O'Connor, 32, isn't speaking in metaphor. Microphone wires inside the walls of his three-story house connect most rooms to a fully equipped recording studio downstairs. When cutting the New Nashville Cats album in 1991, O'Connor fiddled in the living room while his five collaborators contributed their parts from other rooms in the house.
For his latest album, though, O'Connor ranged far from home in search of such violin and fiddle maestros as Stephane Grappelli, Jean-Luc Ponty and Charlie Daniels, among others. Heroes "is my fantasy album," O'Connor says of the duets he recorded with his idols in the U.S. and France. "Other kids had heroes like Mickey Mantle and John Wayne, but mine were these violin players. It was a magical musical experience."
Unfortunately, real life as a child prodigy was considerably less magical. The older of two children—sister Michelle, 28, is studying microbiology and molecular genetics at UCLA—Mark was exposed to classical music by his parents, Larry and Marty, who once worked as Arthur Murray dance instructors in San Francisco before settling in Seattle. "My mom was as eccentric as they come," Mark says. "She spent every available cent on music and records for us. We had a stereo system, but my parents didn't have a bed. They slept on boxes."
While Larry worked in construction, Marty (she died in 1982) oversaw the kids' cultural education, encouraging them to study dance, music, art and poetry. Broadcasts of The Johnny Cash Show helped bring country music into the house, and ' Mark—who began playing classical guitar at 3—had, by age 11, added violin, flamenco guitar, banjo, steel-string guitar and country fiddle.
While a 12-year-old member of a bluegrass band that included future Nashville star Vince Gill, then 16, Mark won the 1973 National Old Time Fiddle Championship, which led to his debut at the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville that year. But such achievements carried little weight among classmates back home in his blue-collar Seattle neighborhood. "Every time my picture was in the paper, somebody would get hold of it and throw darts at it," he says. "Any praise that I got from the music world was quickly taken away as soon as I stepped onto the school grounds."
Friendless and introverted, Mark found an antidote in skateboarding. "It was a lifesaver for me," says O'Connor, who built a backyard practice ramp that eventually gained him some neighborhood pals.
After graduating from Mountlake Terrace High School in 1979, O'Connor performed with the David Grisman Band and the Dixie Dregs before settling in Nashville, where he soon became the town's premier studio musician. "He's the best fiddle player I ever heard," banjo pioneer Earl Scruggs says of O'Connor, who played on more than 450 albums by Nashville's top stars. Then in 1991, after six years as a studio backup, he eagerly hit the concert circuit himself. While on the road, he spent downtime on his tour bus composing a classical piece, The Fiddle Concerto for Violin and Orchestra, which premiered last September with the Santa Fe Symphony.
O'Connor blames the difficulties of "a musician's life" for his 1991 divorce from his wife, Suzanne, a former concert flutist whom he married in 1987. Their son, Forrest, 5, lives nearby in Nashville with Suzanne and sees Mark often. "We both tried to focus on what was best for Forrest," Mark says. "We cherish him."
He also appreciates his son's sense of music, calling him "one of my best critics. When I play something new and he doesn't like it, he asks if we can go to the next one."
Mindful of his own isolation as a child, O'Connor, seen regularly on the Nashville Network's weekly American Music Shop, has been organizing a weeklong fiddle camp in "Nashville next May for students with or without musical experience. "I want kids to know that anybody can play music and have fun with it too," he says. "That is what it's all about."
STEVE DOUGHERTY
JANE SANDERSON in Nashville
- Contributors:
- Jane Sanderson.
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