Resurrecting the Psychedelic Dream: Mark Doyle’s ‘Incense and Peppermints: Out of the Past II’

Mark Doyle’s ‘Incense and Peppermints: Out of the Past II’ is more than a tribute to the psychedelic era. It’s a full-scale resurrection filtered through the hands of a guitarist who lived it in real time.

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But rather than a museum piece, this is psychedelia as hauntology—the ghost of a vanished past flickering back to life in uncanny high fidelity. Doyle, a veteran musician with a career spanning everything from orchestral string arrangements to wailing blues rock, takes on the classics with both reverence and reinvention. Featuring the powerhouse drumming of Steve Jordan and the pristine immersive mixing of Bob Clearmountain, this is a true sonic time capsule cracked wide open, each note carrying the eerie shimmer of memory replayed in ultra-definition.

Doyle’s weapon of choice varies—a 1954 Stratocaster here, a Gibson ES-335 there—but his approach remains consistent. Melody is king. His guitar takes on the role of vocalist, soaring through tracks like Aphrodite’s Child’s ‘The Four Horsemen’ and Simon and Garfunkel’s ‘The Sound of Silence’ with an emotional weight that transcends words. Like some audio archaeologist of the subconscious, Doyle manages to unearth not just the sound of a lost era but its lingering presence, the way these songs still ripple through time, refusing to settle into the past.

“The music you hear in your early and teenage years has the most profound effect on you.”

Mark, ‘Incense and Peppermints: Out of the Past II’ is a fascinating tribute to the psychedelic era. What initially inspired you to revisit this period and create a follow-up to your 2001 album?

Mark Doyle: I happened upon a Facebook post that someone made about my ‘Out of the Past’ album, and a friend of mine named Jeff Jones had commented, “I wish Mark would do a follow-up to this album because it’s my favorite one of his.” A bunch of people liked his comment, and I started to think about it.

The first ‘Out of the Past’ focused on 1966. How did you approach the selection of tracks for this second volume, and what was your process for uncovering those hidden gems from the era?

Since the first ‘Out of the Past’ had focused on 1966, I just started moving forward from there and realized how much great music there was from the psychedelic era and how it spanned several years. I had a great deal of nostalgia for the era because I had left home when I was 17 and moved to Syracuse, NY. The Summer of Love was a year late getting to Syracuse, so I used to hang out around the university with a bunch of my newfound hippie friends. There was a little greasy spoon restaurant on campus called the Gridiron, and it had an amazing jukebox stocked with Jefferson Airplane, Country Joe and the Fish, Moby Grape, Fever Tree, Strawberry Alarm Clock, Buffalo Springfield, The First Edition, and, of course, The Beatles and The Stones. You could order a dish of mint chocolate chip ice cream and loiter there all day, digging the sounds.

Your choice of tracks includes some deep cuts and classics. How did you balance including well-known songs with more obscure selections?

Well, about half the songs I remembered from that jukebox: ‘Incense and Peppermints,’ ‘San Francisco Girls,’ ‘A Rose for Emily,’ ‘Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In).’ My girlfriend at the time loved Tim Buckley and turned me on to him—’Hallucinations’ was just an unbelievable piece of music. ‘The Sound of Silence’ is from a little earlier than the psychedelic era, but the imagery and the electric band that was added always had an acid-rock vibe to it for me.

‘The Four Horsemen’ and ‘Rainbow Chaser’ I discovered by searching for psychedelic-era music from Europe and the UK.

And ‘Tune In and Sunflower Girl’ are original compositions of mine.

I tried a bunch of other songs, but these are the ones that worked as instrumentals because the melody needs to be very strong to carry a performance without lyrics.

The guitar tones on this album are absolutely divine. Could you tell us more about your gear choices, particularly the custom Dishaw and the ’54 Stratocaster? How do these instruments contribute to the album’s sound?

