Mark Stoffel
In a bluegrass world where bands see regular turnovers, Mark Stoffel is an anomaly. For the past 16 years, the mandolin ace for Chris Jones and the Night Drivers has been laying down a solid chop on tours across the country and with his creative innovations on sevenof the group’s CDs. After growing up in Munich, Germany, exposed to a variety of music genres, Stoffel had one foot in the States and the other across the pond before finally deciding to make his home base in Southern Illinois. In addition to his dedication to the band, Mark has branched out repeatedly with his own solo work. His latest, True Tones, is another musical excavation into innovative bluegrass.
Stoffel first became acquainted with his employer when Jones’ band would tour in Germany and Europe in the 90s. In between concert dates, Stoffel would offer his place for band members to stay to save on hotel expenses, and Jones took him up on the offer for several years. In the late 1990s when Mark was visiting Illinois during the off season, Stoffel was asked to fill in on a few gigs as mandolin player. In 2009 he became a fulltime member.
“He came through the area with his wife Sally Jones. She asked me to play a couple of dates up in Alberta where they live. I played with her, and Chris was there. Then, Chris afterward asked me if I’d be interested in joining the Night Drivers. At that time, he already knew me as a person and certainly as a musician.”
There were several reasons Mark wanted to be in the band. “I liked his personality. I liked his songwriting. I liked his voice. Those are all important factors for feeling comfortable in the group. It’s just really fun. And he’s a fantastic band leader! He’s always open to suggestions. If you have a bad day, he’s not gonna hold it against you.”
Chris demonstrated that their relationship goes deeper than the music when he made a long trip to surprise Mark on a special occasion. “He just showed up. He lives in Canada mind you, and he just pulls up into the drive and crashes the party. That is pretty amazing. It was a surprise party or just his part was a surprise. I guess he knew about it. I had never thought that he would make the trip.”
As the senior member of the Night Drivers, Stoffel coaches and helps the newer sidemen. “He [Chris] has a lot on his plate. Being the band leader, and promoter, dealing with a variety of things, travels, and whatnot. So I see my responsibility as helping to … keep a level of happiness and comradery. Then, musically I’m just the mandolin player. I try to keep the timing going with my chop. I like to tell my teammates to just keep a dynamic. Don’t always go in a hundred percent. Just kind of back off. Make some space for Chris’ voice, make some space for maybe another solo, those kinds of things. That doesn’t always come naturally, especially to younger players, so that’s something you have to sort of convey diplomatically.”
“I already told you that I really like what he does, and now I think I dare to say I’m a big part of the sound because I’ve been on the last seven records or so and when we work up new material, Chris relies on my input and my ideas. It’s kind of part of me now and I feel very connected to the band!
Mark’s History
Mark started playing the piano when he was a little boy, but it’s definitely not the instrument to tote along on a camping trip to play with the gang. So he asked his parents for a mandolin for Christmas. “I didn’t really have a concept of what the mandolin was. I was actually imagining a small guitar, more like a ukulele. I was kind of confused by it.”
Searching for some clarification, he stumbled into a music store in downtown Munich and discovered Jack Tottle’s Bluegrass Mandolin instruction book. “It had an F5 mandolin on the front cover that just blew me away. It looked like a little mini electric guitar to me.”
“I didn’t have anybody to show me anything, and at the time, I was still taking piano lessons. My piano teacher quickly got the drift that I wasn’t really interested in piano anymore because I didn’t do my homework, and I had to confess to him that I found another love in instruments.”
“He was a real cool guy, jazz and classically trained, but he also played all kinds of styles, and he opened the book and I started playing “Woody’s Rag,” and he immediately started doing the piano back up.”
Mark got a taste of bluegrass and country music through the Armed Forces radio network, from bands like Doyle Lawson and Quicksilver that would tour there, and a few pilgrimages he made to a huge bluegrass festival in Toulouse, France. Eclectic record stores would supply his music collection with musicians like Tony Rice, Hot Rize, Country Gazette, New Grass Revival, and David Grisman.
“That is kind of what initially influenced me, and then, I was interested in digging deeper, and I got my hands on some Flatt and Scruggs records and I really dug that. To this day, it’s my favorite first-generation bluegrass sound.”
After Mark finished high school and was conscripted into military service for a year and a half, he became a musical gypsy. Living out of “an old hippie van” with a little sound system, he and some buddies traveled across Germany, Austria, and Switzerland playing gigs. “It’s like novelty music over there, especially at the time … but because it has a lot of energy and drive, most people respond very favorably.”
