The Hard Lessons

Mark Dawson has passed.

“Dirty” was meticulous in all aspects of his life. Musician. Comic book nerd. Spice connoisseur. We used to laugh when the cooks at Thai restaurants would come out to see just who was eating the food “as spicy as you can make it” and watch their jaws drop when they saw it was the white boy with the epic beard.

We were kids when we met, and aside from his stints as drummer in The Hard Lessons, he shared a flat in Hamtramck with Korin and others like our friend Eve, we played in our good friend Scott’s band Battling S**i, and he spent years putting together his band Mod Orange - a band he recorded in a studio he hand built and played on a guitar he had custom made and performed with orange shoes though an orange Matchless amp. Meticulous.

He had a quiet presence and you needed patience for those long pauses while he thought. And a backbone for his dry wit and sarcasm.

The biggest show The Hard Lessons ever played was with Mark in Madison, Wisconsin in front of ten thousand folks in the street in front of the capitol. We swapped instruments. He recorded a PBS special with us that I am glad exists. We drove through Times Square blasting The Who. We played many late night shows and stayed up on my grandparents couch we had relocated to Hamtramck. And then we walked to get breakfast and Salvador Deli before it burned down.

Music brought us together. He moved out west and had a whole other life with friends who knew him in other ways, but for countless friends and family in Metro Detroit he will leave a huge hole in our hearts and lives. I know many of you reading this saw him play drums with THL if you didn’t know him otherwise.

He was a really good dude. He deserves to be remembered. I hope he finds what he’s looking for.

-Augie