Bloomington music icon Mark Bingham has just completed a 12 -day residency at The Orbit Room, a small hole-in-the-wall bar and music venue.
Bingham has been in the industry for decades, composing music and producing albums as well as writing songs and playing guitar. He released “I Passed for Human” in 1989 and “Psalms of Vengeance” in 2009. He has been a member of Bloomington protest band The Screaming Gypsy Bandits and a band he formed in New York called The Social Climbers.
Bingham was born in Bloomington and went to school at IU. He recently moved back to Bloomington last November after time in New York and New Orleans. He’s spent over 60 years writing, producing, arranging and recording. His record company, Piety Street Recording, which he opened in 2001 and was based in Louisiana, produced projects for artists John Fogerty, Elvis Costello and Allen Toussaint, Green Day, Marianne Faithfull, Steve Earle, Dave Matthews Band and Peter Stampfel.
Bingham said for his residency he wanted to perform music from throughout his career, including covering artists he admires and pulling lost gems from across music history, some of which have never even been recorded. Sometimes he is joined by a band, other times it’s just him and a guitar, singing and sharing stories about the music and his life.
On March 10, Bingham covered love songs ranging from “the devotional to the deranged” to a small crowd of older people at The Orbit Room. Many audience members came up to Bingham after the show to express their gratitude. There’s an intimate nature to the residency shows; one woman even said she started coming every night of the residency and felt as if she was in a completely different time and place.
Bingham lives in an apartment above The Orbit Room where he can hear the music from below. There, he had the thought that he could play a relaxed set downstairs from his catalogue of solo guitar records while people sat in the bar.
“I thought, wow, it would be really cool just to be able to go downstairs and play happy hour stuff and just play by myself,” Bingham said.
The owners of The Orbit Room agreed, and Bingham said after he got the go-ahead, he felt he had to put together something he could be proud of. He had the idea of doing something casual at first, but the idea grew into a wide-ranging residency with 12 shows and an eclectic lineup of accompanying bands and different themes for each night.
“You never want to fake it. I started thinking and it was like, ‘Oh, let's make every show different,’” Bingham said. “So, off the top of my head I made up a bunch of titles and I sent them to [the Orbit Room manager.] So much of this was improvised.”
He had previously played with many of the bands joining him years ago, such as TJ Jones, who joined him for his “Blues & the Abstract Truth with TJ Jones” show on March 11. Bingham played with Jones 50 years ago, back when they opened for Sly and The Family Stone. Bingham has also worked in preserving and recording music from Hoagy Carmichael and performed with Kyle Cross.
The storytelling element of his show was partially inspired by folk legends Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell, who was his neighbor when he lived in New York.
“Hardest thing in the world is to go up on stage by yourself, so you have to connect with them. I saw Joni Mitchell about eight times,” he said. “I know every time until she got her big break, and she was by herself. She told almost identical stories before every show.”
Bingham went to New York after winning a high school “band battle” competition and the judges took him to a record label. When he was in his late teens, he moved to a downtown loft and started writing songs and composing music.
“They heard me playing and they liked a song that I did, and they gave the song to The Everly Brothers,” he said. “So, I was 19 and got signed up to start making records.”
He was even hired to write music for the independent film “Candy Mountain,” starring Tom Waits and Joe Strummer. Bloomington pop-up cinema Cicada Cinema screened the film March 8, where Bingham spoke about the movie.
After 60 years in the industry and seeing fellow musicians and artists come and go, Bingham says that people can do is continue to make good work. He advises others to never take a job just for money because it never works out, and they’ll always regret it.
“It's like everybody's doing their work and then it just disappears, and you don't get famous,” he said. “When you're dead, you're dead. Life is short. Art is long. Maybe.”
Bingham doesn’t know quite yet what’s next for him. He’s going to New York to record with a jazz musician. He’s also working on finishing a mix of a 15-year-old Marianne Faithfull record.
“I just wanted to do this for posterity, for all the musicians who are still alive, because we never got a chance to finish the record properly,” Bingham said.
He offered some closing advice for musicians and people looking to keep moving forward.
“Show up for life every day and don’t be scared,” Bingham said. “I've had weird anxiety in my life, but I still show up. Show up and do it and don't worry.”
CLARIFICATION: This article was updated to clarify that Mark Bingham preserved and recorded music from Hoagy Carmichael
