Janine Schaults

Like the omnipresent confessionals in reality-TV shows, Mark Geary's online tour diary is a fascinating peek into a road warrior's thought process. In a stream-of-consciousness blur of early morning hard-ons, death-defying highway driving and coping with audiences of varying interest, Geary details his travails through what he refers to as his "circus life."

Chicago first caught a glimpse of Geary's impish wit and contrastingly introspective songs opening for fellow Irishmen The Frames last March at the Metro. Despite transplanting from Dublin to New York in the early nineties, cutting his teeth at his brother's club, Sin-e, alongside Jeff Buckley and touring various locales in Europe and Australia, Geary finally breaks into the Midwest on his own with a set at Uncommon Ground. It's been a long time in the making. Geary coyly jokes that this is the "convincer tour."

"My whole career has been a little kind of a sleeper and things are starting to wake up," Geary says. "I was really reluctant to go somewhere and feel disappointed. I wanted there to be a bit of a buzz going on and I would show up and prove the buzz right."

The buzz swirling around his second release, "Ghosts" (Signature Sounds), is strong. The eleven-track disc is a low-fi affair awash with plaintive vocals and abstract storytelling. Geary credits Karl and Dave Odlum for their easy-handed producing and for egging him on to accentuate the songs with simple honesty rather than hiding them behind a "glockenspiel" or a "tabernacle boys choir."

"For me as a writer or a performer I get to day one of the studio still a little unsure about it all," Geary says. "I like that I doubt and I question. It took me a long time to be okay with it."

Before show time Geary scribbles a note on his hand--usually "let go." It's a motto and a reminder. "This is what I got and I'm cool with whether you dig it or you don't. I'm cool with it 'cause tomorrow night I'm fucking going to be somewhere else too. That's a great place to be."

Mark Geary performs June 14 at Uncommon Ground, 3800 North Clark.

(2005-06-09)

Also by Janine Schaults

Soundcheck
Wesley Stace is sitting in his Brooklyn home waiting for the FedEx man to pick up the final manuscript of his first novel so it can be delivered to his copy editor in Boston
(2005-01-25)

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