Leap Day ...

The Man Who Saved My Life

“God Made Eden in the month of June, so Adam and Eve got married. But the apple got eaten one afternoon, on the 29th of February. It was Leap Day.

I'm starin' at a wall, thinkin' I might sleep, but I won't even try too. Thinking of the promises I won't keep, and who I'll say goodbye to, when it's Leap Day.”
-Mark Humphreys … Title song from the album, ‘Leap Day’

The year must have been 1992, or possibly ‘93. I was running a weekly concert series, and was always on the lookout for singer-songwriters whose work meant something. I’d been hearing about a guy named Mark Humphreys, and on this night, a friend and I had gone to check him out.

It was at a new coffee house in South Pasadena, called Kaldi. Set up in front of the picture window was an unremarkable looking guy in his early thirties, with a big acoustic guitar, singing his heart out to a mostly oblivious bunch of proto-hipsters.

My buddy and I grabbed drinks and a table and didn’t say another word for close to an hour. Within minutes, the guy with the guitar and the big voice had captured us completely. By the force of his talent and his sheer will, he had carried us off into his world.

He told the crowd that these were songs from an album he was getting set to record. He thanked us for listening and said that he had just one more for us. Then he sang ‘Leap Day’.

This is how Mark Humphreys came into my life. Aside from my own father, no other man has left a deeper impression on me. And if you could say that my dad gave me life, you could just as truthfully say that Mark saved my life. Years later, when things had gone very wrong for me.

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At the time of our meeting though, I was happy and healthy. With a wife who everybody loved and two irresistible kids. I had a couple of years of sobriety and a growing reputation in L.A. as both a performer and presenter of talent. My little series ‘The Sunday Showcase’ was consistently packing another coffee-house - 45 Beantown in Monrovia - with 50 avid music lovers.

I booked Mark on the spot, and we kicked off a conversation that was never to end until one or the other of us ran out of breath. I recall one particular day a few months later; his first visit to our home, where we sat on the couch near the west-facing living-room window, as the afternoon tipped into night. Till the room was so dark that my wife came and turned a lamp on. An epic exchange that included everything from our life-stories and lost loves to religion to politics, to what the hell we were really trying to do with these songs and guitars.

Mark was beginning a decade of yearly tours around the country. He’d go out for a couple of months at a time, taking his day-job as a paralegal with him. Each of a series of used Toyota Corollas loaded down with musical gear, but also his work computer - the old-school beige-plastic tower, and bulbous monitor with an actual cathode ray TV tube.

He’d crisscross the country playing Borders Book Stores and any other damn place that would let him set up and play for a small fee or whatever tips he could inspire. By night he’d find a motel with a crude internet connection back to L.A., and work into the wee hours doing whatever it is that paralegals do.

”A waitress walks off of the dining room floor, suddenly starts laughing. She walks right out of that restaurant door. She's not quite sure what's happening. And it's Leap Day.

If I should fall between the cracks, I know the drop won't kill me. And I ain't sayin' I won't be back. I'm just not sayin' I will be ... and it's Leap Day.”

Oh how Mark Humphreys loved the little diners where he’d take his meals on these endless journeys. Oh how he loved the tender-tough waitresses he’d meet along the way, and then carry with him always. Something about the humility of service that is so much more powerful than it appears at first glance.

I always imagined that Mark would meet such a woman somewhere in some rustic ‘Madison-County’ town, and that she would take him home, seeing like nobody else could, what a treasure had come rolling up the road.

Years passed. My marriage fell apart. I let The Sunday Showcase go. I started drinking again. A little bit at first, and then a lot. Way too much. I moved to a cottage in Altadena, and set myself to grimly living out my life as a house-painter.

I saw Mark rarely now, but when I did, he would always tell me that whenever I wanted to make a real record, he would produce it for me free of charge. I always had an excuse for him. Some bullshit rationalization. I had a lot of those.

One day in 2006, my kids arrived for the weekend, my daughter now driving her own used car. It was a hot day. I was out back trying to fix something on my work-truck. Hung over. Sweating bullets. My too-long hair falling in my eyes. My fifteen year-old son quietly watching me, as I slipped a wrench and cut a knuckle. I cussed the blood leaking through the grease and said “Sonny … don’t follow in my steps. Do something with your life.”

