Mark Herndon former Alabama drummer

what was your first memory that you ever had that made you realize you wanted to be a drummer and pursue a music career it came to me it's not it's a first memory it's a huge memory came to me as an epiphany I was in high school serving time in military school for a misspent youth and senior year my good friend at school was the drummer in the band for the problem that night and I left my date she didn't even stay with me and I got up to the edge of the stage and I was leaning on the stage like he do at a concert because they were a really good band he was really good drummer and something hit me in the head like a 20-pound sledge that's cool that's what I'm going to do that I'm going to get I'm going to get in that seat right there I'm on a rock and my athletic prowess was a little bit less left a lot to be desired they used me for the football team you know for the for the football team did he's a little guy you know just pass him around so you know the only other way you could get girls to look at you back in those days was being a musician that that's what that's what led me down that path well it's started in high school it sounds like at the prom and then it led on later to being in a band at the Bowery and in Myrtle Beach like well you're kind of talking about and saying girls to get isn't their attention so could you maybe share a story or two about some crazy things you experience there and maybe those things that led to lessons learned and for your career well we saw some crazy things at the Bowery for sure that the Bowery was a wild place very a carnival atmosphere all down there in the and it's central area of Myrtle Beach all that it's all gone now the pavilion was there that the ride the arcade everything was right down there on Ocean Boulevard and but back in those days like I said was carnival atmosphere inside the Bowery it was soulful no air-conditioning humid it was just right off the beach the salt spray would come in the door people were just rowdy and really into music and trying to yell louder than the band was playing and and the band was pretty loud we used to have strippers hanging from chains in the ceiling and they do their thing you know and there was just a lot of stuff that went on down there that made it a rich experience and me as a kid being a single guy playing at it playing music at the beach in the middle of all that stuff I had died and gone to heaven that it set the precedent probably for some very bad behavior later on but I lived to tell about it and can reminisce about it it's all good well uh this interview is for hours I music starts here and it's kind of an educational networking tool for emerging artists songwriters everything so we want to get tips so that oh don't give up your day job we want to get tips tip for people that are going to town and want to pursue this as a career so from that early on career in Myrtle Beach to where you are today what are maybe some of those lessons you learned early on that you would like to share as emerging artists all right taking care of business and being an artist whether it be a singer songwriter drummer guitar virtuoso whatever requires your whole brain and by that I mean right-brain left-brain very few people myself included can be a performer and a musician the dedicated at getting better at your craft and a businessman at the same time it's they're two different animals I was not good at the business side of it when I started out I procrastinated I didn't like it I didn't want to think about it I wanted to play I wanted to perform I wanted to see the lights I wanted to be on the stage or when experience everything that I thought it was going to be and I did but my business chops fell by the wayside and partially consequently I didn't do as well financially as I probably could have over the years if I had been a little smarter business-wise in the early onset of the bands rise to success so I would advise people that are just starting out in this business if you are not a business person and you I what is it right brain controls the creative side and the left brain is the math and things like that if you're a right brain person have the sense to find somebody that is a left brain person and get them to help you don't be at don't be afraid to ask questions about how publishing works how royalty distribution works what points on an album mean how musical partnerships amongst artists how that works don't be afraid the only dumb question as they say is the one you don't ask I was a little too proud for my own good to go around asking questions because I felt like given my position I was in I already had to know that so I didn't want to admit that I didn't and it cost me so you know don't do that be honest with yourself and if you're a business person more power to you then then go get some music lessons but otherwise at least either study up on it seriously or get somebody we're talking about to help you yeah and that's a little lot of artists come to town realizing I have the talent but they don't realize the business side comes with it as well and now more than ever and I'm Way behind the curb myself because I'm the old-school guy here but it's changing faster than it ever changed when when we were in it we were headed before there was social media and digital and all this stuff now that's changing every day so gosh it's a lot to keep up with and like I said before any people coming to town don't think they need the business side but they also think coming to town if they just get that one big break that they'll be set for a prolonged successful music career and and your book you talk about getting the band's big break at the new faces country radio seminar can you maybe explain that feeling and how it felt as a band and then maybe how that big great was that big break was great but you had to do a lot more to keep this long successful career well the new faces show was a big break for the band I didn't get the feeling that you're talking about from that show because I didn't get to participate and had I know more about the business then that's a case in point of how how things work in the business that are not what you think they're going to be and I tell that story in the book what happened that night that charted the course for business was some areas that I didn't do very well in could you maybe expand on some of those areas a little bit or we have to read the book a little bit more well I want you to read the book and I want to create a little bit of mystique but it became obvious to me on that that night if not shortly thereafter that I was not going to participate in the financial relationship between the band and the label when we started