C-D | 75ORLESS RECORDS

Mark Cutler – Murder of Crows

06/10
75orLess
· 2025 · C-D · Compact Disc · Cutler, Mark · Digital Downloads · New Releases

75OL-384 Mark Cutler – ‘Murder of Crows’ digital download and compact disc

$12.00 S&H Included

Digital download and streaming available here

Track Listing

A Good Day
You Can’t Sweet Talk
Move
Keep an Eye Out
Too Late
Floating Man
Remembering Wrong
I Know What It’s Like
Some Kind of Light
Man on the Moon
Find Out Who Your Friends Are
Home

Words By Rick Massimo:

Mark Cutler has been a musical hero in my native Rhode Island for decades now, and his latest record cements his status as one of the great un(der)discovered songwriters of recent times.

On Murder of Crows, out on streaming services June 9, Cutler continues to make rock music that’s for adults but still actually rocks: direct while still artful, serious without angst, classic but not self-pitying retro, combining the personal and the universal in a way that’s authoritative and empathetic.

My personal favorites included “Floating Man” even before I spoke with Cutler and learned that the titular character is his biological father, who died 10 days before Cutler was born (“So many things he didn’t get to know/As he floats above the power lines/All the people walking to and fro/In and out a little ring of light”); the tough-minded “Find Out Who Your Friends Are” (“You find out who your friends are/They find out who you are too”). The closer “Home,” which Cutler describes as “a love letter to life” (“How high I have felt when the ice starts to melt/First green sings in the sun/A new day’s first sigh/Before you know, the checkered flag flies/Seems like the race has just begun”), is another highlight, as well as the Zevon-esque snarl of “Remembering Wrong,” with lyrics by the Rhode Island-native author, music journalist, and TV producer and host Bill Flanagan.

Cutler recorded a lot of the tracks himself, as well as with longtime bandmates Rick Couto and Jimmy Berger. Murder of Crows is one of two albums Cutler has planned for the year; some the songs are brand new, while some have been kicking around in embryonic form for decades. “I’m getting old, and I want to literally release songs — you know, free them out to the world,” Cutler says. “I don’t want to just have them sitting around on a shelf or anything. …

“It’s just to get my body of work out there — not to be immortal or anything like that, but I feel like if you create something, you owe it, not to the public or to the world, but you owe it to the thing that you created, to give it a fair shot.”

A new path

Cutler made his name with The Schemers and The Raindogs in the 1980s and ‘90s, touring the country and getting radio and video airplay, though the brass ring eluded both bands in the end. That said, he made the break into full-time music-making 11 years ago, quitting his longtime job as a quality assurance engineer. “Dan, who was my therapist, he really saved my life and came up with a plan. I quit my job; I had enough guitar students to hold me over, and I drained my 401k and all that.”

It wasn’t long after that that Cutler found a new musical avenue that’s changed his life.

Filmmaker Jim Wolpaw contacted him about writing the soundtrack for a documentary on the Ladd School, an institution in Rhode Island for nearly a century that served as a school for people with mental and developmental disabilities but in practice was a “dumping ground” with more than a little bit of a eugenical philosophy and with many human rights violations to its name.

Wolpaw wanted Cutler to collaborate with former Ladd School residents on the soundtrack, and while Cutler says he wasn’t sure what to expect at first, by the end of the first meeting “I just said inside myself, ‘Thank you, God — I know I made the right decision.’”

That led to a decade of work with people with disabilities, and that led to The Same Thing Project, which Cutler describes as a community songwriting workshop for people from all walks of life.

“My elevator pitch is ‘From the banker to the bricklayer,’” Cutler says. We all want to want something out of life, like love, happiness. Want to take care of ourselves. Want to be able to have something to look forward to.”

Workshops are held once a week, and roughly 30 people show up. “Their day is transformed,” Cutler says. “I won’t say their life’s transformed, but their day is better. And I know my day and my life are better because of it. So, you know, it’s nice to have that cause and that effect.”

While a lot of the people at the Same Thing Project are differently abled, many are not. “My goal is to not have the Same Thing be about folks who are disabled. They’re just part of it. You know? They’re like, ‘That guy’s retired; that guy has Down syndrome’ — it’s just, that’s a person, that’s a person, and we’re all part of this thing, that we’re writing a song together.”

A lot of people find it a difficult time to be creative, and Cutler says he feels the same way at times — “I’ve gone a year without writing a song; there’s been periods of time when that happens” — but on the other hand working with the Same Thing Project is a great way to keep the creative muscles in shape.

Memories

Now Cutler, 67, plays with his band, Mark Cutler and the Men of Great Courage, as well as solo shows and the occasional Schemers reunion (“I don’t have much family alive anymore. … Your bandmates, they become a family for you too”). He’s not the same person who wrote “I Want Some Fun” or “Remember” more than 40 years ago, but the songs are memories for him as well as the audience.

“In most of the songs that I wrote, I can remember where I was when I wrote them, and I can go back to that, basement, and feel the air. You’re not the same person, but recalling back to that person is something that that’s magic, because, not everybody gets to do that, you know? I mean maybe a carpenter or a stone mason who can see, like, the brick wall that they built for a house when they were in their 30s or 20s. I guess that’s like our little monument, or whatever.”

Meanwhile, the songs keep coming, and with Murder of Crows, they keep coming out. Cutler’s also a skilled, evocative painter — he did the cover of the new record, and his Instagram features his artwork regularly — but songwriting, he says, is like nothing else.

“Songwriting resonates,” Cutler says. “I can feel it vibrating in my body, my chest, like two cool notes hitting together. And I’m not like, religious or anything. I’m very agnostic. But I do feel like completing a song, the act of writing a song, especially with other people — like Jesus said, ‘Where two or more of you are there in my name, that’s where I am’? Well, that’s God. To me, when you get together writing a song, that’s God — writing a song with other people. It’s a spiritual thing, even if you’re writing the low-down nastiest song in the world. It’s great stuff.”

And it’s as important as ever. “I know where I stand in the pantheon, but — you know, sometimes they find diaries of people [from] during Nazi wartime, and sometimes those little diaries say so much more. I’m not even talking about Anne Frank, although they found her diary. But you find these little snippets of life, and that’s what I’m trying to do, is leave little clues. And let people know ‘This is what was going on. And in my corner of the world, this is how I was feeling.’”

Droplets Itchy Friction

05/17
75orLess
· 2025 · C-D · Digital Downloads · Droplets · New Releases

75OL-390 Droplets – Itchy Friction digital download

Digital download and streaming is available here

Track Listing

Denial of Service 04:42
Object Oriented 04:08
Screwd Bi U 05:14
Love Tarp 03:16
He Got a Floppy Disk (But I Still Love Him) 03:34
Manpond 04:07
Talk to My Allergist 03:40
Loophole 05:44
Samplr 04:40
All Tuned Up 02:30

2nd full length album from electronic outfit, Droplets.

Droplets He Got a Floppy Disk

03/14
75orLess
· 2025 · C-D · Digital Downloads · Droplets · New Releases

75OL-386 Droplets – He Got a Floppy Disk..(but I still love him) digital single

[Digital download and streaming available here]

3rd single from the upcoming 2nd full length Droplets release

2025 Events Repeat Music

Droplets Manpond

02/16
75orLess
· 2025 · C-D · Digital Downloads · Droplets · New Releases

75OL-385 Droplets – Manpond digital single

Digital download and streaming available here

The 2nd digital single from the upcoming album.

Track Listing

Manpond

Droplets Denial of Service

01/22
75orLess
· 2025 · C-D · Digital Downloads · Droplets · New Releases

75OL-383 Droplets – Denial of Service digital single

Digital download and streaming available here

Track Listing

Denial of Service

1st single from the upcoming Droplets 2nd full length recording.

The Callouts Victory Lap

01/01
75orLess
· C-D · Digital Downloads · New Releases · The Callouts

75OL-379 The Callouts – ‘Victory Lap’ digital download

[Digital download and streaming available here]

Track Listing

Calling Out 01:20
Policy Unknown 02:25
Killer Instinct 04:08
Matchstick 02:59
Carolina 03:31
Houses 04:00
Glomming On 00:29

Let’s face it, since they released their last album in 2019 the world had a few hiccups. The Callouts however persevered and are back with a new album featuring 7 of their best new songs. Where many local bands struggle to make it past a second album, The Callouts went for the finish line and can now celebrate the release by taking a VICTORY LAP.

Keep an eye out for shows and a physical media release (vinyl and tees and stuff) later in 2025. But for now, enjoy the album!

credits

released January 1, 2025

© 2025, all songs written by The Callouts
Produced by Chris Piquette and The Callouts
Recorded, mixed & mastered by Chris Piquette at No Boundaries Studios, North Kingstown, RI