Mark Fry

Early life

Mark Lewis Fry was born in Epping, Essex, into a family of artists descended from the Quaker founders of the Bristol-based chocolate business J. S. Fry & Sons. His father is the painter Anthony Fry. Mark Fry is a cousin of Roger Fry, the artist, critic and member of the Bloomsbury Group.

Fry was educated at Dartington Hall School in Devon. On leaving Dartington in 1970 he enrolled at the Accademia delle Belle Arti in Florence, Italy, where he studied painting under the Futurist Primo Conti.

Dreaming With Alice

During Fry's time in Italy he was introduced to the record producer Vincenzo Micocci. On hearing some of Fry's songs, Micocci signed him to record label IT Dischi, a subsidiary of RCA. Dreaming with Alice was recorded by Fry and a band of session musicians in Rome over a three-day period in the summer of 1971. Following the recording session Fry toured Italy supporting singer Lucio Dalla.

Fry left Italy in autumn 1971 to return to England before Dreaming With Alice was released. He was sent a box of the records following the release on IT Dischi records in Italy in 1972, and had no further dealings with the label. For several years, Fry continued to perform music with various musicians including drummer Pete Thomas (later of Elvis Costello's band The Attractions), but without any associated record releases. In the early 1980s, after a long period of travel in the US and West Africa, Fry decided to return to London and pursue his career as an artist.

Unknown to Mark Fry, the album Dreaming With Alice had been developing cult status over the ensuing three decades as a psychedelic folk classic, garnering acclaim from critics and a new generation of musicians as diverse as Kieran Hebden (Four Tet), Colleen and Plastic Crimewave. Fry was to discover this by chance in the early 2000s.

Dreaming With Alice is included in Record Collector's Top 20 Strange Folk Albums (Strange Folk Revisited, August 2009).

Mark Fry and Dreaming With Alice are featured in the anthology Galactic Ramble (Foxcote Press, 2009) as well as in Seasons They Change: The Story of Acid, Psych and Experimental Folk by Jeanette Leech (Jawbone Press, 2010).

The highest price paid at auction to date for an original copy of Dreaming With Alice was $4,061 in May 2013.

Painting

Fry has achieved renown as a painter, with eight solo exhibitions since 1993 in London's West End and the Charleston Gallery. Fry's 2005 show "Into the Air" was reviewed by British periodical The Week, which wrote: "With simple lines and subtle effects of texture and shadow, Fry achieves a cool, lyrical elegance with its own dynamism."

Recent work

In 2006, Sunbeam Records reissued a remastered version of the album Dreaming With Alice in the UK.

In January 2008, Fry released his second album, Shooting the Moon, an album of 15 songs penned over a number of years.

In November 2008, Fry was invited by Steve Krakow, also known as Plastic Crimewave, to appear at the fourth Million Tongues Event in Chicago.

In February 2009, Fry collaborated with Nick Franglen of Lemon Jelly on a new version of the title song of Dreaming With Alice, which was released as a limited-edition vinyl single on Fruits de Mer Records.

In 2009 Fry was contacted by Dorset-based experimental musicians Michael Tanner and Nicholas Palmer, together known as The A. Lords. A musical collaboration ensued, and during 2009 and 2010 the three worked on new songs together, Fry adding lyrics and vocal parts to music composed and recorded by Palmer and Tanner.

In May 2010 Mark Fry and The A. Lords played at Bush Hall in London, where they were introduced by critic Will Hodgkinson on the occasion of Fry's first performance on a London stage for more than 30 years.

In September 2011 Second Language Music released the album created by Mark Fry, Nicholas Palmer and Michael Tanner, called I Lived in Trees by Mark Fry and The A.Lords. The album was well-received and its release was followed by a London concert for which Fry's band Mark Fry and Friends included Grasshopper of Mercury Rev, Guto Pryce of Super Furry Animals, Martin Smith of Tunng, Nicholas Palmer and Nick Franglen, who also produced the event.

In November 2012 the writer and producer John Lloyd chose Fry's song "Regrets" as one of the eight recordings he would like to take to a desert island in the long-running BBC Radio programme Desert Island Discs.

In April 2013 Mark Fry played three concerts in Tokyo, which resulted in a live album, Mark Fry Live in Japan.

On 29 September 2014 Second Language Music released a further album by Fry entitled South Wind, Clear Sky.

Albums

Singles

Compilations

Solo exhibitions