out you know just the idea of getting a record label was like odds it was that's one who really got it made that's another instructive thing I can tell new artists that's when that's like graduating from junior high school and the high school and college is still ahead of you the real work begins when you get a label deal that's not when you have it man that's one starts the the hard work start but I found out that the partnership that the three guys had always had before I joined was to remain just the three of them and you know the rest is is a lot of the book is you know how I coped with that not always in the most productive way that's something else too there's a lot of temptations out there and I can only say this through hindsight but I learned this because I almost lost a little bit of gift I got to perform take care of your talents take care of your gift nurture them don't beat your body up don't beat your mind up try to stay as straight as you can in the long run you're a much better player I'm a better play sober for 12 years now I'm a much better player than I was during the days when I was partying raising to help putting poisons in my body and my mind on a spiritual sense I mean if we want to go there I would even say that the maker who gives us our gifts got pissed at me for abusing mind so much and took it away from me because I got to the point to where I could not play I found ways to force it and make my body and my fingers and my wrists and my arms go through the motion but I could not play and it came back to me about two years after I cleaned up my act that's that makes me a believer right there but it take care of yourself if you if I mean you know I'm not trying to be Mother Teresa here or lecture anybody and just tell you from experience it really works and you'd be a much better player for it now and I mean that's the truth let's get advice with any career that you first oh absolutely absolutely but it's just I think the music career is fraught with way more temptations for just general debauchery than most other trades and and and we have to fight that you know I found myself being carried along by it for many years and I don't regret it I do regret it but then again I don't because there's some great memory great times and I had I paid for him too yeah well a lot of those memories probably were out on the roads since you were on the road for over two decades so you maybe explain one high point and one low point on the road that you had and what you learned from mmm I know that's a hard one huh well because there's so many other reasons I call it the high road my goodness lots of high point so I mean from Van success stories to great nights that our individual night's performances gained it I mean I've got a low point for you coming but sound the high yeah stay on the high you know there's so many of them did I just have to pull one out of the year the flashes to mine I remember we did a tour right before the fell farewell tour up in the late 90s and we went out for 70 cities with the Doobie Brothers a band that from the 70s I'd always admired and loved their stuff and and communicated with through various mental states of inebriation listening to their records that that it's so when we got when we got on the bill with them with co-headlined a national tour then I was in heaven and because somebody that I admired and they were great live and they were great guys everybody the band and crew were friends and it was just such a wonderful feeling to be out with a band that I hadn't had admired during my dreaming phase wanting to get in this thing and here I was in it with them on the same level and I just about swung one night we were in in Hatton Kansas playing an outdoor festival right there by that big dam that holds back the lake there in the north of the town and the stage was set up at the base of the dam and I used to carry a 12 speed bike on the bus and I about riding and I got back about 10 minutes into their set summertime you know the Sun was still up and I rode my bike into the crowd of people everywhere you know nobody knew me I bike helmet on my hair tied back and and I remember sitting out there just sitting astride my bike and through the back of the house listening to the Doobie Brothers sounded just like their records flashing back on all the good times I had as a kid listening to that stuff and going I'm going to be up there playing on that same stage and imagine it was it was just that's a little tiny snippet but it was it was so so exciting I just happens to come back to mind I could tell you a million if I sit here and think about him long enough a low point probably the night that I the day well 24 hour period that I went through the metamorphosis of change that it requires to get on the straight and narrow that that's that's in book that's in the book in plenty of detail I want to give it all away because I think it's a really good story and I I I it it it was a very close call I almost killed myself and three other people and although there are lots worse stories out there I've heard through a a and other other gatherings it was pretty bad to me and what happened not long after that real close call I mean I we did leave the road and that real close call with a motor vehicle accident they were something that was absolutely awesome on the spiritual plan and it's it's it caused me to make a promise that I live by today and so it has a positive ending but when it happened a very very dark time in my life and the damaging myself so badly had reached a critical mass and I was getting to the mission Michael see I'm 60 now so you know I was in my mid forties way past time to quit that foolishness and well just never started anyway but rough very dark very dark time leading up to that and then that happened and it was very difficult for about 2 or 3 years to maintain straight and narrow and oddly enough the hardest part was not so much on the road surrounded in what you know people think is the party atmosphere that it was at home when you relax and it's time for happy hour party for one drink and dial and you know when you're in your own environment you don't have to go anywhere doesn't matter if you pass out in the yard and what are going to arrest you so that was that was very difficult for a number of years but I'm stubborn and once I make up my mind do something I might do it I'm not looking for any sympathy for going through that it's self-inflicted it's very enriching as far as how you learn about yourself and I put it in the book because I want to share that part with other people and I really want to help anybody that's out there that wants that goal for themselves in the long run and I think there's a lot of folks