Mark Mulligan 2013
 


San Felipe, Baja, Mexico

Mark MulliganMark Mulligan looks like a chartered accountant on vacation, with his WASPish white-bread, clock-punching, 5-miles-under-the-speed-limit, clean-cut oval face. His Bermuda shorts, sandals and a tropical floral shirt help clinch the impression. But don't let that Easter holiday look fool you. Mark is really a profit, a Baby Boomer alternate lifestyle spokesman. And his songbook, with its live-in-the-moment lyrical message, is his gospel.

According to Mark, his innate skill for avoiding fame was his ticket to a lifelong working vacation, a career that keeps him exceedingly busy with engagements all over North America. He maintains that if the public eye had focused on him, he would probably be in a rehab center now, or throwing distructive tantrums in expensive hotel rooms. Instead, he is quite happy to be playing his guitar in Mexican beach towns, far from traffic jams and stock market pressures.

But behind the hang-loose facade, there's a punishing engagement schedule.

"He works so hard," said Caesar Quirate, the owner of Parrot's Cracker, where Mulligan appeared. "He's booked solid. We could only get him for tonight (Sunday)." Caesar looked around the crowded cabana beside the bar. "Next time we will have a smaller group, I think," he mused. "Or maybe have it outside, if the weather is good."

Mark's schedule is indeed full. His 2014 engagements take him to more than 17 cities, not to mention his gig on a cruise ship that travels from Galveston to Cozumel, a Caribbean island off the coast of Yucatan.

The quiver of Mulligan's musical repetoire is large. He stocks it with such classic arrows as Don McLean, The Eagles, John Denver and Jim Croce. But Mark has an astonishing portfolio of his own music and lyrics as well. He begins his concert by offering the door to anyone expecting to hear good Blues. He claims to be a Margaritaville kinda singer, pure and simple. But a close ear tuned to his lyrics, his poetry really, shows his slight-of-hand and the sisal hood he grinningly pulls over the audience's eyes. Many of his songs are Blues-themed, -the loss of love, the broken heart, the wild flight toward liquor and music to woo forgetfulness. Consider these lyrics from a song titled Pacifico Blue:

I thought the beaches and the ocean view were all I needed to get over you,
The sun is shining like tequila gold but I'm Pacifico blu
e.

Or these words from a song he calls Goodbye:

You picked me up when I was feeling down
I've gotten kind of used to you hanging around
Now the taxicab is on its way
There's hardly time to hold you
And barely time to say
Goodbye to you and a side of me that I never knew

And from Somewhere South of Somewhere...

It’s never been a mystery what keeps me coming back
It’s the beaches and boats, the pirates and poets that got me hangin’ round down here
Somewhere south of somewhere
Somewhere south of somewhere

Or this sentiment from He Remembers:

Oh girl, I need you
I live you, and I breathe you
And once upon a time you felt the same
Was it me, was it you
Was it something I didn't do
You're right beside me but your heart's so far away

Mark Mulligan's songs, when he sometimes forgets what the audience wants to hear, are thoughful and pensive. They are testaments to a personal history that seems to have aimed at fame and fortune in a genre he now pretends to ignore. He may claim to be a Margaritaville kinda guy, but his words speak louder than actions.

HeaterThis Sunday evening the Parrot's Cracker, a restaurant/bar seven miles north of San Felipe, was the small end of a funnel that focused a large number of revelers into its modest-sized dining area. Two free-standing propane heaters held their open flames below the crowns of their pointed metal Chinese hats, a few feet beneath a dry thatched roof. Add to that formula a single exit door located at right angles to the dining room and a dense collection of highly combustable exhalations surrounding the liquor-ladened tables and, well, you've got the makings of a Gilligan's Island version of the 1980 MGM Hotel incident, especially when rubbery-legged patrons take to the small dance floor in front of the stage while others, shouldered away from this proximity, gimbel unsteadily near the torches.

The Parrot's Cracker dining room has lots of charcter, reminiscent of Mulege's old Almeja Restaurant. It economizes its space well but when the floor show is popular, there is definitely a crush of carnaval enthusiasm that can quickly consume any elbow room you have. In such a crowd, it helps if the waiters have had ballet and gymnastic training, and Caesar's waiters certainly seem to be well schooled.

For his fans in northern Baja, Mark Mulligan intends to be hangin' loose again in San Felipe this coming May.