In the late 80s, Mark realized he needed to build a stronger foundation in life, and through a connection of his, he ended up in the United States at Southern Illinois University where he earned a bachelor’s degree in radio and television production. “During that time I met a whole bunch of people here in Southern Illinois and Missouri. There’s a really vibrant music scene here. We went to festivals almost every weekend. I played fiddle and I went to fiddle contests, everyone I could go to here, which helped me meet other fiddle players and learn how to do it right.”
In 1992, after his Visa ran out, Mark returned to Germany, leading a double life working for a media production company and touring extensively with a band that was started over there. After 9 years, he returned to Southern Illinois to work on his master’s degree and decided to stay. He noticed a difference in the music audiences in Germany versus the U.S. “Bluegrass is just not part of the culture and a lot of times it gets mixed with all kinds of stereotypes Germans hold about the US, like cowboys and Indians, trucks (from the convoy movies). Even the Confederate flag keeps popping up occasionally. And even though most Germans speak English, there is still a bit of a language barrier.
However, there is a small but enthusiastic core of bluegrass fans, and they’re faithfully supporting the music, they come to concerts and festivals, and that really makes a difference.”
True Tones
In October 2024, Stoffel released his third studio album, True Tones, which was mostly recorded at his label, Mountain Home Music in Arden, North Carolina. It follows his 2021 successful recording, Coffee and Cake, and One-O-Five, his 2008 solo debut. His latest 12-cut project includes 11 originals he penned and a remake of Reno and Smiley’s “I’m Using My Bible for a Road Map.” All of Stoffel’s tunes are instrumental, but he doesn’t want listeners to recognize them right away in that regard. “Because most of them, I think, have very, hopefully, memorable melodies and stick enough to where it’s almost like listening to a song with the absence of lyrics. I’d like to think that people listen to the album and don’t think of it primarily as an instrumental album.”
His desire is that the instrumentals tell a wordless story. “Some of my [melodic] ideas that I have when I create stuff seem very simplistic at first, but then, I play around with them and experiment with different chords that might not go with it. I just kind of try to keep it simple and memorable.
“I’ve always thought even in pop music that the best guitar solos are the ones that you can hum. You listen to them, and you sort of have them in your head, and you kind of sing along with the guitar solo. I find with a lot of bluegrass instrumentals it’s almost impossible to do that unless it’s a fiddle waltz or something like that. A lot of times bluegrass instrumentals are more texture than melody, and I find more solace in creating melody.”
Even though the mandolinist likes picking with some lightning-speed licks at times, it’s not the most important of making music. “How much emotional weight do you put in every note? There are other factors that play into it like the tone of each note. How do you strike it—hard or soft? There’s all these little nuances that you can apply to make it sound different or more musical. I think the end game is: Is it music? Or is it just notes?”
One of Stoffel’s creations “Barnyard Funk,” was inspired by the King of Pop Michael Jackson’s hit, “Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough.” “At the very end, it’s like the fade out, there’s this little riff that keeps repeating, and I thought that always fascinated me. So one day I picked up the mandolin, and I tried to find what that is, and I decided I’m gonna just take that one lick and turn it into a funky bluegrass instrumental! So if you listen to the end of that Michael Jackson song, and then to ‘Barnyard Funk,’ you kind of see where that came from. That was the funk part, and I just juxtaposed it with sort of a grassy melody.”
For this project, Mark rolled up his sleeves, composing, arranging, and tackling other pre-production duties in anticipation of the main event in the studio. “It’s amazing to see something come together and in one or two days making something out of nothing, with a bunch of great people and a good engineer behind the console makes it an unforgettable experience.
“The other thing that I really really appreciate when you deal with professionals—and that’s why they’re professionals—everybody’s prepared. Once you all sit down, everybody knows what they’re doing. It just comes together. It’s like getting all the components for a construction project together. It is maybe the biggest amount of work, but then putting it all together goes really quickly. It’s amazing. It’s almost like a birth.”
But in making his baby, Mark tries to remain chill about the final outcome. “It’s healthy to keep your expectations a little lower, but it’s usually better than I had imagined. I’m very happy with it. Of course, I’m super biased, and I’m not objective about it at all. I did my part, and I’m proud of my part, and if it doesn’t go anywhere, I’m still happy because I did it for the love of it.”
