Mark Pender, the trumpet player from the Max Weinberg 7 on \Late Night with Conan O'Brien,"" will come to Madison this weekend to perform with the UW Marching Band.
This Kansas City native is known not only for his Conan job, but also for jamming with legends such as Bruce Springsteen, Southside Johnny, David Bowie and They Might Be Giants, as well as fronting for The Mark Pender Band.
Pender sat down with The Daily Cardinal recently to talk about his exodus from Kansas City, Conan and the upcoming UW Marching band show.
The Daily Cardinal: How did you become involved with this weekend's show?
Mark Pender: Well, [UW Marching Band Field Assistant] Brian Hettiger contacted me through the website a few years ago. I was all scheduled to come out, and at Conan, for the first time ever, they changed our week off and the week off that I was supposed to have to come do the thing didn't exist anymore. I figured I'd never hear from him again, because I blew them off with about three months notice, and then they contacted me again this year.
DC: What is a standard day like on the Conan set?
MP: Well I usually get in around one, pull music and stuff-get instruments together that I need to play. Do what we need to do. We usually start our rehearsal around 2 o'clock and sometimes, if there's some comedy, maybe we'll rehearse that, or if there's just music, we'll rehearse that.
Depending on what we need to do for the day, it will either be long or short. We'll just go through the new music we have to walk on people or if there's a big sketch that we all have to play a bunch of stuff in, we'll be there all day doing that, up until show time. Then the show's pretty much in real time, so we don't fix much. Very rarely do we stay behind to fix anything, and it's pretty much over by seven or so.
DC: When you're involved with the comedy bits, how involved are you?
MP: I'm not one of the writers, so usually it's them that's coming up with the foolish banter. But, occasionally when I do the songs, they let me go off and start screaming out whatever I want to scream out, until of course Conan berates me, and makes me shut up and I do the walk of shame back to where the band plays.
DC: So ripping off your jacket and throwing it...
MP: Oh yeah, that's all me. In fact, going over the railing was my idea. I mentioned it, and they said ""Oh yeah, go over the railing,"" and so after that the sketch became ""Go over the railing, definitely.""
DC: How did you become involved with Conan?
MP: Well, we actually auditioned as a band. Max Weinberg had heard that they were looking for a band, and I believe he ran into Conan on the street. I had been in a small group with Max, we were playing around New York, it was called Killer Joe. We made a CD and Max submitted the CD. [The producers] said, ""Why don't you guys come and do one of the auditions?"" I think we were one of 15 bands that auditioned. We rehearsed for two days. I was out on the road with this blues guitar player Robert Cray, and I just happened to have those three days off, so I flew back from California with the rehearsal. Next day we did the audition and then I flew back to Seattle, Washington to finish the tour.
While I was in Seattle, Max called me up and said, ""We got the gig man.""
At that point I was like ""What? No, that's unbelievable!"" Can you imagine the news? I'd always toured and stuff like that and now I was going to have a stable home. I'd lived in New York for a long time, but I'd not really stayed in New York for the entire time. Something like this was really cool.
DC: You were born in Kansas City. How did you make the jump to New York?
MP: I joined this jazz organist-his name was Charles Earland, he died a couple years ago-I joined his band, he had just signed to Columbia Records. He said, ""I want you and your buddy on saxophone to join my band and come record with me at Columbia Records in New York."" So I go ""Yeah! Great!""
We get to New York, and the record isn't anywhere near happening yet, so my buddy, the saxophonist, goes home. I stay, finally we get around to doing the record, we record a few songs and the head of Columbia Records says, ""We're not going to use this stuff, we're going to use real musicians. Nobody knows these guys.""
That was my first real taste of New York. I'm thinking it's going to be all great there, and it was so far from being great. I didn't end up on the record-I ended up just trying to work my way into stuff, slowly but surely.
DC: Which bands did you work you way into?
MP: My first big break was with Diana Ross' band, then one of the guys who was in the horns section from Southside Johnny's band was having problems-alcoholism on a level not even I can arrive at-so they asked me to fill in, and after that I was with them for everything.
With these types of creative careers, you have to really love it, because even after the successes, things would drop off for like a year or even two maybe. Then things would come back and I'd do a couple of good gigs.
DC: In those between times, what would you be doing?
MP: A couple of times I went out to temporary-employment agencies and they'd send me to do assembly lines, and lots of fun work like that. I was in the filing department at Mercedes-Benz for a month once, and I had to take some time off, and they all thought I was lying.
They said, ""What are you doing, why do you have to take some time off?""
""Well, I'm going to go record a record for David Bowie next week."" And they were all so sure I was lying, but I did! I recorded a record with David Bowie, and of course I lost the temporary job, they fired me (laughs). So then I do this one huge record, took me months to get paid, because that's how the system works. I get back home, I'm not working, I'm broke as hell, and I'm on this platinum selling record [laughs].
DC: How does being the frontliner of the Mark Pender Band compare to playing on the Tunnel of Love tour with Bruce Springsteen?
MP: Well, it's all performance, and it's all about being an entertainer, and it's all about playing good. So in that way, it's all similar. I actually think I've learned a lot from watching Bruce, because he's such a dynamic performer. He's one of the few people that I've worked for, that when they do a live show, they really give off a lot of good energy in their performance, and that's the kind of thing that I wanted to head for. It took me a while to get it too. I'm a shy kid from the Midwest.
-Interview conducted by
Kevin Nelson
