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his blues society, and they were putting on a competition for the International Blues Challenge,
and he invited me up to compete in that and they had an acoustic solo section. I had only played
out a few times up into that point, at least just doing the solo, and I went ahead and entered and
somehow was selected to represent that chapter at the IBC. So I went to the IBC, I think my first
time was 2007, up in Memphis, and got to compete
at the International Blues Challenge, which was a
big deal to me and still is.

BiTS: Were you in San Antonio by this time?

MS: Yes, I was. I was in San Antonio.

BiTS: I love San Antonio, one of my favourite places
in Texas. You don't know about me that I used to
work in Fort Worth.

MS: Yes, yes. I live outside in the Hill Country in a
little community called Bernie. It's a little German
Hill Country town right outside of San Antonio, and
they have a downtown area that's perfect for
performing and stuff like that.

BiTS: Aside from blues, you have a very, very wide
interest of musicians. You seem to have recorded
in practically every style of guitar work that there
is. What is it that attracts you to guitar music?

MS: Yeah, it goes back to what I was saying earlier,
I just love music and I've dabbled in a lot of different
things. I don't know if you’re much into some of the
blue side of jazz, but I got into Wes Montgomery
and Kenny Burrell. When I listened to them, I
couldn't stop listening to them.

BiTS: (Laughing) And you've done books of music transcription and guitar tab and all that kind
of stuff. How do you find the time?

MS: Yeah. Yep, I do things just to learn and broaden my experience, so putting those books
together was a learning experience for me to go through and document and transcribe that work.
I put a solid year or two into that, just working on it and I think it paid off. I think it helped me
think differently about music too (laughs), re-encapsulating what I'd already recorded. And then
those books came out right around pre-COVID/COVID time and COVID was a very prosperous

time for writing, I guess, because of the isolation and ability to focus.

BiTS: Yes, that's very sensible, of course, to take advantage of that. Over the years, Mark, you've
won loads of awards. Is there anything that's outstanding to you?

MS: Oh well, I think being chosen to represent Austin in the Austin Blues Challenge at IBC because
Austin’s a big music town and Ginger Pickett and myself entered the solo competition. There's
great players in Austin, and that was nice to be selected by Austin to represent them. The other
one was a Texas music award in 2014, for an all-instrumental album I composed called
“Hazepipe”. The idea of that album was just to take all my influences and put them together in
one, and I literally I think, have a little bit of jazz influence, a tiny bit of country, all in that one