Mark Lorenz Guitar
I was raised in Doylestown, PA in house full of instruments. But when I heard Jimi Hendrix I knew I had to go out and buy my first electric guitar, the very same Fender Stratocaster I play today. Being right in the middle of the big east coast cities, I was fanatically soaking up all the live shows I could see as soon as I could find ways to get there. Unaware of their later greatness, the band Ween was in my scene of friends and I saw many of their first shows and even played a bit with Aaron (Gene Ween) as teenagers. Members of my high school jazz band started jamming after school and it evolved into popular teen jam band called the Baked Potatoes that were getting bar gigs while still in high school. We played mostly Grateful Dead covers and originals but we were probably the first band to also play a lot of Phish covers back in 1991 when Phish was still pretty unknown outside Vermont. Attending University of Colorado at Boulder I basked in the fantastic budding local jam band scene and was lucky to see many early small club tours by now legendary bands like Dave Mathews, Phish, Rusted Root, Leftover Salmon, Sublime, Blues Traveler, Widespread Panic, Ani Difranco and Ben Harper. My influences are too many to list but my main guitar inspirations are Bill Frisell, Steve Kimock, Frank Zappa, Jerry Garcia, Trey Anastasio and Fareed Haque. I came to Bellingham in 1997 after visiting my brother living here and feeling like it would be a good place to make my home. After a few years I finally started finding some people to play with and had a group called the Trytones with many magnificent 4 hour improvisation sessions but only one real gig. When Joel Ricci invited me to come to come join his weekly funk improvisation group, Everyday People, I finally really got going as a guitarist on the Bellingham scene. Here I met dozens of great players such my dear friend and musical genius Alex Vouri. We played with very talented players in the rock group Audrey and later with the acid-jazz Thermostat, which also featured Snug’s sax wizard Jun Nakamuro. Joel Ricci (aka coach Ricci) was a wonderfully supportive mentor and funk technique teacher who invited me to play some shows with his band La Push and later with Yogoman Burning Band. Here I first played with Will Glazier when we both played for a video shoot of Yogoman’s song Pass-the-O. I became a fan of Snug Harbor’s music and when I heard there may be a guitar opening, I expressed my interest and lucky me played my first shows in October 2009. Now you can come hear for yourself how much fun I have playing with my talented kind buddies in Snug Harbor.