Thank you. The Dishaw is designed by luthier Dan Dishaw, who is based in Syracuse. He also makes high-end custom pool cues. When he was building the guitar, he asked me to describe my ideal guitar, and I told him it would tonally have the sounds of a Strat and a Gibson Les Paul. The body and neck are made of African mahogany. The construction is neck-through-body, which adds a tremendous amount of sustain to the overall tone and resonance of the guitar, along with a highly figured tiger maple top. Ebony fingerboard with a 14” radius, Sperzel locking tuners with a Stetsbar tremolo. Extremely versatile three-pickup configuration with Seymour Duncan four-conductor pickups—’59 reissue Alnico at the fingerboard, Jeff Beck in the bridge position, and a single-coil Alnico Strat in the middle. Five-way selector switch with push-push volume and tone that splits the coils to produce an array of variable tones. Natural binding with a cherry sunburst finish.

The ’54 Strat I bought used in 1976 when I was playing a gig with Andy Pratt at Paul’s Mall in Boston. A guy brought it backstage and wanted $1,000 for it. I had just gotten paid and offered him $750 cash, which he accepted. It’s probably worth $40,000 now and never leaves my house!

I also used a 1977 Gibson ES-335 TD.

I played the Dishaw on everything except ‘Tune In and Sunflower Girl,’ which were the 335, and ‘A Rose for Emily,’ which was the ’54 Strat.

The string arrangements on the album are particularly striking. Can you dive into your process for crafting these arrangements and how they integrate with the overall psychedelic theme?

I love writing for strings, and any time I get to use them on a record is a special thing for me. There were strings on a lot of psychedelic records—and on a lot of ‘60s records in general—so it wasn’t a big stretch. I mean, George Martin’s arrangements on ‘I Am the Walrus’ and ‘Within You, Without You’ were pretty trippy. But my influences also go back to jazz string arrangers like André Previn and guys like Jimmie Haskell, who did Ode to Billie Joe, and Paul Riser, who did Papa Was a Rolling Stone. And of course, Paul Buckmaster and the early Elton stuff.

In terms of crafting the arrangement, it’s pretty much like what I do when arranging for a singer like Mary Fahl, whose last two albums that I produced also had my string arrangements. It helps to know right at the beginning which songs are going to have strings and to leave space for them.

Working with Bob Clearmountain on the surround mixes must have been an incredible experience. How did his approach to immersive audio enhance your vision for this project?

I’ve known Bob since 1978, when we first worked together on Cindy Bullens’ ‘Desire Wire’ album. He did the award-winning 5.1 mix on Mary Fahl’s ‘From the Dark Side of the Moon’ Blu-ray, which I co-produced with David Werner.

From the moment I started work on my album, I had Bob in the front of my mind as the only guy who could mix it like I was hearing it in my head. I knew the mixer needed to be someone from that era, and someone who hears music in a very visual way, because that sort of personifies the psychedelic experience. I remember my own experiments with psychedelics back in those days—hearing music in three dimensions, above me and all around me, and feeling like I was a part of it and one with the music. So I think if you’re trying to give people a feeling of what the psychedelic movement was like, you have to acknowledge that drugs were a big part of the listening experience. Since I’ve lived a drug- and alcohol-free life for many decades now, I have to say that Dolby Atmos is a great way to put yourself in that headspace without damaging your health—haha.

Throughout the course of the mixing, Bob would write and say, “I’m really enjoying mixing this record. Your music really lends itself to the Atmos treatment.” And he came up with that great breakdown in Tune In, where it’s just drums, backwards guitar, and strings. He got really creative and engaged. Bob is the best—he just immediately got what I was going for, and he totally graced the sound with his magic.

Steve Jordan’s drumming adds a remarkable groove to the album. What drew you to him for this project, and how did his involvement shape the final sound of the album?

I’ve known Steve since 2015, when he invited me to Germano Studios in NYC while he was mixing Keith Richards’ Crosseyed Heart album. We really hit it off, and his wife Meegan is my wife’s best friend. So we had been trying to get together to play, but the opportunity hadn’t presented itself. Finally, I thought, Wait a minute, I’ll just ask him to play on MY album. I texted him, and he answered me right back, saying, “LOVE IT! Let’s DO it!!!”

We timed it for when he’d be in NYC rehearsing with the Stones for their secret show. We booked our sessions from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., and then he went to rehearse with the Stones from 3 to 8. Then we’d have dinner together afterward and talk about the next day’s work.

Again, like with Bob, I just started hearing Steve’s groove in my head while I was working on the recording. The drums went on last, so he was able to respond to the whole vibe, including the strings. He was so musical, had such a pocket, and we had an absolute blast hanging out together.

