ABOUT

A FEW WORDS

A Few words from John Mark about the new album:

"I'm not sure which songs represent me the best. Some days I feel like I might be OK with people considering me a "Christian" artist and others I just wish people would just let be an artist. I'm obviously known for the community oriented worship songs that I've written (and continue to write) but I just don't think the word "Christian" describes music. Either way here are few of my favorites right now. They're from my new album The Medicine.

"Ten Thousand" uses a number as a vehicle to tell a story from the perspective of a kind of old revelator. I incorporated lots of imagery picturing both death (rivers run red) and resurrection (graves yawning). At the time I wrote this, and much of the album, I was somewhat fascinated with the idea of death and resurrection representing two sides of the human experience. In this particular situation it's not, so much, a strictly Biblical presentation of resurrection but a picture of death and resurrection in everyday life. Though I guess that isn't necessarily and unbiblical concept.

The concept of the song "Reckoning Day" is a confrontation between two characters personifying life and death, where we have become the currency. The idea is that Death owes a debt and Life has come to collect. I like this picture of Life taxing Death as ruthlessly as we have been taxed. To come "untied from the weight of the age" is to enter into a day when we are no longer ruled by death. That is to see a day when death no longer has the final say about who we are and how we choose to live our lives. This may not be a very common modern Christian concept but it's pretty comparable to the language of some early church influences.

"Carbon Ribs" is a fairly introspective song about the conflict between self-doubt and faith from the perspective someone who is fully aware of his/her inadequacy but has chosen to stack their chips in favor grace rather than karma.

"Skeleton Bones" is a song I sing in community/worship situations. Mostly because it has a pretty melody and a fairly anthemic chorus. The idea behind this song is the once again the resurrection from the dead. Bones coming together, standing up etc."

John Mark

PRESS

Concerning John Marks recent release "The Medicine":

"I don't think there can be any question this is John Mark's finest work. This is certainly a step forward musically, lyrically and in his songwriting. The songwriting still has the exposed emotions John Mark is known for but this record comes across as a more matured presentation, not quite as raw as before. It's truly a storyteller album and the story is captivating and beautiful. Go buy this album now!"

Kyle Campos, ourrisingsound.com

"The Medicine is a collection of intimate portraits and amped up love songs by the artist who brought you "How He Loves" and "Closer". Including crowd favorites like "Skeleton Bones" and "Dress Us Up", John Mark McMillan's third album is the sound of a mature artist at the height of his craft."

Jack Arnold

About John Marks 2005 release "The Song Inside The Sounds Of Breaking Down":

The title says it all for Charlotte, NC rock'n'roller John Mark McMillan's sophomore effort The Song Inside the Sounds of Breaking Down. John Mark recently sat down with Braille's Thomas Torrey for an in-depth discussion on the inspirations and personal nature of the record.

The songs came out of the tragic death of McMillan's best friend, just months after John Mark's debut record Hope Anthology Vol. 1 hit stores. The grief that followed, and the subsequent rise from under it, is what bore the fruit for John Mark's newest anthology. "The album is about what happens when you fall apart," McMillan said. "I don't think there is any way of avoiding painful experiences as a human. Those painful experiences can either make us angry and bitter and cynical, or they can break us and change us and we can become more than what we were even before."

When asked about the role of faith in his music, McMillan responded, "Christianity has to have a place in my art because it's who I am. If it didn't then I'd come across as pretentious. People can see through facades easily." But he adds, "The gospel has been abused so often that people hear the name of Jesus and they think of a used car salesman. We've got to change that. There are so many completely broken and devasted people in the world. I think we ignore this as artists and as Christians. I didnt want to do that. I wanted to put something out there that people could relate to. That's what the album's all about, the song that comes out of falling apart."

Thomas Torrey, WSLC Radio

You get the sense, when listening to an album by John Mark McMillan, that there is another America out there. It's an America more real than the one you're used to: the one of endless car dealerships, sprawled out suburbia, and shoeshine religion. This is not that America. This is the America that exists, breathing and living, outside the realm of blue state and red state allegiance. This is the America built on the backs of the bruised and the broken, the America of under-produced country music and fuzzed out rock and roll and old time gospel.

Though McMillan's most recent release, The Song inside the Sounds of the Breaking Down, may open up with the deceptively Anglo-centric "London town", the sound was most definitely born in the U.S.A. From the banjos and tube crunch of "Breaking Down" to the careening, slightly drunken "Next to You Now", McMillan and company have crafted an album that sonically stretches from sea to shining sea, subtly pulling from influences as disparate as Springsteen, Whiskeytown, and Death Cab for Cutie.

Lyrically, John Mark McMillan thinks like a poet. Lines like "I've been walking in my sleep/digging trenches in the pavement with the soles of my feet" and "I dreamed I kissed your feet/between the cigarette butts on the side of fourteenth street" wind their way through the tunes like Carolina copperheads. The result is a thread that binds all of McMillan's music together: being broke down. Whether it's the death of a friend or the distance of a lover, the ghost that haunts John Mark's soul seems to brood on the back of his brokenness. And really, from the blues to Bob Dylan, what could be more American than that?