The Deal (band)
| Mark Roebuck | |
|---|---|
| Birth name | Mark Morgan Roebuck |
| Born |
November 23, 1958 New Orleans, Louisiana, United States |
| Genres | Folk, rock and roll |
| Occupation(s) | Musician, songwriter |
| Instruments | Vocals, guitar |
| Years active | 1982–present |
| Labels | Bearsville, Not Lame, Fear of the Atom |
| Website | deal-band |
Mark Roebuck is a composer and musician living near Charlottesville, Virginia, known primarily for his work as the main songwriter for the 1980s underground power pop group The Deal and for his later project, Tribe of Heaven, Imagine We Were, recorded with Dave Matthews in 1989-90 and finally put out as an independent release in 2005.
Born in New Orleans, Louisiana, Roebuck moved at age four to Petersburg, Virginia. In his teens, he began writing and recording original music and playing professionally as a folk duo with classmate Eric Schwartz. In 1977 Roebuck and Schwartz both moved to Charlottesville to attend the University of Virginia. There they met Memphis musician and classmate Haines Fullerton and formed The Deal. They eventually added Hugh Patton and Jim Jones to the lineup and began playing up and down the east coast, while continuing to record demos of their original material. In 1982 they signed with Premier Talent Agency and completed a management contract with former Ramones manager Linda S. Stein. In 1983 Albert Grossman, head of Warner Bros. Records subsidiary label Bearsville Records, signed the band to a five-album recording contract. In late 1983, The Deal recorded Time Won't Come Back, a five-song EP produced by Richard Gottehrer. Shortly thereafter Warner Bros. severed ties with Bearsville, and the EP was never released. In 1984 Hugh Patton and Eric Schwartz left the band. Former Big Star drummer Jody Stephens briefly signed on, but left and was replaced by Mike Clark. With this new lineup The Deal began working on a second EP, provisionally titled Tuesday Gone To Ruin, which was completed in late 1985. It included five new original songs, and a guitar solo by fellow Bearsville artist Todd Rundgren. In January, 1986 Albert Grossman died of a massive coronary while flying on the Concorde to a musical convention in Europe, effectively ending Bearsville's status as an active company in the music industry, and ending any chance for the release of the second EP. Roebuck and the other members of the Deal were on the verge of calling it quits when Jody Stephens, by then running Ardent Studios in Memphis, offered the band a spec deal to record an entire album. The result was Brave New World, completed in 1987. The record included some percussion contributions from Stephens as well as a few background vocals from Stephens' Big Star band-mate Alex Chilton. The project was shopped unsuccessfully to major labels, and was eventually released independently. It was largely a critical success, called by the Washington Post, 'remarkably assured pop classicism,' and it led to The Deal being named by Musician Magazine one of the twenty best unsigned bands in the world. However, sales were limited, and in fall 1988 the Deal finally broke up. The music of the Deal remained firmly in obscurity until 2003 when a power pop independent label, Not Lame Recordings, released Goodbye September, a 14-song anthology of the Deal's music. The record was highly praised and became one of Not Lame's best selling releases of that year.
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