“Okay class, I’m going to have to end our session a little early tonight, I have to catch a gig at Count Basie Theatre.” If you have not heard a professor at Monmouth University say these words, chances are you haven’t had Professor Marc Muller.
I caught Professor Muller for an interview after he was done teaching a class, exiting the room as usual with a guitar case in his hand. This time, he actually had two, one slung around his shoulder.
“As early as I can remember,” he said, answering when he first began playing the six-string. “About four years old, I guess.”
He took a seat on the green lounge chairs in the lobby of Woods Theatre, the building where he usually sets up shop for his classes, consisting of a Rock n’ Roll and American Culture lecture. Gently placing both of his cased instruments on the floor beside him, he scratched his shaggy grey hair and gave a look of excited apprehension, as most musicians do when approached for an interview. His relaxed look of khaki pants and Sanuk style shoes gives off a vibe that says, “Yeah, I’m a hippie, but I’m a hippie who knows his stuff. So sit down and listen.”
Muller, who attended the Berklee College of Music in Boston, MA, is currently an adjunct here at Monmouth. However, his main occupation is his Grateful Dead tribute band, Dead On Live, which he has created and brought to success since its beginning in 2010. “The Dead On Live thing is a full-time job,” he said. “Trying to promote it, run it, organize it and book it.”
However, it wasn’t always Dead On Live that had Muller’s schedule packed. He also went on tour with music stars such as Shania Twain and Tommy Shaw, and has also done studio work with the likes of hometown hero Bruce Springsteen. Although he admits getting the big arena experience was like traveling with The Yankees, the real lessons came from a producer behind the scenes.
“Working with Mutt Lange, the producer, that was music education right there,” Muller said. “I would see not only the production of the records, I saw them stripped apart. And then I saw him reassemble them and put them together to go on the road. I applied that to Dead On Live, stripping the records apart and then reassembling them to take them on the road.”
Muller has been a DeadHead since 1973, when he saw the band live as his first ever concert with his brother at the Nassau Coliseum in Long Island. It’s only fitting that in the next year, the Grateful Dead would come out with their infamous “Wall of Sound,” a name given to the large PA sound system that stood behind the band and was the biggest concert sound system built at that time. Dead On Live would go on to recreate this “Wall of Sound” in October earlier this year at the Paramount Theatre located in Asbury Park.
“It was incredible,” Muller said, leaning forward in his seat, teeming to tell the story of how he recreated rock history. “It was a big undertaking where I had to have a partner; I couldn’t do it on my own. I was in charge of making the music sound like the Grateful Dead movie of 1974. But I teamed up with Jason Dermer from Asbury Audio, he owns the sound company that does all the Monmouth county events, and he is a big DeadHead and knew, well everyone knows the big historic wall of sound of 1974. So, he took literally every piece of equipment he had and designed the stage – scaffolding, each instrument had its own PA system behind us. He took the old basic design of the ‘Wall of Sound’ and used modern techniques and married them together and it was quite the show.”
But wait, there’s more. Musical talent flows through the red blood of the Muller family like, dare I say, Scarlet Begonias? His daughter Erica is in the band, too. And she can sing.
“She has always been the vocalist in the house,” Muller said in a fatherly tone, as if he was reminiscing on his daughter, who is now 25, in old home movies. “I got her to sing on my solo CD when she was six-years-old. For some reason she was just born with that ear where we would be sitting watching a kid show and she would just hum and sing right with it, she would hear it once and be able to sing with it.”
As for teaching, Muller knows his stuff. I mean, the guy has done it; he’s been there with the best (he actually met guitar legend Les Paul, and even got Paul to sign one of his own guitars), and created some for himself. What better lessons can be taught than by someone who has lived the thing they’re instructing?
“Professor Muller was one of the most interesting professors I’ve had at Monmouth,” said Jennifer Carter, a senior who took Muller’s Rock n’ Roll and American Culture class in the fall 2014 semester. “His guitar playing and his stories about all of the people he met as a musician made him more credible because he had first-hand experiences with a lot of people we were learning about.”
When asked about the rumoring struggles of Monmouth’s music and arts program, Muller expanded the topic to not only Monmouth, but the music industry as a whole. “The birth of the internet was the death of many music industries, and many more to come,” he said, adding that he didn’t want to sound dire, but this was the harsh reality. “What fueled rock n’ roll were the incredible inventions of the radio, juke boxes, singles and record companies; it was a huge business.”
The interview was over but the music will continue to go on, as Muller juggles his Dead On Live concert dates with a solo show of his own on April 17th here at Woods Theatre for a night of “Hippie Jazz.” As we parted ways into the brisk March air, Muller shouted past the parking lot at me with a big grin and his quirky wit, “I hope you didn’t believe a word of it!”
PHOTO TAKEN from deadonlive.com
