If you tried to gauge which musical performers were the busiest in South Florida, thoughts might toward to a pop singer, a country guitarist, or maybe a freelancing rock drummer.
But a blues artist? Well, maybe if they played guitar and sang. How about a bass player? Not very likely. And a blues bass player? You’re dreaming.
Yet Mark Telesca (www.marktelesca.com) is living the dream, in part, because he’s all of those things in one. The 54-year-old Brooklyn native threw all his cards on the table in 2014, eschewing his day job; taking a suggestion from music biz folks to change his Blues Dragon band’s moniker to the self-titled Mark Telesca Band for its 2015 release Heavy Breathing, and even taking up the guitar to perform solo when his own guitarist, Robert Allen Gibbs, needed a recent break.
“Robert took six months or so off to recuperate from an injury, but he’s back now,” Telesca says of his frequent duo and trio partner, who also plays a mean dobro. “He had a surfing accident years ago where he face-planted, and though he walked away and seemed fine afterward, those things can catch up to us as we get older. He had nerve problems in his neck that also impacted his hands, and just needed time off to rest them.”
The tattooed Telesca speaks from a couch in the upstairs music den of the two-story house he shares with wife Karene, an accomplished visual artist, in Boynton Beach. With his ink, goatee and Clark Kent glasses, he looks the part of the local blues Superman amid amplifiers, speakers, and vintage basses and guitars mounted on the east wall. An acoustic upright bass takes up the southwest corner. Yet the darkened room also hints at the recent past of a serious day job he had for nearly 30 years.
“I was a full-time musician until I started working for funeral homes,” Telesca says. “I even opened my own for awhile. I’m Italian, but I ended up working mostly at Jewish homes. One was the Star of David home in Fort Lauderdale, and I even worked for the Neptune Society afterward. I have a little stomp box [a wooden box played with the foot to mimic a kick drum] that I made out a of a cremation urn. And I normally can’t make anything other than lasagna.”
Telesca makes his third competitive trip to Memphis, Tenn., to participate in the annual International Blues Challenge on Jan. 26-31 as a reward for winning a regional Florida leg of the competition. In 2011, he advanced to the semifinals with Blues Dragon, the quintet that released award-winning CDs in 2006 and 2009. In 2014, he again advanced from the quarterfinals to semis with his self-titled trio, which included Gibbs and drummer Anthony Livoti. This time, he’ll compete solo on vocals and guitar, rather than leading a band, due to another regional win as a soloist that was a surprise even to him.
“I started playing guitar at outdoor gigs in the summer of 2014,” Telesca says, “just basically practicing on stage. Eventually, my friend Chuck Fiore showed up to play bass with me, and his son Chuck Jr. showed up with him to play percussion, and we formed an accidental little side band. It’s been great, and I just keep trying to improve. But I know I’ll be up against some serious, heavy guitarists at the IBC.”
Memphis has consistently paid dividends for Telesca, to the point where he travels there to witness the IBC proceedings, held in venues along its famed Beale Street, even on years when he isn’t competing. It’s there that he was discovered by the Austin, Texas-based company Delaney Guitars, which has since made Telesca an endorsed artist and built him a signature “Tradition Bass” that’s among its core retail line — and one of his main axes.
It’s also where Telesca met Houston-based singer Diunna Greenleaf (recently named “Best Female Vocalist” by Living Blues magazine) in 2014, allowing him to win an audition and tour Norway, Denmark, Poland and Sweden as part of her band Blue Mercy. The Southern blues metropolis also allowed him to submit Heavy Breathing for consideration on Sirius XM Radio blues playlists. Its opening Telesca composition “I Don’t Need Your Lovin’ Anymore” reached No. 1 on one such list; the CD reached No. 5 on another, and the disc remained on the “Baker’s Dozen of Blues” chart for 13 weeks.
“The record is selling well,” he says, “or at least as well as any independent CD can sell anymore. And it’s gotten several great reviews.”
Influenced by traditional old-school blues artists like Son House, Muddy Waters and Willie Dixon, Telesca started out by covering these icons in Blues Dragon before adding his own compositions. Former bandmates Tony Monaco (keyboards) and drummer/percussionists Rick Geragi and Fred Weng even appear on I. Telesca’s tune “Livin’ On Death Row,” from that band’s self-titled second CD from 2009 won a Blewzzy Award for best song and inspired his songwriting confidence.
