1993 - 2017

After A Lust and a Longing was released and after I sent it out to several hundred folk radio shows around the country, I started to make plans to move to Nashville to try to sell my songs there. I thought I was done with performing.

But then I scheduled a couple of short shows up in San Francisco with a couple of friends – and the bug bit me again. So at the age of 37 in 1994, I started looking around and discovered an open mic at a place called Highland Grounds in Hollywood. There I met, on the very first night I attended, several songwriters I still know today – and from there developed a new set of friends and colleagues.

By the summer of 1994 I was playing regular gigs at local coffeehouses throughout Southern California. I moved to a new place – out of Hollywood and into tiny Sierra Madre, where I rented a cottage with an old garage that I converted into a studio and I began to record my second Trough album, Angelenos – a series of songs mostly about or involving Los Angeles. By the time it was released in June of 1995, I had become the every-other-week host of the open mic at the legendary Iguana Café in North Hollywood – and after the Iguana closed in the summer of 1995, in October of that year I embarked on my first national tour. – three weeks in the cold Northeastern United States.

I was actually doing this.

Sing Out! Magazine wrote of Angelenos:

“This successful concept album revolves around the people who make up the population of Southern California. It begins in ‘Omaha,’ telling of the Nebraska boy lured to California by oranges and gold, who lived an ordinary life, dying on his front porch in the shadow cast by fireworks at Disneyland. From this acoustic start, Humphreys rocks into the metaphysical creation of Los Angeles and all its blights and furies in the title song. The moving ‘East of Cheyenne' finds Everyman abandoning his family in Wyoming on their journey to his wife’s new job in California. ‘Cry if You Want To’ vividly describes big city violence and the anonymity of death all too common, in this case, in L.A. The final song, ‘Telephone Road', finds our hero desperately trying to reach L.A. after his car dies on the outskirts of town…’Angelenos’ is a first-rate effort. Humphreys has something to say and he says it well.”

In 1996 I toured nationally for the second time, this time in the spring, and started booking for the spring and fall of 1997. By the time I started recording Leap Day back in Sierra Madre in late ’96, I had become part of a truly amazing group of musical colleagues, among them Andrew Lorand and Rod Sphere (then known as Rod Smear).

I released Leap Day in early ’97, and shortly thereafter a benefactor who wanted Rod to release an album asked me if Trough would release a Rod Smear album if she paid for it. I thought it was a novel idea – so Andrew and I recorded – and Andrew produced – Rod’s first album, dot, and it was released in mid-1997 on Trough Records.

It was then I decided to invite Andrew, and then Tim Tedrow and John-Michael Kaye, who were getting ready to put out albums, to release their records on the label as well. From those first four releases in 1997, the model for Trough Records that remains today took hold – artists would pay for the cost of making their albums, and Trough would release them, giving the artists a single identity – except that Trough would not own any of the artists’ work in any way.

Oh – and I took Leap Day – an album filled with songs about leaps of faith and reconciliation – on the road for those two 1997 tours. I was now getting real folk radio airplay and developing relationships with venues and DJs all over the country – and my music was getting favorably reviewed. I was having the time of my life.

Crossroads Magazine wrote of Leap Day:

“Los Angeles-based singer-songwriter Mark Humphreys’ third recording is hard not to like. His strong, imperfect, very human voice compellingly animates real-life stories, memories, and allegories, all artifacts of an observing eye that alternately cannot and will not refuse to see…nothing on ‘Leap Day’ stays down, rising to simple, direct instrumental arrangements and, most of all, Mark Humphreys’ upbeat vocals and lyrical conceits.”

I spent 1998 and 1999 touring myself silly. In 1998 I was on the road for nearly five months, and I was wrapping up booking for a total of seven (7) months on the road for 1999. I knew I needed to release a new album, but constant touring (and simultaneously managing my “regular” job) inhibited my ability to write new material.

One day while on tour somewhere in the Midwest in the summer of 1998, I hit on a unique idea – how about I do a LIVE show with some of my friends and musician buddies – and perform some of those OLD songs from my First Incarnation as a songwriter? I was performing lots of those songs on the road – why not do the new arrangements with a full band in front of a live audience?

Somehow – and it was such a whirlwind I barely remember how we did it – Kris and Terry Vreeland donated their huge living room, we filled it with a lifetime’s worth of friends to watch and listen, and on September 12, 1998 John-Michael Kaye, Albe Bonacci, Andrew Lorand, Tim Cupps, Randy Wolchek and I played our hearts out. When I returned from my 1998 autumn tour, Andrew and I mixed the album and it was released in early 1999. That year, before I left on the spring half of my seven month journey, I ran into a friend from the Iguana Café days at the opening of a new venue, her name was (and is!) Melissa Morgan – and sparks flew. And everything changed. Again.

On the road: At Drips Coffeehouse in Hickory North Carolina, April 24, 1999 – right at the beginning of my spring tour.

My final album of new songs. Maybe my best from the touring years. A collection of songs about journeys – real and imagined. 10 songs written by me and one written by Andrew Lorand and Dan Bern. One of mine, Home, was written for the woman who became my wife, Melissa.

After The River Road was released in 2002 I continued to tour for three more years – and then – after my spring tour in 2005 – I decided that this part of my adventure was over – that I’d always stay around music but that my touring days were done. I wanted to be able to sleep with my bride every night and explore the possibilities laid out before me at the “day job “. I’d worked simultaneously all those years and which now offered me a chance for new challenges – and sitting here today I can say with certainty that I am happy that I chose that path.

I played locally in L.A. and environs for another decade or so, here and there, until arthritis finally made it impossible for me to play any longer. But I will never forget nor ever diminish the years I spent as a performing songwriter. I have been blessed to work with phenomenally talented artists and continue to produce albums by many of them, which is as high an honor as I can imagine. I’m proud of all the songs I’ve written – all of them, even the ones that were…let’s just call them evolutionary.

And I hope you, dear visitor – if you’ve never heard my music – will take the time to listen to some of it when you get a chance. THANK YOU!

At the Fremont Centre Theatre in South Pasadena, 2012.

Tim, John and me outside the barn right before that last show, 9/28/13. In the ten years of touring and more 20 years of live performances overall beginning in 1994, I played more shows with these two guys than with anyone else. I promise you – there is NOTHING more joyful than making music with good friends – and I’ve had a lot of joy!