Musician Mark Bishop Evans will be performing as part of the Camp Verde Community Library’s Music In The Stacks concert series on Thursday, Aug. 24, from 5 to 6:30 p.m.
Evans grew up in southern California and started playing classical trumpet at age 5. During the nine years he played trumpet he began singing as well and found he enjoyed it more than he did playing the trumpet. He then switched instruments to the guitar so he could sing while playing.
Influenced by popular 1960s artists including Peter, Paul and Mary, Bob Dylan and Gordon Lightfoot, Evans later acquired affinity for folk and protest music while in Vietnam. After witnessing others sing songs they had written at a coffee house, he began thinking that if they could do that, he could do it, too. He began playing solo at coffee houses and nightclubs and has been doing that ever since. Evans joked that he always worked a regular job so he could afford to play music.
During the course of his musical career, Evans has played Christian music, gospel, Latin, blues, soft jazz, folk and folk rock.
“You learn music that people want to listen to in the places that you’re playing,” Evans said. “I would learn a lot of different kinds of things and I really enjoy a lot of it. When it comes down to what I write, I really write folk music.” He said he appreciates the authenticity of folk music and its lack of superficiality compared to most popular music.
“It’s not until you get into folk music where you start dealing with subjects like the economy or environmental issues or how we treat each other,” Evans said. “Those are the kinds of subject matter that is available to write about. The folk music realm is so much broader.”
Evans described his style of folk music as “close to the bone,” meaning that he prefers songs that make people think and feel. While he also writes more lighthearted tunes, he prefers to write honest songs that people can identify with.
“When you look at the music-scape out there, folk music is pretty lost, both in general and especially in the younger generations,” Evans said. He encouraged more people to sample and pay attention to folk music, as it is a very diverse genre that addresses a wide range of social issues.
Initially assigned to the Vietnam invasion force as a combat soldier, Evans later heard about a program called Command Military Touring Shows that involved Special Services recruiting musicians and sending them from base to base to perform. Evans said he thought that playing music would be a lot better than being shot at, but added that he later realized he got shot at just as much, if not more.
After an audition in Saigon, he was accepted into the program and created a trio with two guitar players, one from Tennessee and the other from Washington, D.C. The trio called themselves The Common People. They would sometimes play three shows in a day, traveling from base to base by helicopter.
Evans reflected that the three players tended to become somewhat arrogant after seeing the demand for their music. After arriving at a forward base one day and waiting for their audience to arrive, they found when they got up on stage that it consisted of a worn and straggly group, most of whom were covered in bandages. Two men were on stretchers. The officer in command told them that his troop had been ambushed on the way to the show but the men had refused to evacuate until after they had heard the trio play.
“It was like being slapped in the face hard,” Evans said. “Here we are acting like a bunch of prima donnas and these guys are being shot, being wounded and they want to see us. They’re going to take their morphine shot and sit there and watch us play before they’re medically evacuated out. It had a huge impact on me and it’s something that has stayed with me my whole life.”
