Little Monuments: Mark Cutler's Murder of Crows
The Rhode Island legend comes out with another winner.
Jun 08, 2025
Mark Cutler has been a musical hero in my native Rhode Island for decades now, and his latest record cements his status as one of the great un(der)discovered songwriters of recent times.
On Murder of Crows, out on streaming services June 9, Cutler continues to make rock music that’s for adults but still actually rocks: direct while still artful, serious without angst, classic but not self-pitying retro, combining the personal and the universal in a way that’s authoritative and empathetic.
My personal favorites included “Floating Man” even before I spoke with Cutler and learned that the titular character is his biological father, who died 10 days before Cutler was born (“So many things he didn’t get to know/As he floats above the power lines/All the people walking to and fro/In and out a little ring of light”); the tough-minded “Find Out Who Your Friends Are” (“You find out who your friends are/They find out who you are too”). The closer “Home,” which Cutler describes as “a love letter to life” (“How high I have felt when the ice starts to melt/First green sings in the sun/A new day’s first sigh/Before you know, the checkered flag flies/Seems like the race has just begun”), is another highlight, as well as the Zevon-esque snarl of “Remembering Wrong,” with lyrics by the Rhode Island-native author, music journalist, and TV producer and host Bill Flanagan.
Cutler recorded a lot of the tracks himself, as well as with longtime bandmates Rick Couto and Jimmy Berger. Murder of Crows is one of two albums Cutler has planned for the year; some the songs are brand new, while some have been kicking around in embryonic form for decades. “I'm getting old, and I want to literally release songs — you know, free them out to the world,” Cutler says. “I don't want to just have them sitting around on a shelf or anything. …
“It's just to get my body of work out there — not to be immortal or anything like that, but I feel like if you create something, you owe it, not to the public or to the world, but you owe it to the thing that you created, to give it a fair shot.”
A new path
Cutler made his name with The Schemers and The Raindogs in the 1980s and ‘90s, touring the country and getting radio and video airplay, though the brass ring eluded both bands in the end. That said, he made the break into full-time music-making 11 years ago, quitting his longtime job as a quality assurance engineer. “Dan, who was my therapist, he really saved my life and came up with a plan. I quit my job; I had enough guitar students to hold me over, and I drained my 401k and all that.”
It wasn’t long after that that Cutler found a new musical avenue that’s changed his life.
Filmmaker Jim Wolpaw contacted him about writing the soundtrack for a documentary on the Ladd School, an institution in Rhode Island for nearly a century that served as a school for people with mental and developmental disabilities but in practice was a “dumping ground” with more than a little bit of a eugenical philosophy and with many human rights violations to its name.
Wolpaw wanted Cutler to collaborate with former Ladd School residents on the soundtrack, and while Cutler says he wasn’t sure what to expect at first, by the end of the first meeting “I just said inside myself, ‘Thank you, God — I know I made the right decision.’”
That led to a decade of work with people with disabilities, and that led to The Same Thing Project, which Cutler describes as a community songwriting workshop for people from all walks of life.
“My elevator pitch is ‘From the banker to the bricklayer,’” Cutler says. We all want to want something out of life, like love, happiness. Want to take care of ourselves. Want to be able to have something to look forward to.”
Workshops are held once a week, and roughly 30 people show up. “Their day is transformed,” Cutler says. “I won't say their life's transformed, but their day is better. And I know my day and my life are better because of it. So, you know, it's nice to have that cause and that effect.”
While a lot of the people at the Same Thing Project are differently abled, many are not. “My goal is to not have the Same Thing be about folks who are disabled. They're just part of it. You know? They're like, ‘That guy's retired; that guy has Down syndrome’ — it's just, that's a person, that's a person, and we're all part of this thing, that we're writing a song together.”
A lot of people find it a difficult time to be creative, and Cutler says he feels the same way at times — “I've gone a year without writing a song; there's been periods of time when that happens” — but on the other hand working with the Same Thing Project is a great way to keep the creative muscles in shape.
Memories
Now Cutler, 67, plays with his band, Mark Cutler and the Men of Great Courage, as well as solo shows and the occasional Schemers reunion (“I don't have much family alive anymore. … Your bandmates, they become a family for you too”). He’s not the same person who wrote “I Want Some Fun” or “Remember” more than 40 years ago, but the songs are memories for him as well as the audience.
“In most of the songs that I wrote, I can remember where I was when I wrote them, and I can go back to that, basement, and feel the air. You're not the same person, but recalling back to that person is something that that's magic, because, not everybody gets to do that, you know? I mean maybe a carpenter or a stone mason who can see, like, the brick wall that they built for a house when they were in their 30s or 20s. I guess that's like our little monument, or whatever.”
