Mountain Holler leaving St. Pete for Portland, Oregon

One of St. Petersburg’s most unique musicians is about to say goodbye.

Mark Etherington, who uses the stage name Mountain Holler, creates musical soundscapes – lush, atmospheric combinations of acoustic guitar, voice, rhythms and the judicious employment of reverb and other effects. He is a singular talent.

Following Tuesday’s performance at the Hideaway Café, and a couple of Christmas-week club shows, Etherington is outta here.

Tampa Bay’s loss will be Portland, Oregon’s gain.

Etherington called Monday morning from Savannah, the 76^th consecutive day of travel for him and his partner, Chelsea Esposito.

“I’ve been wanting to move to the Pacific Northwest for about five years, and it really just presented itself,” he explained. “We’ve been figuring out the types of characteristics we wanted in a city to move to – and Portland had all the things we wanted. We just decided, f— it, let’s do it.”

The marathon road trip began Oct. 5. “We drove to Macon, Georgia,” Etherington said, “and that kind of started this adventure. We spent a month on a mountain in North Carolina – and every day, I would walk out on the property with my guitar, and if anything sounded good, I would just record it.”

He had already finished a new album, Casa Lago, before they left Florida. In Appalachia, he wrote and recorded six or seven new songs for an EP. And they kept moving. They went to Chicago. They went to Asheville.

“Chelsea had never seen the Lincoln Memorial, so we actually watched the sun rise there, a week before Election Day,” he explained.

“We spent Halloween in Salem, Massachusetts, which was dope, and the we spent a week in Williamstown, where a really good friend of mine lives. We went up to the Peace Pagoda, a Zen Buddhist temple up in the mountains. And that was pretty profound. It was this beautiful, snow-covered winter wonderland with one monk in this cabin with a fire going and a chimney. It was really appropriate for that day.”

The plan is to spend the first month in Portland in an Air B&B while the couple look for jobs and a permanent home. “There’s absolutely no reason to not do it now, while we can.” The west coast, he said, is better than Florida for getting plugged into the music industry.

Etherington arrived in St. Pete 10 years ago, and worked locally with two bands (Set and Setting, for which he was one of two drummers, and the folkie/psychedelic RedFeather).

From these, and from a well of disparate musical influences – everything from Black Sabbath to David Crosby to Jack White – he created Mountain Holler.

(Lest you think this is all too, too serious, Etherington adapted the moniker as a joke – it’s the brand name of a discount Mountain Dew knockoff.)

He was asked whether he has any parting words to the people who’ve known and supported him for the last decade.

“If I could just say one thing over the loudspeaker of the scene, it would be: Don’t stop, keep going and keep supporting each other,” Etherington replied. “Because St. Pete has such a great pool of artists, of all different mediums. I want to be able to watch it grow.

“I feel like I did a good job being myself there, and trying to do as much as I could while I was there. But I know that it has this great potential to really be a center for a lot of really genuine and unique talent.

“Keep throwing shows, keep making stuff happen. That’s what I would implore St. Pete-ians to do. And also, keep it punk. When I first moved to St. Pete, it was very punk. And I feel like that scene kind of died a little bit. I want to see that continue.

“St. Pete is a gem. Not a lot of places exist like St. Pete. Or not at all.”

Info on upcoming Mountain Holler shows here.

RELATED VIEWING: Mountain Holler on ‘The Catalyst Sessions’ June 22, 2020: