Biography All Media Guide
The Blue Mockingbirds is a group made up of brothers Ted Mason and Monty Mason on lead guitars, drummer Milan Mesarich (toured with Peter Wolf and former member of Icicle Works and the Spin Doctors), classical and jazz-trained keyboardist Chris North, and bassist Muzz Skillings, formally of Living Color. The band formed in 1997 when Ted (producer, lead guitarist, and co-songwriter of later-era Modern English) moved to New York where his brother was in college at Columbia University. Mason's greatest claim to fame (after playing the hit "I Melt With You" nightly in concert) was as producer/engineer for Spandau Ballet, Art of Noise, Jesus and Mary Chain, Mary J. Blige, and the Verve. The band takes its name from the rock & roll footnote band the Mynah Birds who formed briefly in 1966 and included Rick James, Neil Young, and Bruce Palmer (right before the latter two formed Buffalo Springfield). Young once described the supergroup (who recorded an album's worth of material but never released it) as "a Rolling Stones kind of R&B thing." The Blue Mockingbirds have a similar appreciation for a broad range of styles and multicultural influences from Brit Pop and bebop jazz to classical and country boogie. Reflected Ted Mason, "We loved the idea of opposites playing together as they did, and we are by dint of birth and upbringing, multicultural." Born to multicultural parents (Nicaraguan and English), the Mason brothers were exposed to a wide range of musical influences. The art rock label MI5 released the group's In Colours in 2001 (with distribution through Koch). The biographical, cathartic album is heavily influenced by the Mason boys' Yorkshire childhood and adolescence.