Mark is a creator of words and sounds that, although sounding shambolic and slack-arsed, somehow manages to breathe new life into the rotting corpse of the singer-songwriter genre.
You can find him running away from the nearest cliche at any number of squalid venues near you throughout the year.
1. Is it a conscious decision of yours not to sing in tune?
Are you suggesting that I sing out of tune? Okay fair enough... I personally like to think of myself as more of a mumbler than a singer anyway...
mumbling in and out of tune , thats me... some people would suggest that I should ennunciate more so they can hear the words... I can see there point,
now if I was feeling a bit "clever git" today I would say they should listen harder but I'm not feeling very clever today so I'll just apologise now, in advance of the rest of my life, for mumbling unintelliggiblle nonsense into microphones and expecting people to understand it.... Sorry
2. Why don't you write music that more people like?
As I am a cheap pessimistic shell of the child I used to be I am certainly surprised to see the good in that question... By the way it is worded it seems to suggest that some people like it.. maybe I mis-read it... anyway... because I am such an "arteest" I find this question to hold far too much water and therefore I'd just like to once again apologise... this time for not being liked by everyone... I try, honest I do...
3. Your recent recordings seem to be more erratic, is this because of a mental or physical decline?
How dare you... I am at the peak of mental and physical fitness... (really, I'm so funny)
No, you see my soul has started to die recently, that's it, I've being blaming it on bad diet and to much megabus but I don't think it's that...
Actually no, I'm just very bored, I write music to amuse myself and of late it's taken a lot of erratic noise to amuse me.. loads in fact...
Also, I've sat in to many cold venues watching to many dull bands to make anything but erratic music... My opinion is my eyebrows, my eyebrows are down...
Anyway, there not erratic, I am just musical wallpaper, there to be covered up and drawn on when your mother isn't around please...
4. Have you ever apologised onstage and really meant it?
Yes, any time I set foot on stage is an apology... I apologise for turning up, for mistaking a man for a woman in the amersham arms, for talking out of my arse, for wearing a plaid shirt, for apologising, for making a pamphlet of poems, for being the support act, for being boring, for being interesting, for being self obsessed, for being late, for being early (though that one is always to myself), for filling the internet with my innane ramblings, for not caring, for my smell, for answering phone calls half way through songs, for thinking thats really cool and so anti career, for not getting a proper job, for subjecting people to my weak facial hair... there is more but lets stop apologising...
5. What has been your most worthless musical experience?
Taking part in a glorified advert campaign for a mobile phone because I wanted to be "something"... Being off my head on various substances somewhere in acomb one night and making up lyrics as alex fox played acoustic guitar at 6 in the morning... Oh dear...
A very drunk man once pulled me up outside a pub in york and pointed at the poster in the window (it was a poster advertising my new CD) he then said who the fuck is gonna buy that..
I nodded in agreement, then told him it was me and then agreed once again that he was right...
6. How did you get your musical credibility?
I didn't.. funny,. I don't think there is any such thing, the only creddible thing to do is to accept that your a cracked useless human being and try not to go down to many blind alleys with your pants down...
In my head I am creddible to myself because I know that I'm not... I'm a fake self obssessed person who plays music, expects people to listen and (no matter how hard I try not to) always ends up kissing someones arse... credibility is arse anyway... the idea of what's credible and what's not kept me from loads of interesting stuff for years... but I'm over that, and now I just sit on my self righteous cloud all day, reading Christopher Nosnibor books, listening to The Fall and dreaming of one day having a cat and a dog and being myself...
7. You recently released a small book of poetry. Did you actually mean to do this?
I'm still not sure.. I guess I must have meant to do it... In fact I know that I did, why is a whole different question... I did it to prove to myself that I can always get a bit more pretensious
8. You seem to be part of a real movement of politicised singer-songwriters such as Frank Turner, Jake Bugg and Sam Duckworth. Where do you see yourself in this scene? At the front, the back or in the middle?
Who is this Sam Duckworth, who is this Tab Jones... Sam Ducksworth is not my mother...Erm... I am the forerunner of that scene... nah, I don't see myself in any of that...
I'm a bumbler... A bumbler who scribbles and amuses myself... I am as far away from stuff as possible... I scribble about myself being rubbish.. I write love songs...
I do not want people to sing my words back at me... I think that would put me off... I am not on a mission from God, I am avoiding the 9 to 5 while drinking when its free and writing myself into a corner...
I am to far gone... save yourself, this is a machine... once you notice it is a machine... then everything becomes completely clear and unclear all at once...
Music isn't my radar it's the stone in my shoe that I put there before I taped up my boots... Everything feels boring today... I feel tricked by the Rolling Stones
9. Is it true that you play music so that you can touch other people's microphones with your mouth?
There is only one reason to play music and that has not become clear to me yet, but while i'm finding that out I will enjoy touching microphones with my mouth and tongue and art
10. Which do you prefer? Playing live or updating your music pages on the various social networks?
Neither, I mainly prefer listening to Down the Hillside and then making a tit of my self by telling Sam how good it is when am drunk on cans of red stripe in kings cross falling over...
Actually no, I prefer sleeping at the foot of Benjamin Francis Leftwich's bed in hotels in north north london after the aforementioned telling to Sam...
No I prefer meeting Esme in cafes so she can tell me to pull myself together and not be so cynical... Thats my favourite... I only make records or write songs to impress her...