Denver Rocker Mad Dog Celebrating His 70th Birthday With Blues and Booze

Multi-genre musician, poet and visual artist Mark Friedman – aka Mad Dog, or MD – turns seventy this week. In true Mad Dog style, his milestone birthday will be celebrated by a double birthday bash including booze and, of course, blues presented by Friedman’s band, Mad Dog Blues.

Although Friedman’s artistic nature revealed itself early – he began writing poetry before discovering his love for music – the storied tale of how he discovered his inner Mad Dog and the multi-genre artistic talent that has kept his career alive for five decades is compelling.

Friedman’s musical journey started 55 years ago at the bright-eyed age of fifteen, with an underappreciated instrument often thought of as a child’s toy: the harmonica. Inspired by the captivating jazzy rhythm meant to illustrate the clinking chugs of a train speeding down the tracks, Jack Bruce’s performance of “Train Time” on harmonica captured the young Friedman’s imagination. “I turned to my brother [and asked], ‘What instrument is that?’ He said, ‘It’s a harmonica,’ and I just loved it. I wanted to play it. So I went out and got one and started learning,” Friedman recalls. “[The library] had a lot of old blues albums, and I started to listen to Brownie McGhee and Sonny Boy Williamson, and that kind of started me on my journey on harmonica.”

But his musical persona, Mad Dog, didn’t emerge until years later, when Friedman was in college. “I had drunk something called MD 20/20, and I don’t remember much from that night, but the next day everybody was calling me Mad Dog. It kind of stuck, because I think it was an ironic nickname. I’m a very mellow kind of guy,” Friedman chuckles, reminiscing about the college days that gave him an integral piece of his identity.

Friedman is originally from St. Louis; his move to Colorado marked the start of his dedication to creating art and music full-time. “When I first moved to Colorado, [I] formed a band called King Comfort, which eventually became a duo, and we played all over the state for several years,” Friedman says. “It was also when I first started writing songs for more than a solo harmonica and that kind of thing…that was about ’77, ’78,’79.”

After King Comfort broke up, Friedman spent his time teaching for a living and doing side gigs with bands of many different genres. “That was really, really good for me, because it introduced me to a lot more styles than just straight country blues, which was pretty much what I did,” Friedman explains. Throughout his career, Friedman’s artistic style ebbed and flowed, morphing into new creations as he expanded his skill set. “I met Muddy Waters’s band…and Carey Bell, the harmonica player, I talked to him and said, ‘Look, I play country harp, country blues, and I don’t know anything about amping. Can you tell me how you get that sound?’ And he showed me how he got that sound through his amp and how to set it up so I could play more Chicago-style harmonica.”

Although Friedman’s first love, the harmonica, can’t be replaced, he has added another unique instrument to his repertoire: the Native American flute. Friedman was introduced to the instrument at the Song School in Lyons, which he attends regularly. “In 2014 – it was the year after the flood, I remember that distinctly – they offered a class called Native American Flute: You Can Do It,” Friedman explains, laughing about the name. “I totally took to it, I guess because I had been playing the harmonica, and it’s a wind instrument, so I have some of those wind techniques down. But it just spoke to me, and it was all about healing that year. It is simple music. It’s improvisational. It really, really suits what I like to do.”

And Friedman has taken to improvisation like a duck to water. “When you’re playing with a band, you’ve got a set list. Everybody’s gotta know what’s going to happen, right? And maybe you stick to it, maybe you don’t. But when I’m playing solo, it is totally improv,” Friedman explains. “[The inspiration] can be anything: It could be the weather, it could be something that happened to me on the way to the gig. It could be something that’s happened in my life. It could be something that came from the audience. It’s really opening yourself up to be in that moment. So whatever’s happening inside you and inside the audience and the people around you in that moment is your inspiration.”

Although much of Friedman’s work is improvisational, he also enjoys notating songs with lyrics and a chord chart. “I guess I’m a poet kind of songwriter. So it starts with the words, usually, with me, and I’ve learned through Song School how to notate it and give a chart to my band,” Friedman says. Like his music, Friedman’s poetry is diverse, and never stems from a single source of inspiration. “It’s just whatever comes into life; there’s no one inspiration that continues, except perhaps my wife. I’ve got more songs written for her than anything else.”

But Friedman doesn’t feel that he found a place to truly express his personal sound until he formed his band, Mad Dog Blues, in the fall of 2018. The ensemble is a flexible, acoustic-blues jam band that performs as a duo, trio or five-member group, with Friedman on harmonica, Jeff “Bone Head” Becker on mandolin, Clark “The Champ” Chanslor on stand-up bass, Sean “Rocket” Bennight on guitar and Mark “Kaz” Kaczorowski on slide and guitar. Friedman’s band plays what he’s coined “Colorado country blues,” a genre that combines jamgrass with traditional rural blues soundscapes.

“I tended to be a sideman throughout most of my career, which has been wonderful, because I’ve played with wonderful people and I’ve played wonderful music, but I’ve never had a chance to really develop my voice until I started Mad Dog Blues,” Friedman explains. “And that has been miraculous to me. I just really feel like I’m living my dream, because the music that I’m making is the music that has been inside me for my entire life.”

In 2004, Friedman added yet another medium to his already impressive artistic résumé: visual art. That began as a happy accident while he was designing the cover for one of his many poetry books. He spent several hours manipulating a picture of a crane operating outside of his apartment, and later did his book launch at a gallery that was very interested in his design – so interested that they let him show his work. “At the time I had nothing but the back cover, but I made up half a dozen other pieces, and I had some photographs and I showed them, and that’s how I started art. I love it,” he says.

And if asked what his favorite medium is – from poetry to music to visual art – Friedman makes it clear that what he really loves is combining all of them. He fuses digital art, music and poetry to create cross-medium works he calls “digital poems.” He also has a website that showcases 24 of his paintings that are designed to be mandalas for use in meditation. “They’re each tuned by colors and vibrations for healing different parts of the body and different parts of the psyche,” Friedman explains, describing the visual effect of the mandalas. “And then there’s also music that I compose that goes with that, that enhances that experience.” These synergistic pieces create beautiful, moving art that seems to breathe with the viewer.

Friedman’s newest project, an album titled River City Roots, recently charted on Roots Music Reports and will be released on April 15. His decades as an artist have taught him a lot, but one of the lessons that reverberate through his work is the importance of connection. “I said [music] was all about connection, and I’d just like to emphasize that. I think too many people get lost in all these other things about music, you know? ‘What do you look like on stage? What genre are you doing?'” he says. “It’s not what it’s about. It’s about connection, and I think if musicians keep that in the front of their brains…or keep that in their heart, they will go in the right direction.”

Join Mad Dog Blues for the free Double Birthday Bash, 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, March 22, Nissi’s, 1455 Coal Creek Drive Unit T, Lafayette.