The Shackeltons at Bruar Falls, Brooklyn, 10.16.09

“I’m in awe of you people who live in this city, paying 700 dollar a month rents.  I live in fear and I pay only 300 a month,” singer Mark Redding mentions during our chat before the Shackeltons’ set.  ‘Mark, make that 700 times three,’ is my retort.  Ah, if it weren’t so.  Living the band life in rural Pennsylvania may be quite a different thing than our struggle to support the higher rent artistic life in NYC, but then again, we all have our crosses to bear.

The Shackeltons are an honest band.  On stage, they are cathartic and visceral in a theatrical sense, but not in a faux or showy, character-driven kind of way.  Watching, and better yet, feeling, their pure emotion pour out on the stage is the most real kind of theater.  You get a sense that Redding and the band don’t perform in order to seek attention, but it’s just something they need to do.  It’s a release for both audience and performers, after all.

Redding seems to have a nature that’s built on a kind of awareness and nurturing for those around him.  He invites questions instead of passing opinions, often with mysterious leanings, both in real life and in the lyrics of the Shackeltons’ songs ["Your movement is my treasure chest."]  And as Redding has said in a past interview: “I will have to say that life in general takes courage, faith, hope, love, persistence, songs, and a good dose of humor- that is what we have in common with Ernest [Shackelton]. We don’t want to give up, and we know that this journey is definitely not all peaches and creme. But we will survive and we will have a story for our loved ones.”

The reason that their shows are still sometimes intimate, attendance-wise, is because some people don’t know what to make of their act.  Perhaps all that inner self being exorcized, and all those gut-felt revelations, may cause a timid embarrassment in the minds of new spectators.

“This song goes out to all the mothers,” Redding insists at one point in the set.  “If it weren’t for them, we wouldn’t be here.”  (Yes, we’ve heard this before, but when it’s said with as much of an intent as Redding’s, it’s as if music had not yet been invented).  We danced wildly.  We danced, because we had to.–Cleo and Zabatay/photos by Kelly Starbuck

Decorating The Stage For Mom

by Bob Boilen, with The Shackeltons' Mark Redding

I recently saw The Shackeltons at the South by Southwest music festival and conference in Austin, Texas. I probably saw a hundred bands that week, but none were as impassioned as this one.

I was particularly taken with the heartfelt emotions of singer Mark Redding, who performed on a stage decorated with fresh-cut flowers -- flowers that Redding would toss into the audience in bursts of ecstasy and rapture. It both delighted me and puzzled me.

Mark Redding decorates a Shackeltons stage in New York City. (Credit: Alexandra Marvar)

In honor of Mother's Day, Redding tells us why he decorates every Shackeltons show with flowers.

For the past five years, I've been delivering flowers for a local flower shop -- All Occasions Florist, on Main Street in Chambersburg -- in exchange for flowers for The Shackeltons' shows.

When I was 12 years old, I used to go to the local Chambersburg radio station (Mix 95.1) and help the DJ pick songs to play on the Sunday-morning Gospel Rock show. This DJ's wife had a flower shop, and when I grew up and started this band, DJ Scott asked me to help with deliveries on busy holidays.

I said I would deliver flowers for the payment of flowers. Thus, fresh flowers at all our shows.

Mark Redding and his mom. (Credit:Alison Hood)

Having flowers at our shows is important to me. My mom has always had her original artwork hanging in our home. I now have it in my apartment. Her aesthetics have been ingrained in my heart. My mom was diagnosed with a mental illness years ago, and we found out that she cannot paint while she is on her medication. So her art is very rare. And in her honor (and that of my father and stepfather), I decorate the stage.

This Mother's Day is very special for me. For the past five years, my mom (a widow twice) has been fighting ovarian cancer. Each year, she wins the battle with the help of a great doctor, chemo treatments, her great sense of humor, daily lunches she prepares for her two sons and two grandsons during their work break, and the dinner she makes me each night. (I live a block away from her.) Mom has eight kids and 21 grandchildren.

Mom is quite the wonder woman. She also hosts a local homeless man for breakfast each morning. His name is Jim, and he's always dreamed of being a filmmaker. Mom's other friend is an elderly lady, Rose, who brings Mom fresh produce and bread from the local Salvation Army. Rose is a friendly pack rat, as well as a former hunter, trapper and all-around mountain lady.

The past few years have been my time to make music and be a friend to my mother. As the baby of eight children, I am the only one yet unmarried, and I want to make sure my mom doesn't feel lonely. I travel often with my band, and she is proud of me, but she can't wait till I return. Like I said, I live a block away in Chambersburg. There's a bridge over a waterfall, an old log cabin and a busy downtown street.

In our song "Emergency," I speak of missing my family. I speak of blue eyes. I miss my dad and stepdad. And, as I see my mom in sometimes frail and joyous moments, I feel the urgency of life. It's my desire to bring all of that sweat, swagger, tears and hopes into our shows. One of our new songs is called "The End." That song was written after taking a morning walk with Mom -- and, after hugging her, hearing her say, "This could be my last day."

So if you see tree branches and flowers at our live shows, now you know: My mom is an artist, and I carry that with me to every town and to every club. I couldn't feel at home on a stage without such reminders. And for Mother's Day, I'm happy to have her alive, along with her paintings of birds, birdhouses, lakes, boats and, of course, flowers.

Bob Boilen