Mark Femino has been a professional musician, performer, and teacher for nearly 30 years. His active touring days started in the mid 90’s with the jam band, Blind Man’s Sun. This band sold roughly 10,000 albums, toured the Northeast, had thousands of fans, and enjoyed some radio play. It was a blast, and definitely a spectacle to see live.
In the early 2000’s, Mark embarked on his own musical journey, which saw the release of a 5 song EP, The Light and The Dark (Chiaroscuro), in 2003. This EP also did reasonably well, and was highly regarded by critics. One album review stated, “ Femino, sounding like a second generation cross between Paul Simon and Sting, sings with the same kind of youthful exuberance that made the two songwriters so prolific.” - Face Magazine; high praise indeed. During this period, Mark also got to play on the ABC Weekend Morning Show to and audience of some 500,000, and had the good fortune to tour more and get airplay on college radio.
Femino had a daughter in 2003. It was time to accept the challenge of being a good dad and offer a stable life for her. During this time, Mark became a teacher, choir director, conductor, and still managed to play in bands and perform shows regularly. As a prolific writer, he couldn’t help but keep writing and recording during this period of life. Some of those ideas and songs are still finding their way on to releases to this day.
Somewhere around 2013, Mark was handed a ukulele. Not exactly knowing what to do with it, he started tinkering away. What started as light-hearted, frivolous fooling around on a tiny, friendly little instrument turned into a full-fledged 15 song release in 2015 - The Flea Jumpin’ Juke Joint. He simply couldn’t believe the depth that the ukulele contained. Mark is still extremely proud of this album to this day. It is so different from what one might think a ukulele album to be - like his jam band in the 90’s, there are so many different styles on this album: singer-songwriter, rock, funk, pop, Latin, classical, bluegrass, and blues, to name a few. It is definitely worth a listen, if you are in need of something truly unique.
The next several years, Mark resumed performing in a big way. It became very important to him to make income as a gigging musician. He began to play 1-3 gigs a week in Boston at places like The Barking Crab, The Hard Rock Cafe, and The Harborside Lounge, where he enjoyed a 3 year weekly residency. He is still performing at least once a week while simultaneously releasing and performing original material.
2020 - the Pandemic hit…
At first, like many musicians, Femino put out live videos and/or live streams. But then it seemed clear that it was time to make another album. Femi La Bouche was born. This album was a new adventure, combining a singer-songwriter’s sensibility with hip-hop and electronic beats. The result was a funky, danceable progressive rock album.
At the tail end of 2022, Mark released a hard rock album called Ferilus - “Fearless, feral, and slightly perilous, this is the album known as Ferilus.” This album went all the way back to Mark’s days of hammering it out with garage rock bands. It was incredibly fun for him to make, a little dirty, and very powerful. If you have been in need of a solid, throw down the gauntlet, and rock your socks off album, this one might just do the trick.
2023 saw the release of another more acoustic album entitled, These Are The Moments. It is chock full of stories and sonic adventures. From this album, a children's book was also born. The song, Freddie The King is now a published children's book illustrated by Mark's good friend, Jim Poulos.
Now in 2024, Mark Femino is a seasoned, realized musician. He’s at the peak of his musicianship, and is poised to get all his material out into the world. To that end, he has been releasing singles every four to six weeks and is promoting them heavily on social media and streaming platforms.
Please be sure to check out the shows page if you’d like to see Mark live in action.