You mentioned that Jordan went the extra mile to capture the vintage sound of the era. Can you share more about the specific techniques and equipment he used to achieve this?

We talked on the phone early on to brainstorm the session, and when I explained to him what I was going for, he said, “We need a vintage drum kit for this. I know a studio in New York that’s private and has a 1963 vintage Rogers kit, a great board, and some cool mics. It also has two Fairchilds.”

So we booked Funky Joe’s, and Steve actually went in the day before, while I was traveling down to NYC, and got the drums set up and mic’d with vintage ribbon mics—including a rare Telefunken ribbon used on Ringo’s snare at Abbey Road. The drums were tuned to have a nice, open sound, and he played a test drum performance over one of my songs and sent me the MP3 to listen to after I checked into my hotel. I mean, he had it covered, so when we went in the next morning, we were ready to record.

He also had a wide choice of vintage snares, so, for instance, when I told him at dinner one night that I wanted Sunflower Girl’s drums to sound like Greg Errico from Sly, he jumped up and said, “Greg’s my brother!!!” He proceeded to change the snare the next day because “this is what Greg would use.” And it turns out the board was designed by the drummer in the Blues Magoos, so I knew we were in the right place!

The album seems to be a personal journey for you, reflecting your own experiences growing up around Syracuse. How did your time at the Gridiron influence your approach to this project?

It wasn’t just about the music to me. The music was the soundtrack to what was in the air at the time—at least in my experience. Most of us were away from home for the first time, and there was a real sense of wonder and discovery. We looked after one another, so there was kindness and trust there. It was that golden period between childhood and adulthood, so I look back on it with a lot of nostalgia and affection. I wanted especially to honor that feeling in the music.

Your background in jazz piano and your early experiences with your father’s big-band arrangements have clearly shaped your musical perspective. How do you see these influences merging with your work as a guitarist and arranger on this album?

I started playing piano when I was four, and if I was good about my classical studies, my dad would let me take summers off to learn jazz piano with him. Before The Beatles appeared on Ed Sullivan, I only listened to jazz. I thought pop music was moronic. So by the time of the British Invasion, I had a solid background in jazz and theory. Yes, I would work summers as my dad’s copyist for his arrangements and got to see the nuts and bolts of making an arrangement. The Beatles swept away any ambition I had of being a jazz pianist—I just wanted to learn guitar and do that, haha.

For some reason, I told myself that I should only be self-taught on guitar, that all of that theory and arranging skill was only going to get in the way of the emotion of what I wanted to play. So I sort of split my brain into two sides and concentrated on accessing what I needed when I needed it. If it was a fiery, emotional performance I was after, I would disengage from all of the technical minutiae as best I could. But if I needed to craft an arrangement, I was able to access the other part. So far, that approach has worked really well for me.

How does ‘Out of the Past II’ reflect the evolution of your musical career, from your early work with David Werner to your current projects with Mary Fahl and the Maniacs?

It’s all of a piece to me. I try to learn from every project that I do and bring that forward as background for whatever I do in the future. I’ve been so fortunate to work with artists whose musical values align with mine, and we’re all driven to push each other to make the best musical statement that we can. It helps that we all come from that time when you got signed by a record company, made records with great budgets, and toured to promote the album. That whole experience was so valuable and informs the work in a way that people coming up with a laptop in their bedroom just don’t have.

“My way to time-travel”

How does it feel to re-create and reinterpret music that was so influential to you in your youth? What emotions or memories does this process evoke for you?

I think it’s a proven fact that the music you hear in your early and teenage years has the most profound effect on you. It’s when we’re the most open, before the world and its myriad distractions encroach. So in a way, it gets me back in touch with my innocent self—when I was just starting out on the journey and music was the end-all and be-all of my existence.

I wish I could’ve given that kid a glimpse into the future—all of the amazing people I would have a chance to work with and the technology I would have at my disposal to create music with. So this is my way to time-travel and commune with my younger self, if that makes any sense.

Finally, if listeners were to experience Incense and Peppermints: Out of the Past II on a high-resolution audio system, what do you hope they take away from the experience?

I hope it lifts them up from all of their problems and immerses them in a time when music was our whole universe. I hope they see how this music was able to drive a culture.

Klemen Breznikar

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Mark Doyle Website / Facebook / YouTube

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