MRC - Portland's Art Rock Kings

l:r Steve Maclean, Dave Fields, Tim Inman, me and Todd Dadalares - The Elvis Room  Portland - CD release party and contract signing for Metamorph 1995

MRC (MeRCy) was formed by two musical contemporaries who dominated the music scene in Portland for years, Steve Maclean and Todd Dadelares. These guys are great people, performers, artists and songwriters. Steve owned and operated a commercial recording studio in downtown Portland Maine and is very much into creating sound-scapes with any and many instruments. Surreal but tight, compositions and songs you've never imagined are his playground. He is also an Associate Professor at Berklee School of Music in Boston specializing in electronic music and digital recording. Todd, simply put, is a creative ground breaker. From my perspective his stage persona is a theatrical performance that astounds, which he efficiently makes sets and sounds, real on stage, at any instant.
It was my honor and pleasure to be associated with this Steve and Todd as well as our excellent drummer and brass virtuoso, Dave Fields and the always surprising, creative and prolific Tim Inman on keys.

I joined on with the unit in 1994 to replace the former bass player. These guys were the heavy hitters in the New England art-rock music scene, I wasn't sure about even coming close on winning the audition, but wanted to give it a go! I learned a few of their songs in the 2 days I had before the audition and showed up more or less prepared and on time. The songs were complicated and nothing at all like I had ever played. The songs were sonically very dense with guitar, synths, kora, tabla, sitar and other world instruments.  With no charts in hand and taking a shotgun approach to learning the right notes, arrangement etc., I tried to emulate everything in the bass spectrum, not knowing which low notes were mine. During one song in the audition, Steve and I played the same harmonic at the appropriate time in the song, he stopped and said, "that's my note, just stick to the bass line!" I'm thinking, "Oh crap, start packing up, I just blew it!" There was awkward silence, then a few eyebrows raised, then Todd said, "Welcome to Mercy, you're in dude. We have a gig at The Rat in Boston next Wednesday night - can you make it?" We killed it in Boston that night in front of the typically cool and aloof art-rock audience. Soon after we got the recording contract. Snag some cuts that I play on: HERE, THERE, EVERYWHERE, and other PLACES

News alert: MeRCy reformed in 2012!

Below are some MRC ephemera:

Stage at Univ. So. Maine for the WMPG live concert

That's me on the far right.

Set List for The Rat 1994