New Haven, CT recording artist Mark Mulcahy influenced a generation of indie rockers as the frontman of the alternative rock band Miracle Legion in the 1980s and 1990s. Around the same time, turned another generation of youngsters onto music in general by playing the theme song and appearing on the surrealistic Nickelodeon show ¬_The Adventures of Pete and Pete_ as part of the fictional band Polaris. After years of hard touring, Mulcahy veered off the road shortly after the release of 2005’s In the Pursuit of Your Happiness. Then, tragedy stuck and Mulcahy suffered the loss of his wife in 2008. Indie icons including Radiohead’s Thom Yorke, the Pixies’ Frank Black, The National, R.E.M.’s Michael Stipe, Dinosaur Jr. and Mercury Rev all came to his aid and participated in the all-star tribute album Ciao My Shining Star: The Songs of Mark Mulcahy.

The tribute album helped push Mulcahy back into the public eye and a series of live Pete and Pete reunion shows have subsequently placed the reclusive songwriter in front of some of his biggest live audiences. He even revived his Polaris persona for the band’s first actual concert. Now, Mulcahy has returned with his first album of original material since 2005, Dear Mark J Mulcahy, I Love You and a series of concert dates.

It’s been almost a decade since you released a full-length recording, and you’ve held off from touring for much of that time. I was wondering if you could walk us through a little bit of the recording of the album and when you first started working on these songs and the thumbnail chronology of when they were recorded?

I started a record before this one called In the Pursuit of Your Happiness. And I put that out, and I toured it. I went all around and, at some point, I was playing a gig, and there wasn’t actually that many people there. I was like, “Man, I’m killing this thing,” so I kind of made a rule to myself that I wouldn’t go back to playing till I had another record out. And, so I started making another record. It was going along really well, but it was sort of a complicated record. It just couldn’t seem to quite get finished. And then I had this kind of break and didn’t do anything at all for about three or four years.

I was hanging out with a couple of guys I know. One of them has a studio and we decided to try to make a record where we would do the whole song in one day instead of doing a batch of one thing and then adding things and adding things – the way we sort of normally do it. And that turned out to be a great plan.

We’d sort of pick a date that I was gonna come in, and I’d write a song maybe a couple of weeks before that and then give it to a few different people that would be good to play on it and just do it that way. Just sort of one brick at a time or something, and it turned out to be a really kind of lively way to make a record and we didn’t get bogged down. In the studio you have this list of things to do. You know, that’s functional and practical in some way. The rule was to finish it in the day and so at some point during the day, someone would say, “that sounds pretty good.” And someone would hopefully say, “Yeah!” And it ended up making it more immediate and sparser. I figured out a lot of stuff before I got there about the vocals and certain little bits I had figured out on the demos. It was a really a nice collaboration.

*I’m sure it must have been a liberating process to be like, “Okay this song is done,” so you don’t have to go back in your mind and think, “Well, maybe when we do the bass lines we can switch that up later.” *

To be super honest there was a moment or two of oblivion and then, then after it was done I just sort of reconnected with Paul Kolderie, who I had done a bunch of stuff with. And I said, “Hey, what do you think about mixing this?” And he said, “yeah.” And so he mixed it, and that was really a big bonus. It was pretty much done. We worked with a producer named Henning Ohlenbusch (School for the Dead). He’s not a super record-maker-guy. But Paul’s made 10 million records so that was a great lucky turn of events because that really made it get a lot louder and bigger.

You’ve said these songs have that spontaneous feel to them, but they were also written beforehand as you said, some of the re-arrangements were even done in advance of the recordings. Or what period of time were these songs written.

They have all been written since about late-2011 or something. It was really just one at a time. You know, almost to order. You know, I did the music for Adventures of Pete and Pete. And that was an exercise in a way. Those songs were written to order. They would say, “We want something like this, something like this, something like this and something like this.” And then I’d turn in things, and I’d say, “No. Let’s do this, or it needs to be this.” It was kind of written on demand – in a good way, because those guys are great music fans so it wasn’t like writing for Kellogg’s or something. It was real music for real people kind of thing. But this was the same idea where it was like, “Okay, write a song.” And I’m usually trying to write songs anyway, but these were specifically written for that area of recording.

You recently played a show with Danny Tamberelli’s band Jounce at the Spaceland Ballroom in Hamden CT. I heard you taught him about music on the set and he taught you a bit about acting.

He did man, I learned a lot about acting from him, which I still don’t know anything. I was on the show with these little tiny kids who were like, “Hey man, just relax man.” I was like, “Heh heh, all right I’ll relax, nice try.” It’s funny, I don’t normally get advice from a child, but he knew how to do it, and I didn’t so…Acting is like who can be the most relaxed it seems like. Like who can’t care the camera’s there.

You took part actually in one of the reunions right, and actually played with Polaris, which was the first time you actually did an actual show the band, which was invented for The Adventures of Pete & Pete, right?

That was our only gig so far, we played a pretty big reunion I did in Los Angeles. That was great, that was really, strangely eye-opening. It’s strange to have a band that’s, I don’t know how many years old, 20 years old or something and you never play and then when you play everybody thinks it’s awesome. I was just dreaming at the beginning of every song.

It’s funny it’s a reunion but then it never really existed.

