Bio

THE LONG VERSION

Far more entertaining than any single human being with an acoustic guitar is allowed to be under current law, Mark Allen Berube is a performer who refuses to be anyone’s background music. His punchy, brainy, well-crafted songs and his sometimes rapid-fire delivery allow audiences little time to indulge in the laughter he frequently provokes without feeling like they’ve missed something. This, apparently, is okay with Mark, reluctant as he is to be labeled a comic songwriter. Not that he disdains laughter. Far from it. He’d just rather write a good song than a funny one. But hey, if it makes you laugh, that’s cool too.

Mark’s tasty tunes have graced such New York rooms as Postcrypt Coffeehouse, Christopher Street Coffeehouse, and the late-and-legendary Fast Folk Cafe, and such regional haunts as the Peekskill Coffeehouse (Peekskill, NY) and the Hard Luck Cafe (Huntington, NY). He’s also graced the stages of some of the northeast’s best listening rooms, including First Acoustics (Brooklyn, NY) and Concerts at the Crossing (Titusville, NJ).

He has been featured at the Northampton (MA) Music Festival, The Huntington (NY) Folk Festival, the XFS’ XFest, and was chosen as a finalist at the 2001 Minnesota Folk Festival New Folk Contest. More recently, Mark was selected for the 2015 Falcon Ridge / Grassy Hill Emerging Artist Showcase.

Mark was the featured artist in the September 2005 issue of Acoustic Live in NYC and his song “The Way You Smell” was used on “The Rachel Maddow Show”. (It was a piece about skunks. Don’t ask.) Mark has released three solo CDs, the live Shut Up So I Can Play, the studio-produced Suspicious Fish, and his latest CD, Sticky, released in November 2014.

Mark has shared stages with such folk luminaries as Carolann Solebello, Sharon Goldman, Karyn Oliver, Meg Braun, Carla Ulbrich, Honor Finnegan, and Scott Wolfson (with whom he co-founded New York City’s favorite freak-pop band, The Right Bastards). Most have forgiven him.

If you’d like to contact Mark to book him in your venue, to interview him for your publication, or just to say “I love you”, you can e-mail him at mark@markallenberube.com. Please be gentle.

THE SHORT VERSION

Far more entertaining than any single human being with an acoustic guitar is allowed to be under current law, Mark Allen Berube is a performer who refuses to be anyone’s background music. His punchy, brainy, well-crafted songs and rapid delivery allow audiences little time to indulge in the laughter he frequently provokes without feeling like they’ve missed something. Although he’d much rather write a good song than a funny one, if it makes you laugh, that’s cool too.