Mark Durante

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Mark Durante is a guitarist who is currently based in Chicago.

Durante began playing guitar in 1968 after being inspired by the fretwork of Jimi Hendrix, Frank Zappa and Merle Travis. Ten years later, Durante founded a rock combo he named "Public Enemy". Durante's band bears no relationship to the hip-hop musicians of the same name.

In the early 1980s, Durante played guitar with The Aliens and the punk band The Next Big Thing. In the late 1980's, he played with The Slammin' Watusis who recorded two albums for Epic Records. Although a third album was produced by Rick Nielsen of Cheap Trick, it was not released because Watusis were dropped by their record label.

Durante then played guitar with The Revolting Cocks on their 1990 U.S. tour and their 1991 European tour.[1] During that tour, RevCo recorded the live tracks for their Beers, Steers and Queers Remixes EP, on which Durante provided guitar. [2]

In 1992, Durante joined another WaxTrax industrial rock combo, KMFDM.[3] In addition to playing guitar, Durante helped write all but two of the tracks on the album, "Angst". Durante toured with KMFDM and provided guitar and some songwriting on the subsequent albums "Nihil"[4] and "Xtort"[5]. The All Music Guide describes the albums on which Durante contributed as KMFDM's "best-known and strongest releases."[6]

Since 1995, Durante has played steel guitar as a member of the insurgent country band The Waco Brothers.[7] Originally intended to be a side project, Durante and the Waco Brothers have recorded eight albums for Chicago's Bloodshot Records label.[8] Their latest album, "Waco Express: Live & Kickin' at Schuba's Tavern", is a concert recording which Ken Tucker, the pop music critic for NPR Fresh Air and Editor-at-Large at Entertainment Weekly, described as "country as it should be written and played, with a long memory for roadhouse honky-tonks rather than TV-ready music videos."[9] In 1997, Durante played guitar on Jon Langford's "Skull Orchard" album. [10],

In 2004, Durante released a solo CD entitled "Welcome to Earth" under the nom de rock of durantula.[11]