He thought for a little bit and said “Dad, all you need is some recognition. That’s all.”

Later that week I called Mark Humphreys and asked if the offer was still open. He didn’t exactly jump at the chance. He’d now released several really good albums on his own fledgling label, Trough Records. He’d stopped touring. Was living with his future wife in Van Nuys, and had a room all set up as a studio. He now had an important job with the big commercial property management company where once he’d been a humble paralegal.

”Let me think about this, Dave. I’ll call you back in a few days.”

He did. And he caught me sober. “I’ll do it. But you need to make me a promise. If we start this project, we WILL finish it. Is that clear?” How well he knew me.

I made that promise and kept it. I should say that I allowed Mark to hold me to it. As the recording progressed to match Mark’s schedule and my ability to pay the musicians we used, I began to put patches on my life made from a week or two here and there where I didn’t touch a drop.

By the time that Mark was sending the album out, and the reviews were coming in, I’d worked up to three or four months at a time clean. Clear-eyed and productive. At which point some number of stresses would get the better of me. I’d load the kitchen with cases of Miller Genuine Draft, and two-liter jugs of rum and Diet Coke. I’d take the phone off the hook and drink my way back to the fuzzy alcoholic safe-house that still felt like home. The classic binge-drinker pattern.

Those lapses would last for 8 or 10 days, and then I would detox and get my feet back under me. I’d started playing with Greg Krueger, and at a gig in Venice, met Alexia. We began a conversation as never-over as the one that I had with Mark.

In early 2010, she and I rented the Sierra Madre Playhouse. Mark had the idea that I needed to make a live album, and so that was the plan. On the morning of March 14, I drove up to Santa Clarita where Mark and his new wife were settling happily into a beautiful home on a cul-de-sac. I was there to help Mark wrestle his recording console down the stairs from his new studio at the end of the hall.

It was just shy of noon when they let us into the theater. Mark set to work straight away, with me as his assistant. By early afternoon, hundreds of feet of cable was routed and mics were up and plugged in. Band-members were arriving. We were testing and retesting sound. There is an awful lot that goes into making a live album.

But I had, miraculously, rehearsed the musicians and made myself ready. And with a hundred people filling every seat, we played what anybody can now hear.

Again, Mark did all of this without charging me a dime.

I don’t know what time it was when we got his recording gear back home and up the stairs. Whatever gratitude I expressed was not nearly enough. A different man drove the truck home that night. It seems that my son had intuited something about me that I hadn’t admitted to myself.

I had one binge left in me. But only one. In June I drove out to Texas for the Kerrville Folk Festival. Seven months sober, and eighteen days of camping with nothing on my mind but the next song to play.

But a job I’d been dreading was waiting for me back in Los Angeles. A huge industrial building to be painted black, of all things. And on the long drive home the stress took me over.

I canceled that job, stocked up, and blew my brains out for ten days. Then I faced the roughest detox yet without so much as a Xanax. I’ve been sober ever since.

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We made another album several years later. It might be my masterpiece. And again, it was Mark at the production reins. He didn’t only produce my records. In a real sense he produced me. The producer’s job is to take the rough material, locate the gem within, and put it in its proper setting. You get the picture.

Mark was hugely influential as well, in the things I’ve written and made into videos. A lot of what I believe in and stand for, came out of the long conversations we continued to have. On Facebook, he wrote as Zane Bardwick, and never was there a more complete or compelling voice. I often just called him Bard. He was that to me.

We had occasional meetings to compare notes as the world got weirder and weirder. ‘The BardMor Summit’, in multiple episodes. Sometimes in a diner that he’d found and wanted to share with me. Sometimes at a Starbucks in Tujunga.

I kept writing songs too, and playing lots of gigs, now partnered with Alexia in backyard concerts that took us into over 80 homes across Southern California. Big rollicking events where we’d bring in a ton of gear and even feed everybody.

Gradually, I learned from Zane/Mark, that no disagreement ought ever turn a friend into an enemy. He walked that walk with absolute commitment, constantly engaging with friends despite ideological differences others would see as insurmountable.

