Album Notes

This is a moody and wintery album. Passionate and atmospheric. It's difficult to put it in a specific category. Many of the songs were commissions for dance and theater companies in San Francisco.

It features such instruments as accordion, bass accordion, trumpet, alto horn, baritone horn, trombone, upright bass, banjo, slide guitar, bowed cymbals, Hammond organ, Sona, Thavil, baritone and soprano saxophones, prepared guitar, field organ, scissors, and voice.

The album features some of the Bay Area's finest musicians including:
Myles Boisen (Tom Waits, Clubfoot Orchestra, Splatter Trio)
Nils Frykdahl (Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, Faun Fables, Idiot Flesh)
Freddi Price (Rube Waddell, Extra Action Marching Band)
Jim Santi Owen (Pharoah Sanders, Tabla Rasa)
Chris Grady (Tom Waits, Grassy Knoll, Clubfoot Orchestra).

Here are some press quotes that describe me and my music well:

"Fiery, earthy and sublimely sensual." - Comet Magazine

"An unusual and voracious talent." - Willamette Week

"Theatrical, dark and sexy." - West Coast Performer

"Mark Growden has to be one of California's most colorful and intriguing musicians...Growden is a genius..." - Albuquerque Alibi

"Part singer-songwriter, part bluesman, part avant-gardist, he's an avatar of bohemian weirdness on a par with Tom Waits or Joe Henry..." - Fort Worth Weekly

"Torrid lyricism and fierce accordion rascality. His live shows...are becoming the stuff of legend." - East Bay Express

"Growden's Music is a caliope of tangos, marches, pedal steel blues, and eloquent acoustic ballads. In his hands, parade scores unravel to become inebreated waltzes. Ballads are stretched thin and poked with forks. Melodies dance like wicked children... His songs are a carefully crafted patina of cultural influences, arranged and orchestrated with an uncanny ear for what, where, and more importantly how they sound best." - S.F. Bay Guardian

"A gifted composer of twisted tangos and distorted marches, Growden is indeed a beautiful freak." CMJ Weekly
Here are some press reviews for Inside Beneath Behind: