Leaving His Mark

“J Mascis’ engineer and the guy I record with in America, Pete Weiss, are friends with each other,” says Mark O’Connor of his against-the-odds hook-up with Dinosaur Jr’s alt.rock legend. “They made that happen when I recorded for three days in Vermont last July – we went to J’s house and did it on the last day. I’ve been listening to him since ’93, and that moment when you hear him play the first three notes over my stuff was one of those life-flashing-before-your-eyes moments. It’s like Beethoven jamming with Bach, if any such comparisons can be made! It’s a dream come true, sort of Bambi’s-mother-back-from-the-dead kind of shit.”

Of course, Mascis shares with his contemporaries, such as Pavement, a somewhat eccentric streak that has manifested itself in various ways. He has in the past spoken of his love of golf and was at one point Evan Dando’s ski partner. As Mark notes, there is a slightly odd background to their collaboration.
“I read an interview with him recently and there’s this spiritual healer woman that he’s into, Amma,” he says. “He recorded some music for her, for a dedication album. She’s an Indian lady who goes around hugging everyone; she’s hugged, like, 29 million people. It was a shocker to hear that he’s into her, but he’s genuinely an admirer. I can’t remember his exact words, but J said something like, ‘When you do stuff for free, then you get something back.’ It was a ‘in-giving-we-received’ type of thing. I think it was done in that spirit and he made me very happy!
“J being on the album is beautiful artistically but it’s helping open a few doors as well, and I’ll be forever grateful to him for that.”
Espero is in fact Mark’s third album. He says that he first hooked up with the aforementioned engineer, Pete Weiss, at a conference organised by the California-based Tape Op magazine, to which producers of all kinds are invited, from lo-fi DIY practitioners right up to superstar groove technicians.
“The Arts Council got me over to it,” recalls Mark. “I went to two of those conferences, in ’02 and ’06, and had developed a friendship with Pete. I was going to my brother’s wedding last year on that side of the pond anyway, so I was like, fuck it, I’ll do a few days. If I may namedrop, it was something like Van Morrison doing his three days in New York when he did Astral Weeks, or The Band up in the hills. I had a romantic notion about doing it that way. Also, I met Beck’s drummer, Joey Waronker, at one of the conferences as well, and he explained that on Sea Change, Beck didn’t have all of his songs finished, but he’d bring it to the band and they’d arrange it around him.
“I’ve heard of people doing it that way before, and that’s kind of how I did it in America. I got Jeff Berlin, a drummer I’d never met in my life, and a bass player called Roger Vaughan Jr, who I’d jammed with in 1994 on my J1 visa. I was in Rhode Island and we used to flip burgers and swordfish at a restaurant I worked at. So I called him up 16 years later and said, ‘Hey Roger, haven’t seen you in a while – what are you doing tomorrow? Can you come three-and-a-half hours up the road?’ He said, ‘I’ll have to check with the wife and kids’, and thankfully they said yes.”
Espero’s unlikely supporting cast is completed by none other than Limerick’s premier comedy outfit, Rubberbandits.
“It’s kind of a weird pairing, to have J Mascis and Rubberbandits on the album,” says Mark, with considerable understatement. “But in terms of being a Limerick person, it was unbelievable what happened last Christmas with ‘Horse Outside’. It was another way of saying, ‘Limerick city is cool.’ Despite all the efforts of City Hall or whoever over the years, Rubberbandits made Limerick cool overnight. It was hilarious and they’re just fucking...‘genius’ isn’t a word I use too lightly, but there’s a bit of that going on there.
“I was in a support act when they were touring around that time. My friend Gary Carroll has this piss-take, Daniel O’Donnell hip hop thing, and we were his bitches! So we dressed up as old grannies and Gary would go out front and sing about, “Bitches and hoes from Donegal/Come over here and suck me balls”. That kind of shit. Anyway, I got to tour with the Bandits around then, and got to see a very happy Irish public filling out venues twice in the one day. Just amazing stuff.
“However, their contribution happened before all that – I was down with them before they were cool! I just needed a call-and-answer thing on one of the songs, and they were very cool about it.”

Espero is out now on Mockery Records. For more info, see facebook.com/markoconnormusic.