How long has it been? Wasn’t it two minutes ago we last met Marc, Ray and Jared in The Soul Shop up the park on Serena Lane for coffee? You remember! Those endless afternoons and evenings beneath the brew of rock, pop, country, folk, jazz, bossa and soul blended together by the natural maturing of life. Or was that before Rome? Ten years you say? Has it really been a decade? It always seems the way…

Time isn’t relative; time is the mischievous stranger who steals into your room and rearranges the furniture while you’re gazing at yourself in the mirror; the lifetime of longing reflected back in the eyes of a stranger in that fleeting glance as you both pass in the arrivals lounge; the age difference between the person you thought you were, the person you are and the person you need to be for her. It’s the spark of a second you needed in those weeks of the unrelenting; it’s the afternoon together that lasted all year;  it’s the forward momentum you felt even though the scenery stays unrepentantly the same; it’s the endless years of connection in days of first of attraction; it’s the rapid unravelling of the decades building a beautiful labour of love; it’s the years of your baby growing which passed in the blink of an eye; it’s the eternity spent waiting until the weekend you can see the person who stole your heart again. It’s All The Little Mornings-a cumulation of days and weeks and years of life expertly distilled onto two discs by Marc Teamaker and the Soul Shop. Jared Nixon and Ray Herrmann hold time as Marc Teamaker threads his compositions around it-as reassuringly familiar as leafing back through those moments you captured in light forever in the leather-bound book; as fresh as the promise of the new day.  ‘All The Little Mornings’-the stunning debut double LP from Marc Teamaker and the Soul Shop. – Iain Clarke 2019

Our new double album, “all the little mornings” is out now and available digitally at “all the little mornings” and on compact disc. Contact us here if you are interested in the CD. For a short time can get a free copy of the CD if you buy it digitally.

‘Skinny Wrist’ and ‘Summer Come Save Me’ herald the long awaited return of Marc Teamaker & The Soul Shop, whose summer tinged pop, encompassing all points on the block between the intersection of Elvis Costello and Neil Finn and beyond, is a much needed breath of fresh air after the fog filled damp days of a long, dark winter for us all. Songwriter Marc Teamaker invites you to step freely back into a world where the sensuous and simple delights of life, love and other people triumph over the petty mountains of mediocrity that threaten to overwhelm the day to day. Ray Herrmann and Jared Nixon help to drive you along in a journey through two songs which take hold like a summer breeze, refreshing the senses and invigorating the soul.  In a world where communication is rife while communion is rare; where the frontiers fade away and yet the barriers slam down; give yourself ten minutes-shut down, log off, pack away the wardrobe from your seasons of discontent, take the hand of the one you never knew you needed so much until the last time you saw them, and take a stroll down the avenue to browse The Soul Shop

Get the new single here!

This is a remix of King Quiet with added instrumentation by my dear friend and musical companion, Robert Baird. It can be originally found on 2000 release, Ping!. Robert added some guitar, banjo and percussion and then remixed it. Enjoy!

https://albanyparkwirephoto.bandcamp.com

It was Christmas Day, Two Thousand and Ten, and I was to catch a flight to Chicago that night to meet KT for the first time…but a storm was coming. So… I changed the flight to an earlier one, arranged a car, and beat a path to Newark. I wasn’t going to get stuck. If I did that might have changed everything. It was a crazy thing. We had been having a relationship on the phone starting around Thanksgiving. I knew this was it. She was the one. I told her I felt like I knew her since we were kids.

I first fell in love with her words on a screen…her humor, her wit, her passion for music and poetry. I then fell in love with her voice. A soft Midwestern accent with a hint of imagined Irish brogue. We had made a strong long distance connection and we knew we had to meet in person…so I packed a small bag and grabbed my guitar, as I was to play a show with our mutual good friend and great Chicago musician Lou Hallwas later that week, and made it out just in time. As a matter of fact I came to know KT through Lou.

On the other end of that flight was the love of my life, Kathleen, standing next to her black Rav 4 that she named Betty and that I drive still. Long curly locks… tall, skinny, and beautiful. The 3 E pick up spot at O’Hare would be our meeting place every other week for eight months. Then… on the last day of August we married. And the rest, as they say, is history.

Our life together was intense. We were pretty much glued to the hip for 5 years. There was a lot of laughing and a fair amount of crying too. KT was a writer. She was also the funniest and sexiest person I’ve ever known. I am a songwriter so it was natural that we fell into writing together and we had a blast doing it. Papers strewn all over our North Saint Louis apartment living room. Late night vocal sessions with our dog Stax curled up next to our feet. I could go on, and I probably will in future writing, but for now I will just leave you with this and a record I am very proud of. I know KT was very proud of it too.

So in honor of my beautiful wife… Kathleen White… who left this plane on her 48th birthday, August 29, 2016, I release these 9 songs by Albany Park Wirephoto titled “Random Acts of Commandment,” which we wrote and produced together in our apartment in Albany Park, Chicago, Illinois.

Merry Christmas.

MT

https://albanyparkwirephoto.bandcamp.com