A Personal Appeal (and four decades of bass)... My friends – I have a story to tell and I need to raise some money. My story is one of music and travel that has encompassed most of my life, beginning more than three decades ago with a deep love of music and the bass guitar. From the day I picked up my first bass I knew my life would be forever immersed in music. At that time I had just turned fourteen, and a few short years later my mum, dad, and sis – my entire family - would be waving goodbye to the naïve and idealistic young Englishman who was me back then, watching him leave on a plane bound for Los Angeles with his bass guitar, $400 in his wallet, and a “plan” that was nothing more than a wild dream. Thus began my lifelong journey in music that has led all the way to this present moment – sitting in my band HEDpe’s tour bus, getting ready to add another show to our running total of several thousand shows over the past twenty years. The journey has been long and eventful, rewarding and life-affirming, but is one that has led me to a place and time where I now need to raise a substantial sum of money to continue it. As a British citizen, I am granted a work visa to stay here in America in order to make music and tour. I am required to renew this work visa every three years, at a personal cost of several thousand dollars every time, and every time the cost goes up. For twenty years I have financed this process this myself, every single penny, from the early days in Huntington Beach when HEDpe was just (HED) and my ‘home’ was a sleeping bag on my best friends’ patio (remember those days Ken?), through the “glory days” of our home-grown punk rock band being signed to a major record label and touring the world in style, sharing stages with some of the biggest bands on the planet, through the days of starting all over and rising to the top of the indie music scene, and writing new chapters in our history all the way to this present moment. Doing this has cost me a fortune – literally - yet I wouldn’t trade my experience for anything. My modern-day reality as I write this note is this: I’m proud to be in one of the hardest-working bands in the music business; we have released 9 albums over the course our career, played many thousands of shows around the world, and we currently perform over two hundred shows per year – but I have endured two years in a row of making less than minimum wage in this music business. Personally, I will always survive, but as an Englishman who must pay a huge sum of money to stay here and work in America, I just can’t make it alone. The cost of my visa, legal fees, and a mandatory trip to London to collect it add up to $7,000. And this is why I’m humbly putting my story out there for anyone who would like to help me in any way, so that I can continue the next three-year chapter in this book of music, travel, and life. Music and travel IS my life. Over the next few weeks I’ll be auctioning a few autographed HEDpe shirts, memorabilia, and some bass equipment (starting with my beloved SansAmp RBI Bass Preamp that I used to record Blackout and every HEDpe album up to Truth Rising) - I’ll be posting links to anything I auction on ebay, and if anyone would like to contribute a few dollars to my cause I am very humbly taking donations via PayPal at the email address yogibass.hedpe@gmail Lastly, if anyone out there has an interest in an expanded version of my story – exactly how and why a shy kid from a remote corner of northern England left his home, his family, friends and everyone he knew, to travel to a far-off land with just a bass guitar, and happened to run into a phenomenal young singer called Jared who was looking for a bass player, I’ll write up this story and share it with you – it’s quite entertaining. Peace Love & Bass, Mark.
Posted on: Fri, 05 Dec 2014 23:29:07 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015