{image1}Anyone who listens to one of keyboardist Mark Mallman's bleak concept albums gets the feeling that he is hiding behind a character. After one listen to his first live album, "Live from First Avenue, Minneapolis," available on Susstones Records, fans will hear the real Mallman emerging like a musical Mr. Hyde, sometimes leaving broken keyboards and broken fingers in his wake.

"I really take a fly-by-night approach to my live show. They are always different," he says over the phone, "I get a little goofy. You keep doing the same songs over and over and you tend to get a little antsy."

Mallman's albums, such as "The Red Bedroom," and unconventional and entertaining live shows have been drawing his ever-increasing fan base in droves in the Twin Cities, where he currently resides. The former art student has become the David Blaine of the music world, making it hard for the casual fan to discern if he's trying to be Andy Warhol or Jackson Browne.

In September 1999, Mallman performed his song "Marathon" for 26.2 straight hours in an event covered by local and national press, and viewed by 28,000 fans over the Internet. As a result, he lost his singing voice, inspiring a track off his release "How I Lost My Life and Lived To Tell About It." The next year, he went under a microscope when he faked his own death the night before a show. Later that year, he performed a Henry David Thoreau-inspired show titled "Human Insect," in a 6'x2'3' refrigerator box.

Those expecting the Waukesha native to make another attempt to blur the line between pop music and pop art will be sorely disappointed. As he prepares to take his intense performances on the road for his first nationwide tour, Mallman is busy preparing demos for his next album.

"I'm just writing for now," he says. "There are too many forces at work preventing me from attempting something like that again. The people from New York and Los Angles want me to be a musician right now."

For the first 18 years of his life, the 30-year-old Mallman listened to the Rolling Stones, Steely Dan, Jackson Browne and other classic rock staples on the only station that played them, 96.5 WKLH.

Moving from Waukesha to Seattle and back, he finally found himself in Minneapolis-St. Paul, where he joined up with 1998 Twin Cities critics' poll winner The Odd, a band influenced by punk and the Stones. They quickly disbanded, but the breakup gave Mallman the freedom to do his own thing.

He then went on to release dark, character-driven concept albums, starting with the critically-acclaimed "The Tourist." Fans maybe surprised that the inspiration for his unique body of work doesn't come so much from literature, but from the silver screen.

"I'm definitely moved by music, but I'm inspired by other things. I go to a lot of movies," Mallman says, "They inspire me for a lot of my characters (on my albums). When I wrote 'The Red Bedroom,' I watched 'Lost Highway' a lot. It helped give me a darker edge."

Even when he thinks he's hiding behind the façade of a character in a David Lynch movie, Mallman looks back and sees parts of him coming through, especially in his early work, bringing an another dimension and richness to his songwriting.

"You totally think you aren't writing about you, but you look back years later and you say, 'That's me!' People aren't black and white. They go through many different emotions just like everyone else."

It's these flurries of emotion that Mallman want the audience to experience when they attend his live shows. One minute he's covering the Moby track "Natural Blues," and then he moves on to one of his pop-sounding songs dealing with his early bouts with depression. No matter which way the show will turn, he always wants the audience to be entertained.

"You want to make something people want to hear," he explains, "You want them to say, 'I'm not the only one who feels depressed.' I hope they see quality, but with none of the scenster attitude. There's a lot of that going around."

Mallman feels that his greatest achievement hasn't come from continuing to make quality of music, but by fighting the system that tells him that he shouldn't. He says proudly, "I'm staying true to my vision."

Mark Mallman performing at Mad Planet. Sat., Nov. 22. For more information, please visit www.mallman.com.