That equilibrium came hard to me. I have a warlike streak, that’s wrapped around and threaded through my urge to self-destruct. Countless hours of projects with the libertarian Mark and the liberal Alexia, finally delivered me to the post-partisan territory I’m now working to define. He was proud of me. I’m proud of that.

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In June of 2021 Mark and Greg and I went into a rented studio and cut drums, bass, and my scratch vocals and guitar. A day and a half of live takes, for the songs that would make up another album. My fourth. (if you don’t count a self-produced cassette I made back in 1990, which nobody should count)

It was a glorious two days. Mark was free of the mixing console. On his feet. Pacing in the control room listening to the takes. And giving us instructions through our headphones out in the big room. Greg standing by to consult.

Then we let it sit for a while so I could get some money up. In early September of that year, Greg and I drove up to Santa Clarita. The plan was to go to breakfast at Mark’s favorite diner, and map out the next few recording dates. Also Mark was liquidating a lot of his gear, and wanted us to take whatever we needed.

At the diner, Mark couldn’t get comfortable in a booth, so we moved to a table. We ate, and talked and drank coffee and made mental maps of recording dates to come.

Back at Mark and Melissa’s place, he showed us the stuff he was giving away. Greg and I carried out mic stands and cables and things that we thought we could use. Mark seemed out of breath. While Greg was organizing the gear into his SUV, Mark and I went into the kitchen. He fished a couple of Diet Dr. Peppers out of the fridge, while we finished up our conversation.

We hugged as we always did. I said, “I love you”. He said “I love you too.” And the next morning, he got into his car to go pick up bagels ……. and left this world forever.

”It's almost time to go. Oh it's Leap Day, and nobody told me so. Still I know ... it's Leap Day.

And oh my my, the time still flies away. And oh my soul ... here I know, that it's Leap Day.”

A month or two later Greg and I went to the outdoor courtyard of a Cemetery in Canyon Country. We brought the PA we gig with. We set it up and got a sound. A couple of the stands Mark had given us. A decent mic at the podium. A big crowd had gathered and everybody had stories to tell about how Mark had influenced them. Had guided them. Fought for them. Sometimes even carried them.

Other musicians were there to sing songs as well. My label-mates on that little record label that Mark created and ran. But maybe it was those friends and family members and co-workers of his that brought me the most comfort. To know how deep and wide ran the river of his life, makes the loss of him easier to bear. He was content. He was happy.

When it was my turn, I said just a few words, and then Greg and I played Leap Day.

”A little girl sittin' in a chair at the rear, in the middle of a funeral service. She whispers real quiet in her mama's ear. She says 'How come everybody's so nervous?', and it's Leap Day.

I'm standin' on the road where the highways meet, I have no load to carry, just one small dream and two tired feet, and it's the 29th of February.

It's Leap Day. I guess I'm goin' alone. Oh it's Leap Day. I'm finally on my own, and in my bones, it's Leap Day.“

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Thank you for indulging me. Obviously I owe a debt to Mark Humphreys that I don’t know how to repay. So I try to keep him alive as best I can. Today is Leap Day. Any day can be Leap Day, if we just have the courage and the faith to make it so.

Before I posted this, I messaged Greg about finishing the album we started with Mark. I just haven’t had the heart to work on it, and that now seems like a failing on my part.

If I may ask one favor of you, it’s that you’d follow THIS LINK and hear Mark’s recording of the song I’ve quoted here.

(my own version, recorded for a tribute album to Mark that the folks on his label made while he was still hail and hearty, is here. As a bonus, this is Mark’s recording of ‘Waverley’, the other song I recorded for that tribute album way back when. And my own humble interpretation. The website he built that contains all of his stuff, seems to have lapsed and disappeared. Maybe part of my debt repayment will be to set another up. I’ll look into that)

Thanks again. I hope that I’ve captured a little bit of this man’s generosity and wide-open heart. But I’d be remiss not to add a glimpse of his wry skepticism. This is a picture of a picture that seems to be resting on a guitar amp. Taken, I reckon, during his rocker years before I met him. This was Mark too.

edit: (some of you have requested a one-time donation link.
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