If you are a concertgoer, chances are you’ve seen up-and-coming rocker Mark Daly. Mark did double duty in 2023 opening for and then playing with Geoff Tate on his US tour, and he also opened a run of dates earlier this year on the Mr. Big farewell tour. He is about to release some new music and recently sat down to talk about his journey so far.
Please press the PLAY icon below for the MisplacedStraws Mark Daly interview –
On upcoming new music – So “I Wanna Be More” is the first single from this new record and it’s going to be non-stop releases from here. We have the next single “Pieces” which features Emily Armstrong from the band Dead Sara coming out next month. Then there’s another single the following month. They’re kind of all like drip fed out now over the next few months and really, really excited about it.
On the upcoming Devil’s Arms record – This was the first record where we did it as a full band. The record records previously I’ve just been myself and a producer kind of that way. This one I wanted to be with the guys and we went to Sonic Ranch Studios in El Paso, Texas. We spent, I think it was eight days there, eight or nine days, and we got all the tracks done. It was the most amazing recording experience in my life. It was same for the boys and I’m glad that they were a part of it because I feel like from playing live together and then having that experience and knowing each other so well and then coming in to write together for the first time. I think it made it extra special and we kind of knew telepathically what everybody wanted to go, what direction. There’s a couple of heavy hitters on this record. Some dark, deep ones as well. A nice little mixture, a nice roller coaster of emotions.
On recording with his live band The Ravens – It makes it a lot more fun playing live now, because the intro is kind of a cowbell, nice drum intro to “I Wanna Be More”, that’s all the drummer’s idea. That’s his own idea, Danny (Laverde). James Brown on guitar, I’ve been playing with him for years and writing with him as well. So to have him come in, and Jack (Ross), Danny, and just have that connection that we already had from playing live and then bringing that into original music was really, really special.
There’s a track on the new record called “Brighter Days”, which (James) wrote and brought to me and I added the lyrics. I know that one’s really special to him because it was the first track that he brought in that was the other way around because I’d write the lyrics or I’d have some piece of music and he would add to it. It ended up being probably my favorite track on the whole record and I hopefully we’re going to continue that way where the band are more involved in the writing as well.
On how he first hooked up with Geoff Tate – It was actually through Geoff’s wife. She came to Ireland on a holiday and I was playing in a bar in my previous band. She just came up to me and was like, “Are these your songs? Are these original songs?” I was like, “Yeah”. And she’s like, “Are you serious? Are these really your songs?” I’m like, “Yes”. And she was like, “Play more, play more”. We got chatting. We had a pint of Guinness up at the bar after the gig and exchanged numbers. She wasn’t messing around because a couple of months later we were out to the U. S. for our first time ever and we were opening for Queensryche. I think that was like 2010, the end of 2010, and that was my first experience of proper touring and going out opening for Geoff and Queensryche at the time. It would just all go from there. So thank God she came on holiday and saw us in the bar.
On the differences in crowds between the Geoff Tate and Mr. Big tours – It was funny, I naturally changed our set list and brought in some of the new songs, like the song I just mentioned that James brought to the table. The “Brighter Days” song has a very Pink Floyd, very guitar-strong, deep lyrical kind of song. Even though the record wasn’t out, we decided to bring them into the setlist for the Mr. Big tour. There was a guy at one of the shows, actually, and he had seen us two months, three months before on Geoff’s tour. He said, “your sets were completely different to what I saw on the Geoff tour”. He said, “Did you do that to cater to the different audience and the different atmosphere?” And I said, “Yeah”. And he goes, “Good move, because, I got to see two completely different sides and I love both.” It was really cool that it was very slight. There’s a song like “Peace of Mind” that we played on Geoff’s tour, and we played it on this tour as well, and there were certain tracks that just worked in both atmospheres, in both environments. Same with “Don’t Look Back”, the biker song, we did that on both sets. But I thought bringing in the new songs was really cool for the Mr. Big Tour and to hear what we’ve been working on and how we’ve kind of matured and grown… I’m not going to lie. I didn’t really think about it until I was on the flight from Dublin to Newark and I was like, “Hang on, what if they don’t get it?” It’s a whole new audience.
