Upon Oanda's Wing (1977)
The second album by Gary Marks, American singer-songwriter, recording artist, and author.
Upon Oanda's Wing (1977) was my second recording, which I completed at the age of 26. This was recorded with the great pianist Art Lande (ECM Records).
Members of Art Lande's band, Rubisa Patrol, played on Oanda along with Art himself. Those band members included Bill Douglass on acoustic bass, and Kurt Wortman on drums.
Jazz Magazine's W. Patrick Hinely wrote that a flow chart of this album “might closely resemble some of Milton Nascimento's EMI albums, which still serve as a paragon for anyone trying to be equally convincing across the board, from tight vocals and arrangements, to wide open instrumental playing.”
A 2012 Stella Records (Japan) review called Marks “a songwriter with both brilliance and charm,” naming both Gathering and Upon Oanda's Wing “folk-rock-jazz masterpieces” that “have gracefully withstood the test of time.”
Art Lande and Marks also performed together outside the studio: in 1976 I opened for him at the Santa Barbara Opera House, each of us playing a solo set.
Jazz Magazine review (Summer 1979) notes Marks “has long eschewed contract offers from major record companies, opting to found his own Arewea label rather than be marketed as a male surrogate of Joni Mitchell,” and argues that “what James Taylor and those of his ilk can only pull off in a pedestrian manner, Marks is doing here with taste.” (Note: Marks thinks Sweet Baby James was a brilliant album, and even now loves James’s very underrated guitar work.)
The Jazz Magazine review closes with this: “Lande and Marks both deserve better than their relative obscurity, but the hard sell has always been a more powerful tool than good taste in creating ‘successful’ musicians.”
The album was released on Marks's own Arewea Company imprint, catalog number Arewea 2001, with session credits confirming Ron Stallings on soprano sax and Brian Atkinson on vibraphone alongside Lande, Douglass, and Wortman, the same personnel now documented on this page.