He promises that his performances in Memphis will mirror the latest CD, which features all originals (some composed with those former band mates) except for a stinging cover of Dixon’s “Evil.” All tracks are delivered in Telesca’s throwback singing voice, which ranges to both growl to howl, and with his bottom-heavy bass playing grounding the song structures. And the novice guitarist’s finger-picked lines in live performances are surprisingly strong.
“I’m still a bass player, so I can’t comfortably play guitar with a pick,” he says with a laugh. “I may do one cover in Memphis. It depends on how far I advance, but the originals are really what I’ve chosen to be about. You do roughly 25-minute sets the first two nights; a half-hour if you make the semifinals the next night, and a 20-minute set if you reach the finals.”
Telesca has also been the host of the popular “Biscuit Jam,” held at the Funky Biscuit in Boca Raton on Monday nights, for more than a year. His predecessor was David Shelley, a talented singer/guitarist who’d toured with Cher, signed with major recording labels, and led his band Bluestone through South Florida for more than a decade before succumbing to cancer in August at the age of 57.
“Like Dave, Mark is the right kind of person to balance and manage all the people and egos who want to play at a jam,” says Funky Biscuit owner Al Poliak. “He’s personable, respectful and enthusiastic. I tend to stress having the ‘want to’ factor in order to succeed, because if you don’t have that, it always involves heavy lifting. Mark has that ‘want to’ quality. And despite a busy schedule otherwise, he’s never given the impression of mailing it in once as the jam host. That’s inspiring.”
“Dave had started to have serious health issues, but he was also getting really busy with Bluestone,” Telesca says. “Things were going really well for them. So between those things, he had to take some time off, and Al started rotating guest hosts before Dave unfortunately got too ill to continue. Al called me to do it for the first time in June of 2014, and my response was, ‘You must be clean out of guitarists, because no one asks a bass player to do that!’ But it went well, and he asked me to do it again a few weeks later. Then I got an entire month, and subsequently another month, and it sort of became official. And it’s going really well. There’s no list to play, but it’s a pro jam, not an open mic night, and we have touring or local featured artists who play a set before the jam. I know enough people to know who to call up, whether directly or word of mouth, and who to pair them with onstage.”
Word of mouth certainly serves Telesca well. He produced Heavy Breathing — his first official turn behind the mixing board — and is now doing the same for the debut EP by a 14-year-old Orlando-based guitarist and vocalist. David Julia will also be in Memphis for the IBC in January.
“David will be there for its youth showcase,” Telesca says, “and he’ll represent the South Florida Blues Society. His parents are very enthusiastic and proactive, and they brought him all the way to the jam at the Funky Biscuit. They said they felt like it was the highest-level jam that David could get involved with, so it was worth the trip from Orlando. I suggested that they bring him to Memphis, too, where I was able to introduce them all to some people. And I wrote him a letter of recommendation for a scholarship through the Blues Foundation’s Generation Blues program, and David ended up getting it.
“So he got to go to the Fur Peace Ranch, Jorma Kaukonen from Hot Tuna’s place, in Ohio. He also got mentored by Bob Margolin, Muddy Waters’ lead guitarist, and Doug McCloud, who has 19 albums, several Blues Music Awards and a National Guitars endorsement. And David came out of that experience an even better player and singer. His EP, ‘Simple Things,’ should be out between November and January,” Telesca said.
In a genre that continuously looks to the past for inspiration, this recent project proves that Telesca values broadening his horizons by paying it forward.
If you go
See Mark Telesca at 8 p.m. Mondays as host of the pro jam at the Funky Biscuit, 303 SE Mizner Blvd., Boca Raton (561-395-2929), the Mark Telesca Band at 9 p.m. on Jan. 9 at the Downtowner Saloon, 10 S. New River Drive East, Fort Lauderdale (954-463-9800) and at 8:30 p.m. Jan. 16 at the Bamboo Room, 25 S. J St., Lake Worth (561-585-2583), and solo at 6 p.m. on Jan. 14 at the Backyard, 511 N.E. 4th St., Boynton Beach (561-740-0399) and at 8 p.m. on Jan. 22 at Smoke Inn, 1030 Gateway Blvd., Boynton Beach (561-721-2383).