Mark Barron

The Canadian guitarist and multi-instrumentalist is stretching out to a world of possibilities.

Mark Barron’s first steps on the road of conversion to prog came from a most unlikely source. Then a teenage guitar player in his own pop-punk band, Embassy, he and his bassist became intrigued by a lyric from Wheatus’ global hit single, //Teenage Dirtbag//, that ran, ‘Listen to Iron Maiden, baby…” Soon converted to the metal figureheads, they were introduced to Dream Theater, which in turn led to Rush and then Yes. “That’s what tore the band apart,” laughs Barron. “We said, ‘What if we have this aggressive song about girls but we have this six-minute instrumental jam in the middle?’ And by the end of the band, we had no idea who we were and it was time to move on!”

The youngest of six creative siblings, Mark Barron’s musical journey began with the violin, which would later influence his approach to the guitar. “Starting on violin got my thinking with my ear rather than with my fingers,” says Barron. “So when I started on guitar when I was 12, I was approaching it musically a lot more than a lot of other beginners.”

A prodigiously talented guitarist and multi-instrumentalist, Barron later lent his skills to variety of prog and metal bands in his local Winnipeg scene before the pandemic brought everything screeching to a halt. “That was when I decided to take a bit more time to focus on my solo work,” he says. “It gave me a chance to reevaluate what I wanted to do with music.”

As displayed by his new album, //Redefinition//, Barron’s musical prowess has developed in leaps and bounds. “At a certain point, I asked myself, ‘Why am I playing just instrumental music when I can be singing?’ And that led to other avenues. Since I’ve opened in a broad sense to what I want to do creatively, suddenly I have no idea what my next release is going to be like, so maybe that will make it more fun for other people who follow my music.”

He adds, “I wanted to create something that was honest and organic and something that would represent me accurately as a human individual; not as a perfect product but as an individual with all the good and bad that comes with it.”

— JM