Mitch Marner All Star Skates

I have covered the famous Travis Trogan show in Pittsburgh twice: in the first live episode, which also included Chris Cornell, when we interviewed him, and in the second audio interview and article which has been posted in the Sound City Collection site. In this second article we are talking to Mitch Marner, but the interview was done with a slightly different ear than the one I heard and with a slightly different guy in the studio.

Mitch Marner first started going in on the drums for Travis that his brother Dan started after Mitch left to play backup in the late 1980s. His drumming on Travis' songs wouldn't go beyond fifths or around fifths or the occasional roundhouse kick. In the late 1980s and early 90s, Mitch played a large part of a touring band called Alcatraz. Later, while still playing for Alcatraz, he gave up drumming to pursue other passions, music and publishing, writing several books including his highly praised self-help book “Speedball is Good,” one in which he outlines his latest three decades in the music business. His most recent album was the 10-year-old “Delirious,” which was released in 2007 and led to a tour to support the album. Shortly after that, he quit music as a consequence of something that, up until that point, he could no longer get out of.

During the 1990s, Marner moved to Los Angeles, and during that time he managed to hire some of his old E Street Band friends, including John York, Brian May and Roger McGuinn. He also started working for the Grammy award-winning producer John Shanks. For a few years, he worked with Bryan Adams, later meeting up with Brian Williams for the first time, then joined him and Gordon Lightfoot for touring. Since the mid-90s, he has been doing bookkeeping, putting together his band, writing music and developing his artist for both sides of his image, and that means there is an even greater amount of work than there used to be. When he left music, he went back to working for the first time in well over a decade, and he went back to managing a long list of artists, from artists who he worked with over the years to those who have been passed between family and friends.