‘I could create a rapport’: Stories help Bethel Park musician connect with audiences

A song with a name like “Drinkin’ Wine, Spo-Dee-O-Dee” has to have a story behind it.

And Bethel Park resident Mark Shuttleworth tells it whenever he performs the 73-year-old precursor to what became rock ’n’ roll.

Spo-dee-o-dee, you see, was the nickname for a concoction made of port and lemon juice that was popular in New Orleans, which serves as the setting for the song as originally recorded by co-composer Granville “Stick” McGhee.

Around Pittsburgh, Shuttleworth will joke, an equivalent combination might be wine and beer.

With a repertoire that stretches from the better part of the 20th century through quite a bit of the current one, Shuttleworth likes to share such tidbits about the tunes he likes to play.

“I was too shy to tell stories about myself,” he said. “It was easier for me to give a little musicology type of lesson. That was a way I could talk to the audience, and it was safe. I didn’t have to expose any inner emotions. I could just tell them about songs, and I could create a rapport and overcome my shyness.”

So he’ll mention, to give another example, that Bob Dylan’s “Gotta Serve Somebody” came out on the “Slow Train Coming” album in 1979, just as he was embarking on his “born again” musical phase. Or that Bobby Troup wrote the immortal line “get your kids on Route 66” at the recommendation of his wife following their early ’40s cross-country trip.

Much more recent references are to the likes of Jason Mraz and “I’m Yours,” and Sam Hunt and “Body Like a Back Road.”

Alternating between his Nash electric and Gibson acoustic guitars, Shuttleworth mixes in an original or two with his decades-spanning covers, the stylistic diversity of which he attributes to his involvement in music at his alma mater.

“That’s the jazz program at Thomas Jefferson High School coming out,” he said.

‘Changed my life’

Shuttleworth was in elementary school when he joined 73 million other viewers in watching the Feb. 9, 1964, American TV debut of the Beatles on CBS’s “The Ed Sullivan Show.”

“Pretty much changed my life,” he said. “I bugged my dad for the remainder of that year to let me play guitar, and I had already quit piano lessons. So he was reluctant, although he didn’t have to buy me a piano. It was my sister’s piano.”

Just after Thanksgiving, his father relented and rented a Harmony brand acoustic guitar.

“I stuck with it long enough that he made the rental payments ’til we owned the guitar,” Shuttleworth said. “And I still have that guitar today.”

In the meantime, he put it to productive use.

After he and some fellow sixth-graders attended the Monkees’ concert on Dec. 30, 1966, at Pittsburgh’s Civic Arena, they decided to form their own band. And as suggested by one of their moms, they named it the Vital Statistics.

“We weren’t a bad band for a bunch of little kids,” Shuttleworth said, as their repeated bookings at local swim clubs would seem to attest.

He later was a member of a band called the Fanatics.

“This, I will brag about,” he said. “We went to a battle of the bands in Boston, Pa. There were over 30 bands in it, and these bands were all college-age, maybe some high school-age, definitely some bands in their 20s. We were somewhere between eighth and ninth grade, and we placed 10th in that band competition. I’ve been proud of that all my life, to this day.”

‘A second life change’

As was the case with many young guitarists in the’60s, Shuttleworth couldn’t wait to switch from acoustic to electric. Then he and an ex-Vital Statistics bandmate attended another Civic Arena show, on Aug. 14, 1970.

“We went for two different reasons. I went for Chicago,” Shuttleworth said about the headliner. “He went for this skinny, long-haired guy who was opening up, playing guitar by himself, and held 13,000 people spellbound: James Taylor. Seeing that changed my life, a second life change.”

His enthusiasm for acoustic guitar was bolstered by attending Christian coffeehouses, small venues that provided the opportunity for close-up views of what the performers were doing. He also played the acoustic for sing-alongs with church youth groups, which taught him some skills to generate audience participation:

“Trying to get a group of bored kids to sit there and sing songs with you is a challenge.”

Since those days, Shuttleworth has played in a variety of band configurations, in a correspondingly eclectic mix of styles. Today, in addition to solo shows, he performs with upright bass player Jared Negley in another creatively named aggregation, the Bad Joints.

All the while, he’s continued to enjoy enlightening his audiences about what they’re hearing.

“I used to keep my head down and play song after song after song, and not look at anybody,” he said. “So it took me years and years, and telling stories about songs was the way I learned to communicate with an audience: have eye contact and make people laugh a little bit. And smile.”

For more information, visit www.facebook.com/MusicByShuttle.