struggling like I did all my life wanting to be straight even though I was a party boy from hell for 20 years I alway in the back of my mind I always I didn't like that so but I covered it up and went at it anyway now the real nice is is here and I like him a little better than I did that other guy he was dark well I know a lot of people will appreciate reading that story and learning from it but I hope it okay yeah I really do well that's a great thing to hear as well but there were those dark times but it sounds like the high points like being with the Doobie Brothers really shadowed over theirs so when you were on the road what gave you that motivation to get up and do that star performance every night with the same energy for different routes all over probably because during the dream phase before I really got into it before I got a break it was it was so intense I mean I after concerts that I would go to I go out and talk to the building you know I'm going to play in you someday I'm going to be you're gonna be mine someday and there's a story in the book there where there's a little anecdote in there where I got to go back to say I told you so to one of them and that was a great night I said that was a high point to is that that's one of those who goes in the history books it's just I wanted this so so bad and I'm very lucky I you know I don't know why I of the millions of chances and the millions of people out there and why it got to be me I couldn't tell you I'm very grateful for that and I think I think that's throughout the book I want you to know that it's not full of sour grapes my I tell my side there's some things that I'm not going to take the fall for and I set the record straight there but I think I did it in a tasteful way and here's another instructive thing for your Watchers I discussed this in the book about the code of the road and what happens on the road stays on the road and that's largely true and should be honored you have to be very careful what you say in this business I can say that now because I've lived through it but when you're getting into it remember if somebody in the business makes you mad unless they steal from you or they hurt a member of your family if they make you mad live with it because you're going to meet them on the way down are you going to see them again sometime it's a small world and usually the next day your temper blood is over and it's really better to let it go it's just it never works when you say something bad about somebody in public the baggage is yours to carry after that because it's like I said if it's a small business and it could be the difference between you making it or not well talking about those relationships and never burning a bridge in this business or even with the people you see every day on the road your band mates having that chemistry and finding those people you mess with is very hard and people that want to go down that route of being in a band could you maybe explain how once you find that chemistry it's hard to find one and then hard to maintain what you have to do to maybe keep that industry um yeah it's hard to find it's it's even harder to maintain your spot on there I think you maintain it through you know after the release of the personal relationship either gets old or sours for one reason or another if you if you have a mutual love for performing you can put up with a lot from somebody else because you're all driving toward the end of the day when it's time to start the show anyway and that was the case with this band for many many years now I I guess that it's still the same because all of us in one way or another is still out playing somewhere you know none of us have quit playing so I suppose that's true I feel I'm the only one I can speak for is me I don't think it ever died and me it went away temporarily if you are in getting into this business be aware of the fact that there will be times in your life to where you feel like you hate what you do and you wish to god you would have done anything else but I can if you're legit if you really belong in this business those feelings go away after a while and it always comes back remember that all saw Rock & Roll never forgets that's what that's about that's a good thing cuz I know people are happy to see you playing to see you have this happiness now and I just have one final question it'll be about the book you talked about it just being kind of like you writing down your thoughts to say to your daughter how did it end up being ending up this long product that turned into a novel that's a great question I asked myself that man every day why does he um yeah it did start writing to my daughter and I don't know have I already told you that you know I wanted my dad to do that for us me and my daughter and it happen go into that in the book and yeah I got a few stories together and spark some brain cells I thought long did and I was relating stories to some friends around you know bonfires and whatnot and they started telling me dude you write that down man you know some days that's never going to get told and so I thought okay well I can't see myself writing a book that's for smart people well a little by little logging you know I got to where I could type very fast and stuff and start flowing and I go hmm this is fun even telling the not-so-good stuff was sort of perversely fun you know it because it was cathartic food so one you know it's no bald I guess and then a lot of the wound up on the cutting room floor we have we have probably we're not 250 260 pages I think last time the publisher called me all the word-count but probably that many wound up on editing so because as you can tell I'd like to talk too much hey that's not a bad thing though yeah oh yeah I keyboard it too much but yeah you know what you're doing that's what I loved to teach young kids hopefully what to do and what not to do I teach I'm a TM give drum lessons at a music school where I live now for a part-time thing to do and and some of these some of these kids go out I see myself you know they're so starry-eyed and they're so eager and it's kind of a big responsibility because your first teacher sometimes are the most I hope I'm doing right now yeah a mentor and I know everyone that will watch this video will think that as well and get the book as well oh yeah well thank you so I think unless you wanted to add anything what's the 60-year old mark what would he say to the 18 year old mark if you could go back and talk to him god it's a great question listen to your gut and act on it because it's right

Channel: Rachel Tripp

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Length: 25min 49sec (1549 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 21 2016