Meanwhile, the songs keep coming, and with Murder of Crows, they keep coming out. Cutler’s also a skilled, evocative painter — he did the cover of the new record, and his Instagram features his artwork regularly — but songwriting, he says, is like nothing else.
“Songwriting resonates,” Cutler says. “I can feel it vibrating in my body, my chest, like two cool notes hitting together. And I'm not like, religious or anything. I'm very agnostic. But I do feel like completing a song, the act of writing a song, especially with other people — like Jesus said, ‘Where two or more of you are there in my name, that's where I am’? Well, that's God. To me, when you get together writing a song, that's God — writing a song with other people. It's a spiritual thing, even if you're writing the low-down nastiest song in the world. It's great stuff.”
And it’s as important as ever. “I know where I stand in the pantheon, but — you know, sometimes they find diaries of people [from] during Nazi wartime, and sometimes those little diaries say so much more. I'm not even talking about Anne Frank, although they found her diary. But you find these little snippets of life, and that's what I'm trying to do, is leave little clues. And let people know ‘This is what was going on. And in my corner of the world, this is how I was feeling.’”
Murder of Crows is available June 9 on all streaming services and at 75orless Records.
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WELCOME TO FORGET I SAID ANYTHING; I’ve been writing what other people tell me to for 21 years, and I still do sometimes, but as Christine has been telling me for years I needed a public place to write what I wanted. So here we go.
There will be music, and thoughts on music; there will be screeds; as a former member of “the media” (not a fan of the blanket term) there will be a particular focus on how completely they’ve failed at their one job; there will be a recurring Today In Donald Trump Being Stupid feature, because my dubious superpower is remembering stuff other people forget; there will be less-screed-like considerations of life (political and non-political divisions); there will be blatant promotional activities for my long-distance home-recording musical collaboration, my other long-distance home-recording musical collaboration, my podcast, my two books and whatever else I manage to create; there will be things I haven’t thought of yet.
I can’t promise it’ll be a good time, but it might be.Cutler finds balance with new album
By ROB DUGUAY
Rhode Island Music Hall of Famer and rock legend Mark Cutler, Cranston native, is always up to something. He’s usually playing around the area with his band the Men of Great Courage at various venues, and sometimes he plays with his original band The Schemers, who played their first live show opening for the famous soul duo Sam & Dave during the late ‘70s.
Cutler also does great work through The Same Thing Project, a community songwriting workshop that gets people from all walks of life together every Tuesday morning at 10am at The Outsider Collective within the Hope Artiste Village in Pawtucket. Along with all of this, he has a steady habit of working on a new batch of songs. This is the case with his latest album “Murder of Crows”, which came out on June 9 via the Warren based label 75orLess Records.
The theme behind the songs within the full-length deals with a few different struggles Cutler experienced over the past few years pertaining to his own health, living during the COVID-19 pandemic and the passing of people he was very close with. To round it out, he brought a couple great friends into the fold while walking a fine line between the stylistic elements of folk and blues.
“‘Murder of Crows’ is a collection of songs I’ve been working on from more than a few years ago to as recently as a few months ago,” he says about the album. “I recorded the songs at my studio in East Providence and my home studio. Some songs were written and recorded during COVID, some were written after I got cancer, and some after I lost a few loved ones in my life. Besides pain, there’s also joy in the songs. I hope that shows through.”
“Lifelong friend Jimmy Berger plays bass on a few songs and longtime friend Rick Couto plays drums on most of the songs,” he adds. “It spans a period of time and I hope folks can sense the universal themes I’m trying to relay.”
Along with Berger and Couto lending their talents, music critic, radio host, author and former MTV executive Bill Flanagan did so as well. This is through him penning the lyrics for the tune “Remembering Wrong”, which has a poetic aesthetic that’s conveyed through Cutler’s vocal delivery.
“Move” echoes the blues influence that’s been part of Cutler’s musical identity ever since he started out. This trait comes through via the guitar chords and the drumbeats establishing a particular vibe. Other highlights include “A Good Day”, “Floating Man” and “Find Out Who Your Friends Are”, but it’s suggested that whoever gives “Murder of Crows” a listen initially does so from start to finish.
To celebrate the release of his new album, Cutler is going to be putting on a show on June 13 at Myrtle in East Providence at 7p.m. While you’re there, grab a physical copy of the record, but if you’re looking to check out “Murder of Crows” sooner than that, look it up on Spotify, YouTube or any other streaming service of your choice. For more information about Cutler, log onto markcutlermusic.com.