Biography

Born and raised in Port Arthur, Texas, Mark Viator grew up in the predominately Cajun community there, where families had close ties to their Louisiana cousins and grandparents, and the food, music and storytelling had a distinctly French, spicy flavor. After short stints as a young man in California, Florida, and back to Beaumont, TX, he made his way to Houston to finish a degree in social work and pursue the club scene there, becoming a weekly performer at Dan Electro's Guitar Bar and plying his craft as songwriter and guitarist.

After a chance encounter with Susan Maxey at the Kerrville Folk Festival in the summer of '91, where the music and rain came non-stop for days at a time, he decided to finally make Austin - the music mecca - his home. Since then Viator has made at least a dozen appearances the Kerrville Folk Fest, playing guitar with Slaid Cleaves, Bobby Bridger, Rue La-La, Australian Paul Taylor, and Mitch Walking Elk. He and Susan Maxey have traveled extensively throughout the western United States, performing as a duo and playing in Bridger's stage productions in Wyoming and Yellowstone, as well as making their way to Maine and New England with Slaid Cleaves. He has worked extensively as a guitarist, playing and recording with artists such as Jim Stringer, Steven Fromholz, Jimmy Lee Hannaford, Kevin Dooley, Karen Tyler, Eric Blakely, and others.

In 1998 he teamed up with Jane Gillman and Marce Lacouture to form Rue La-La, an original Cajun folk band that played for three years around central Texas. Their "Sky On Blue" CD (available through their web site) was released in 2000. That recording took them to south Louisiana where they shared the stage with Sonny Landreth, Errol Verret and Al Berard for a release of "Sky On Blue" and Lacouture's "La Joie Cadienne". A later tour of Montreal and Ottawa wrapped up Rue La-La's run.

Mark Viator also has several documentary soundtracks to his credit, as well as the score to the play "A Christmas Memory", which has run in Austin theaters each season since 1993.

Viator and Gillman continue to collaborate. Since co-producing "Bayou Teche" they have carried on with an eclectic live band that includes Susan Maxey on vocals, Charlie Larkey on upright bass, and Richard White on drums.