I know, you kill yourself inventing bands your whole life, and then you have one that doesn’t do anything and that’s the one that gets this incredible reaction.

Speaking of influences, since your last album they put out the tribute to you, you know all sorts of musicians in different genres and age groups came in and covered your songs. As a musician and music fan, what did you think of those covers?

Well you know, I’ve always wanted to be covered. I think some of the songs I have could be done by somebody else. And listening to a lot of those things I thought those were really great versions you know? I think, in my head, they’re better versions than what I did, I don’t think anyone wants to hear that, but I think there are really unique and as good, and I’ll treat them. Some people did it exactly how it goes and that’s cool, but some people did it kind of in a different style or their style of their band, and I really thought that was, you know, strangely validating to me, in my own head, that I could be covered. I’ve had publishers say, “You know man, they can’t cover you, they’re too this or they’re too that.” And it takes some imagination from somebody to imagine somebody else doing your songs or choosing songs for somebody to remember. I didn’t have anything to do with it, so the whole thing was a surprise to me. But yeah, it was really nice, really nice to be covered.

It was such a wide range of musicians too, which I think for a songwriter like yourself it must show how many influences people can take from the same, you know, composer and musician.

What I got was that most people picked a song that they really felt comfortable with. I’ve been sometimes asked to be on a cover album. Sometimes it can be really hard to listen to, especially someone you really don’t know, you know if you’re not really a big fan, or who you’re not really familiar with. I don’t know, we did the Byrds one time and I listened to their music, and it can be hard to choose a song. But it seems to me that everybody wanted a certain song that they felt happy with, so it was nice.

You mentioned earlier that you’re really holding off on touring because you want a new album out and now that the album’s out and you’ve gone to some more gigs how do you feel now being back in the saddle so to speak?

It’s pretty great. It’s just something I’ve done so much, and not do it for a long period is just really frustrating a lot. Frustrating yourself and frustrating your mind that you’re not doing the thing that you are supposed to. But it’s been great to perform, to practice, to play guitar. It’s just been really good, and this last weekend to have this eight or six piece band, it was really fun, great. Driving to Philadelphia tomorrow is something that I’m not looking forward to. But getting there will be good.

The road part of it is not the great part but the performing is excellent.

One part has not changed, still have to drive there. I remember I knew this guy who was gonna play bass with I think it was Billy Joel or something. ‘Oh yeah man, it’s a bus tour," I guess he was hoping it was gonna be a jet tour you know.

*I guess it’s all in perspective, “I don’t get my own bus, what?” *

I’ve been on a bus like two times.

It’s funny it informs people’s opinions about what it means to live life on the road.

After a while even if you have someone to drive all over the place you just don’t want to be in a vehicle all day long, it’s not that hard.

Have your setlists been drawing from all periods of your career or has it been focusing mainly on your material with some Miracle Legion songs sprinkled in there?

You know, I’m not too good at playing most of them. There’s a few that I can play and there’s a few that the other guys can play and I just sing. But yeah there’s a couple of Miracle Legion tunes in there and a couple of Polaris tunes in there. It’s just whatever’s on the list. It’s a pretty long list at this point. You don’t really get long enough – like the other night when Wilco played for two and a half hours. I mean, that’s a pretty long time, and obviously they can do it because they have so many songs and everything. But it’ll be great to do that and have like 5,000 people sitting there watching for like two and a half hours. It’ll be pretty fun.

As you mentioned, you recently played Wilco’s festival, Solid Sound. During that festival a handful of big name guests sat in with you. Can you talk about some of those collaborations?

J Mascis played on two songs. One called “I Have Patience” and another called “Bill Jocko.” And [Wilco multi-instrumentalist] Pat Sansone played on those two and another one called “Cookie Jar.” I’m pretty good friends with Pat.

What were your impressions of Solid Sound?

There was so much music. It was great – I did my own show and another pop-up show and jammed. Yeah it was pretty tight, a pretty good festival. I do these pop-up concerts,
I love that place [Mass MoCa, where the festival is held]. I’ve been there millions of times. But then they do pop-up concerts in the galleries. So he and I went in the gallery with a couple of other guys and did a bunch of Miracle Legion songs. Pat was a big fan of Miracle Legion when he was in Mississippi. Tthen the band played on Sunday, yeah, and I was out at the festival on Sunday so I decided to play with J.

How did you first meet Pat and the rest of the Wilco guys?

I met him a long time ago. Like I said, we used to tour. For some reason we’d always go down to like Alabama and you know, Birmingham, Alabama and Tuscaloosa. We did a lot of shows in Alabama and I don’t know that we actually had a big audience there but he would always come to those shows. So I knew him from back then. It was from a long time ago. And I just knew him as a fan and I ran into him once on the train in New York. I was like “Hey, you’re that guy. What are you doing out here?” He goes, “Well, I’m in Wilco now.”

That’s funny, yeah.

Strange that he went from people you saw as a fan to being in a pretty massive group. So yeah, so then we just kinda tightened up a little bit. I don’t really know the other guys. I know him pretty well. Yeah I don’t – [Jeff] Tweedy I know a little well, I played a bunch of shows with Wilco here and there, but I don’t really know them that well. I know Nels [Cline], I played some shows with him.