BY ANDREW BAILEY
BG Independent News Correspondent
Famous, but not too famous, is where local musician Mark Mikel is in the late stages of his career. And that’s exactly where he wants to be.
Mikel has been the backbone of the Howard’s Club Band since it started as a solo act in 2017, until he reached out to local musicians to see who would want to join his motley crew performing every Wednesday evening at the bar.
It reflects how he first got started in music at 13 years old, growing up in South Toledo in the ‘60s and ‘70s. Banging on the drums and receiving a standing ovation at an eighth-grade talent show, he thought the drums were “just a really cool instrument.”
But he couldn’t write songs on the drums, he said, so he picked up a guitar and learned piano too, beginning a longstanding passion for songwriting.
He and his neighborhood friends formed The Bronze Serpent, a KISS tribute band, which then turned into Marikesh.
Marikesh continued into young adulthood, performing at clubs and gaining underground recognition, before they parted ways in the ‘80s.
He described his music as fitting comfortably into psychedelia, but he has an appreciation for classic rock that informs his tastes today.
A plexiglass barrier partially surrounds the drum set onstage at Howard’s, which Mikel said is meant to protect the sounds of each instrument from not overlapping too much.
“But that’s not rock and roll,” he said.
To Mikel, rock and roll can’t be distilled down to just one element. It’s about the performers, the instruments, the crowd, the energy, the venue, and everything else in between coming together to create a truly magical experience.
Career-wise, it started to come together for Mikel when he decided to chart his own course post-Marikesh, naming himself The Mark Mikel Hallucination, and inviting more local friends to perform with him as an informal band.
Like the Howard’s Club Band, The Mark Mikel Hallucination formed naturally.
“That’s what you do in a local band, you just get your friends to play with you. These things happen really organically for me. I don’t put up ads,” he said.
After about 10 years, he got the “band bug” again and The Mark Mikel Hallucination became The Pillbugs in the mid-‘90s.
They sold “the most psychedelic CD you could ever buy” on eBay, debuting with a self-titled double CD album — two CDs packaged together — a decision Mikel felt bold about because double albums are typically released after a band has a record under their belt.
“We wanted it to just be packed full of psychedelic music. It was something to be reckoned with,” he said of the 1998 32-song set.
Their debut caught the attention of David Bash, who gave them a 25-minute set at his International Pop Overthrow festival in Los Angeles.
They started to get minor recognition internationally, too, after the Japan-based company Strange Days began selling their music. U.S.-based indie labels Proverus Records and Rainbow Quartz started selling CDs too.
Mikel said successes like these, which meant a lot to him and the band but didn’t entail being “too famous,” are what keeps him performing on a weekly basis.
“Nothing major, never been huge. Which is fine and I’m glad about it actually. I think being famous would be tough today because it’d be harder to just exist,” he said. “I like being able to play music and make a living at it.”
National and international success hasn’t kept Mikel from his devotion to Northwest Ohio. The Pillbugs covered The Beatles’ “Abbey Road” album in its entirety in Bowling Green as one of their first gigs.
Mikel said their success continued until 2008, when his best friend and bass player Mark Kelley died of lung cancer, and they disbanded for six years.
“(Kelley) was so integral. I took care of the music, somewhat, but he took care of everything else,” he said. “The Pillbugs ended for a time there, but the Pillbugs’ popularity didn’t.”
They returned to the recording studio for a two-parter reunion album, “Marigold Something,” in 2014, after their music was noticed by drummer Mike Portnoy. Mikel officially released it on March 21, 2021, with record label Omniphonic.
Members Dan Chalmers, Scott Tabner, David Murnen, and Mikel dedicated the album to Kelley.
Mikel said being noticed by someone like Portnoy, who drums for groups including the Neal Morse Band and Dream Theater, revitalized him and his love for music after the death of Kelley.
“It showed me that our music, with (Kelley) on it, lived on.”
Portnoy springboarded Mikel. He sat in rooms and riffed with bands he had listened to while he was performing, eventually landing him a feature on Alan Parsons’ “The Secret,” doing lead vocals on the track “Fly to Me,” which he co-wrote.
“It was amazing, but I was nervous as hell, working with a guy like (Parsons), a giant, musically and physically, in the industry.”
He sees his inspirations, from when he was young and discovering the Beatles, Led Zeppelin, and The Who, and eventually artists like Parsons and Portnoy, as friendly competition.
“My competitors are the classics. That’s the standard I shoot for, because I love their music, so why wouldn’t I want to top that?” he said.
Mikel had settled with the success he’d had up to that point in the late 2010s. “I was like, ‘Okay, I never ‘made it,’ but I get to make music, I get to record my own songs and have fun in life. I’m not famous and I’m not rich but I’m happy.’”
But the 2019 feature on “The Secret” brought a “late period boost in stature,” he said, as he celebrated his 60th birthday in September of 2020.
Mikel said the period from when he met Portnoy, to when he performed with Parsons, turned him into “not so much of a nobody.”
“I’m less of a nobody now than before Portnoy,” he said. My career is like “Mark Mikel B.P., Before Portnoy, and everything since has been Mark Mikel A.P., After Portnoy.”
He credits Portnoy for being a gateway into a larger audience, but it’s each and every audience that kept him rocking out through all of it.
“I get to play (at Howard’s) every week with great people and a great crowd. It’s probably the most fun I’ve had in my life,” he said. “It’s all about the music.”
He also performs a solo act on Thursday evenings at Six Fifths Distilling in Perrysburg.
But nothing lasts forever, a lesson Mikel said he learned a long time ago. He refers to the Howard’s Club Band’s gigs with numbers. As of June 23, they’ve had 151 performances at Howard’s.
“I’m just interested to see how long it’ll go on. Everything comes to an end eventually and naturally, so we’re just rocking our hearts out and enjoying every night because we can. And that’s where I’m at in my career, just having a lot of fun making music with my friends. What else would I do besides what makes me happy?”
“I’d like to hit 1,000 shows, sure, why not,” he laughed. “I’d like to live that long, have a gig for 1,000 Wednesdays, and make 1,000 Wednesdays a special night for everyone.”
