europe?
Mark T: Yeah, we’ll be going in about two and a half weeks’ time, to the UK; we start in London and end up in Wales at the Hard Rock Hell festival.
Mark: It’s a great festival, I’ve never actually been there, but a couple of bands I’ve worked with, I’ve sent over there, and they’ve told me great things about it. We have a photographer called Peter Coates, he’s a great photographer, who’ll be photographing your show in London, so if you get chance, say Hi! We’ll just close now with a couple of generic questions, that we ask everyone. If you could have been a fly on the wall for the creation of any great album, what would it be for you and why?
Mark T: Well could I have been in the audience when ‘At Fillmore East’ (The Allman Brothers) was being cut, that would have been magical to be in The Fillmore and watch that go down! Or I guess to be at Criterea (the studios in Miami) when the Derek and the Dominoes album was being recorded, that might have been even more fun (laughs)
Mark: Two fantastic albums! And the final question is the easy one, what is the meaning of life?
Mark T: (laughs) you’ll have to get back to me on that one, I’m still on the hunt!! I think we’re all here to love each other and take care of each other, and just make sure that everyone has a good time, finding something they love and connect with. Other than that I think it’s just being good to each other.
Mark: That’s a great answer! Thank you so much for taking the time to talk to us today and hopefully we’ll get to catch up again at some point, somewhere!! It sounds like you are really enjoying yourself, which is the main thing; you’ve got to do the stuff that you love.
Mark T: Thank you, you’re actually the first person I’ve ever talked to in Australia, so it’s a milestone for me, I’d love to be there!! And, absolutely, I’ll play any style of music, but my most fun is with Disreputable Few, and I want to keep doing that.
Mark: Take care, cheers.
Check Mark out at:
http://www.disreputablefewmusic.com/
https://www.littlecaesar.net/
