Bio

From a young age it was clear Marc’s future was in music - having his first guitar at the age of 4! When he was 8 his parents bought him a keyboard to have some music lessons at school and he hasn’t looked back since. By the age of 9 Marc could not only read and write music, but had an understanding of why it worked. A piano at home soon followed… “An old Cliche, being from Liverpool but The Beatles played a massive part in my early development in music.” Marc explains, “Everyone in the music group at school would be learning ‘Greensleeves’ or ‘William Tell’ but my Mum and Dad had been out and bought me the Beatles music book, meaning I was playing ‘Hey Jude’ and ‘Let it be’. I would be playing some of The Beatles songs without ever previously hearing them so when I got my first Beatles album ‘Revolver’ I was hooked!”

When it came to career choices, Marc picked Art over Music… “Something I never understood and still don’t is how you can be made to pick between Art, Drama and Music. They are all creative subjects, and all joined in some way. You only have to look at what’s going on with someone like Lady GaGa to see what I mean. I picked Art and almost immediately regretted not taking music but it was too late - I had to wait until college to change what I was doing. My fix for music at that time was going to the park after school with some mates, a couple of guitars and singing The Beatles and Oasis. My Dad even built a shed at the back of our garden were we used to go and rehearse almost every night - we never even had a gig!”

It was at college when Marc would play his first gig with a band. This was at the Cavern Club in Liverpool, a little eerie that it is the venue so closely associated with The Beatles rise to fame who he had grown up idolising, that it would also be the place he started his career. Marc had already been playing at open mic nights in local bars singing his own material, but the Cavern gig was a step up to the main stage.

Upon leaving college, Marc continued to attend open mic and jam nights whenever they were on. It was at one of these nights when Marc would have his first break, a manager called Martin O’Shea was in the audience who at the time was managing UK girlband, Atomic Kitten. Marc had recently won a national songwriting competition where Chris Martin (Coldplay), Steve Levine (recorder producer) and Harvey Goldsmith (promoter) were the judges. Martin O’Shea got wind of this and decided to check Marc out as he had another project on the go that had a vacancy for a lead singer, “I was shocked to find out what the other project was” Marc says, “it was a band called the Real People who had co-written some Oasis tracks with Noel Gallagher and produced the early Oasis mixes, which got them the deal with Creation Records. The lads were a little older than me but really took me under their wing, I learnt more with them in a year than I had in my career up to that point.” Again, a little eerie that Marc found himself in a band with two people (Antony and Chris Griffiths) who’s songs he had been singing in the park as a schoolboy.

Things drawn to a close with The Real People and Marc found himself as a solo artist again. Undeterred, Marc submitted a demo to a radio station, Juice Fm who had just started a competition looking for the ‘Next Big Thing’. When Marc got the phone call to say he was in the final, he immediatley knew he wanted to do it with a band rather than on his own so he set about putting one together with just one week to go before the gig. Marc’s new band (still without a name) blew the audience and crowd away and Marc walked away with the title as ‘The Next Big Thing’, hopefully a sign of things that were to follow.

For the next few years Marc would be writing, rehearsing, gigging and developing his talent as both a solo acoustic artist and frontman of a band. Although there have been several line up changes over the years as there often are in bands, one thing that hasn’t changed is the explosive live performances Marc delivers in either capacity and the growing fan base.

Towards the end of 2008, Marc was approached by some producers and radio dj’s and asked to work on a new project ‘Northern Allstars’. “They were dance dj’s and they wanted to work on a dance project with me. At first I had a few apprehensions, especially as I had always stuck to my acoustic singer/songwriter roots so this was a major step out of my comfort zone. But I thought, why not? It was something fresh and completely different to anything I’d done previously and I couldn’t wait to get stuck in.” The first track that they wrote and produced was ‘Rock The Dancefloor’. This went on to become an cult underground club track across the North-West of England and was signed to All Around The World Records in January 2009. Things started moving rapidly and the music videos followed shortly after. Northern Allstars are now signed to ‘AATW’ and are currenly working on an album.

At the moment, Marc has several projects on the go and sees himself more as a collaborator than an artist, “Labels always want to pigeon hole you to make their job easier for marketing but I don’t see myself fitting in one but several. I suppose I look at someone like Damon Albarn who has an incredible career with Blur and Gorillaz and see myself going more down that route than say, Paolo Nutini or James Morrisson. Of course I’m writing and recording all the time so thats not to say I wont venture there at some point.”