- Mark Heyes' big break occurred when he went to the song composing studios' team of Steve Tyrell, Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil. They paid Mark 50 bucks a week to bring them coffee and cigarettes. On his first day, Linda Ronstadt and James Ingram were downstairs in the studio singing "Somewhere Out There," a song that Cynthia had written for Steven Spielberg's "An American Tail," and that song went to No. ! in the country. During the eight years Mark was with Barry and Cynthia, they had three No. 1 songs that were written by them or their partner, Steve Tyrell. That is how Mark got his education in the film business. They were songwriters and they would get calls asking them to score films - and they said, "We don't know how to do it," and so they turned to Mark and said, "You guys figure out how to score," and he did - that's how Mark learned his composing craft from 1985 to 1992. Mark continued his "Time Out" - Bill Locey - Ventura Star newspaper interview, "Every one always want to be someone else? Everyone in Los Angeles is writing a screenplay! Well, this is 'El Lay' - so of course, every box boy, every bus-boy and every waiter has something they'd rather be doing - it's just part of life. Now this was a bucket list thing for me. I played in a band in high school and I played in coffee-houses in college and toured for two years - and then gave up. I never performed for 35 years. I never performed once, but it was in my soul and in my heart, so when I met Phil Salazar and realized that I could accomplish my dream of performing, as well as my career as a composer, I jumped at it. And I'm willing to do the work - be a roadie or whatever it takes to make it as a performer." Bill Locey asked, "OK, one more easy one: What's the best and worst thing about being self-employed?" Phil Salazar replied, "Well, you work all the time. We work day and night because if you don't work, you don't get paid!".
- Mark Hayes is a feature-film and television composer, an EMMY winner who at one point was writing the music for seven network prime-time television productions. When his workload is somewhat lighter, Heyes joined up with "Fiddlin' Phil" Salazar to make things better. Phil Salazar has improved countless local bands he fronted or ably assisted, including "Cow Bop," "Phil Salazar & the Kinfolk," "the Rincon Ramblers," "the Cache Valley Drifters," "Acadiana and the Jonathan Raffeto Band." Phil Salazar also played frequently with the late, great Jimmy Adams, and even survived a few gigs with "Raging Arb & the Redheads." The guy under the baseball cap is a world class fiddle player. The "Mark & Phil Show" - where bucket biz meets the fiddle biz - hosted a CD release party, on the World's Safest Beach, Saturday night, October 29th, 2016, at the Plaza Playhouse Theater in Carpinteria, a cool little beach town - just like your beach town used to be. The duo have been playing together for four years, and two years as an official duet. Their CD is their first album put out as a duet. Both musicians come from very different musical backgrounds but they both knew as children that they wanted to be in music for the rest of their lives. Neither knew each other! Mark's career was in film music. He was a film composer for 28 years, and Phil has been an unbelievable performer and a mainstay in every band in Ventura (California). Mark reported "the CD is a compilation of originals and great instrumentals that we love playing and a few covers that have a meaning to us. We don't like to play covers normally, but there's some that really touch us so on the CD. Some of the covers that have meaning is Rodney Crowell's "Long Hard Road," a song about an Appalachian family struggling in the Dust Bowl days." Phil added, "We sing a little blue-grass duet - it's kind of a traditional blue-grass tune. That one's a cover and it's called 'Back Tracking.' Also, I have a friend from New York that's kind of a Broadway composer and he wrote this beautiful Irish tune for the prime minister of Ireland, and so that's on the CD. It's called 'Celtic Air.' Oh, and we do a tune we heard on 'The Andy Griffith Show,' by the Dillards, a blue-grass band, a song they played as the show's Darling Family." Phil Salazar's fiddle hero is a guy named Vassar Clements. The first fiddle tune he really ever heard was "Lonesome Fiddle Blues," and "after playing it for 25 years, I had never recorded it, so we put that on there, too," Phil said. There is no Stradivarius equivalent for a fiddle - just the player. Mark was asked by Bill Locey of the Ventura Star newspaper - "so how did you guys meet? Who's to blame for all this musical mirth?". Mark answered, "Five years ago, my community asked me to play a St. Patrick's Day event and I told them that I was a film composer and not a performer. They didn't care that I had never performed before - they wanted me to do it anyway. So I told a friend, 'I've got a gig but I don't know anybody. I've never done this before - who do you know that can help me out? And they said they knew a great fiddle player named Phil Salazar. He did the job with me and we didn't talk until the next St. Patrick's Day. And we did it again and at that point, we started enjoying playing together and we started picking up some jobs - a few parties, a few wine bars and all of a sudden we realized that we really had magic when we played. We play off each other in ways that we've never seen before and we said, 'Why don't we focus on making this a real act?' Both of us had time to work rehearsals into our schedules, which is unusual, but we manage to rehearse three or four times a week to get our vocals right as a vocal duet and to get our instruments tight as instrumentalists. It's just been gangbusters ever since." Bill Locey reported: "the middle step to that was three years to the month - the Canyon Club said they wanted the duo to open for some of their acts. Phil and Mark opened for the 'Marshall Tucker Band.' " Mark continued reporting, "the next day, the club called and asked if we could open for 'Dave Mason.' Then after the 'Dave Mason' show they called again and asked if we could open for 'Dickie Betts.' Then it was 'Dan Hicks,' but then at that point, the Canyon Club decided that local acts would only get half an hour instead of 40 minutes, so we stopped playing there, and just worked on our craft, toured when we could, and continued to write songs together".
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