We’ve been lucky to tour with Geoff a few times and knowing Geoff and knowing his family and knowing the crew, you kind of go into it a bit, you’re comfortable because you’re like, “I know what to expect”. I know who’s going to be running sound and lights and it’s a really nice working environment. The Mr. Big Tour was like, “Hang on, nobody knows us, the crowd don’t know us, the band don’t know us, the crew don’t know us”. Then we got there and within 30 seconds, the band could have been nicer to us, the crew couldn’t have have been nicer. The first show that we played, it was in Cincinnati, Ohio, and it was just incredible. So it just took the one show to be like, “Oh my God, everything’s going to be fine”. We managed to sneak in, I think it was about four headline shows as well, just to kind of test the waters in the U. S. That honestly was like a “pinch me” moment because I was like, we’re here in the U S like from playing little pubs in Ireland and then playing our own shows and people showing up. It was hard to get my head around it. It was just an amazing experience.
On touring with Mr. Big – After the first show that I just mentioned, I remember afterward, Billy (Sheehan) came up and said, “Oh, you know, that song that you did, the brand new one?” And he’s starting mentioning parts of the songs. He was like, “Interesting chord progression”. I was like, “Hang on, these guys are actually listening to us”. They weren’t just like, “Oh, the opening band”, or whatever, they were actually listening. I’d met Eric (Martin) before at a show in Ireland. He was the only person that I knew going into it. He was kind of comfortable to be like, “Oh my God, I love these new songs. And I love that old one”. Anytime they talk, we would listen because we’re like, “These guys know what they’re doing”. It was the same on Geoff’s tour. I feel like these people have been playing for many years. They know how to be ultimate professionals and just watch and learn from those guys.
On if he is constantly writing – Absolutely. It’s been nonstop the last couple of years, just constantly writing. Since I got home now I’ve just been writing nonstop. I’m loving it. Get the kids out to school in the morning and straight down to the studio with a coffee. I’m just going through it like when I’m on tour, I’m always coming up with new ideas, especially when you’re in the tour environment, because you’re like, “Oh my God, I can’t wait to do another record”. When you have that energy and that feeling, I just always do my voice memos on my iPhone. Then I come home and listen to all those ideas and then put them into songs and stuff. I’m trying to remember what I was feeling then and what the subject is about and I’m putting it together. I really love that part as well. It’s coming home from tour and being all excited to write new music.
On if there is a particular band or artist he models his career after – There’s not a particular band that we’ve got in and been like, “Let’s go for that kind of that sound”. We all have actually all have quite different tastes, but then there’s a few bands that we all really like. So, I think collectively like Queens of Stone Age and Foo Fighters, Highly Suspect, bands like that that are a modern rock, but then we all love like Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd. So we all have those, the classic and modern rock bands that we both love. I think that’s where we all kind of met when it came to the writing that we kind of fell into, like you said, the straight-up rock, because we’re not trying to reinvent the wheel. We’re not trying to do anything crazy. We’re not looking at these crazy vocal effects and all these things. We just want to play the song and I think trying to capture what we do live. A couple of the songs we’ve played live before recording, which is the opposite way around. Because I feel like when you play them live, you get to really know the song and get to find these new parts of it. But when you’re writing on the spot, you don’t have the chance to watch it grow. So it was a couple of songs that were written long before we went to Texas and those ones kind of grew over time. So it was nice to do that, have a mixture between brand new and stuff that was sitting there for a while.
On upcoming plans – It’s looking like pretty much the U. S. full-time right now is the (plan). It’s where we seem to be getting, everything seems to be clicking there, people are understanding the music better over there, I think we’re enjoying it so much over there. There’s not a big rock scene here in Ireland, so it’s not a place that you’d really concentrate fully on playing around Ireland because you play four shows and that’s the country that’s done for six months. But America’s huge and America has a great rock scene. I feel like over the years of touring out there is where we’ve kind of built their fan base. We just love it out there. So I think that our main focus is there for right now.
On the release of Devil’s Arms – The first week of July is when the record is fully out, but we’ll have, I think, four to five singles off the record before that date. So by the time the album comes out here, there’s only going to be a few new tracks out of it, but I like doing it that way. I like introducing the songs one by one. We’ve shot a bunch of music videos as well while we’re on tour. So it’s really cool to have something visual to go with it.
It’s weird because there’s things you have to think of now that you wouldn’t have think of before, like the algorithm on Spotify and Facebook. If you’re not regularly releasing and promoting, then you kind of disappear. Attention spans as well. I’m guilty for it. I’d love a band and listen to them, but then if they take a year out and then they come back, I just forget. I’m like, “Oh yeah, I remember really liking that band. Have they got anything new?” I guess it’s just attention spans and algorithms and all that. I think it’s smart just to keep releasing and that’s the plan. We’re planning on going back to the studio probably before this record drops and doing another one, because that’s, I think it’s a great way to do it.
