With Jay Sherman-Godfrey joining Mark on guitar
Mark Donato fashioned his musical identity in Downtown NYC and Upstate New York as a writer of eccentric and poetic rock songs and earthy, experimental pop. Donato writes songs that are effortlessly profound and tuneful, layered with subtle irony, humanistic pathos, and a kind of psychological perfect pitch.
The Pittsburgh native has worked as a drummer and singer with John Linnell (of They Might Be Giants), Amy Allison, Flat Old World, Rosine, and the Oswalds (songwriting vehicle of author Camden Joy), while piling up songs for his own releases.
Donato’s sixth and latest record, the opulent At the literal crack of dawn (SubFamily Records), finds the songwriter firmly planted in the Catskill countryside and considering fresh starts and new beginnings, and how to make it always so.
He is nearly finished with a new full-length record, and has been cooking up dozens of other new songs in his West Shokan garage, which he's ready to unleash and unload on anyone who will kindly listen.
Learn more: http://www.markdonato.com
A few words about Mark Donato:
" …A History of the Boys and Girls draws its title from an unfinished work by the late poet and author Delmore Schwartz, who in his lifetime influenced everyone from Saul Bellow to Robert Lowell to Lou Reed. It's worth noting the disparate group of names in an effort to draw a parallel between the disparate sounds on this utterly wonderful collection of songs…"
- Roll Magazine.
"An unflinching yet sympathetic look at love, work, and memory, this wry singer-songwriter's appealing latest batch of songs, The Old Joy, is like an arm around your shoulder during hard times...delightfully droll country rock."
- The Village Voice
"…Donato's songs remind me of the way that Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. would adopt a childlike language and sensibility in order to highlight things that we take for granted, to isolate the unrecognized assumptions that gird our perceptions. This technique is used to great effect throughout Donato's relationship-as-creation-myth concept album, A History of the Boys and Girls…What is so appealing about Mark Donato's lyrics-firstness is how distinct and natural his voice is, quite apart from his physical voice. It is a literary entity. But if nature vouchsafes one gift to songwriters, it is in the other dimensions where they most show their resourcefulness. Donato's troubled vision of adulthood goes down smooth in the rollicking, tuneful ease of his sound."
- The Woodstock Times