Mark Mittlesteadt has been playing music since he was about seven years old. Born in Central Wisconsin, he was surrounded by music at a very early age.

"Jimmy and the Javelins", a local group from Merrill, WI, used to practice in his basement with Mark's older brother Bruce who was best friends with the late Jim Strassman (a very good guitar and banjo player), the leader of the group.

With that kind of musical influence, Mark stole time away to play his brother's guitar and a friend's drum set to classic Beatles and Rolling Stones 45's on his brother's old record player. This was circa 1968.

Though not a good musician at the time, Mark could pick out songs on the piano and guitar by ear and his love for music was firmly ingrained in him.

Mark's first band at sixteen years old was "Revenge", a band made up of himself on guitar and his friend Dennis Kohnhorst on guitar and various drummers. Not being able to find a decent bass player, Mark switched to bass. What was surprising was that Mark actually preferred bass and wasn't until years later that he realized he always played McCartney's bass lines to the Beatles tunes when he was younger, yet at the time, didn't know Paul was a bass player. At seven years old, Mark didn't know what a bass was, he just thought it was another guitar.

After years of playing bass with Revenge, Mark started to get into the music of his bass influences, mainly John Paul Jones of Led Zeppelin and John Entwhistle of The Who. Mark's musical focus was strictly on the low end and the rhythm section. While Mark continued to toy with the guitar, it was the bass that got all the attention.

After the inevitable break up of the band, Mark continued on with some of the other players who came and went out of Revenge. "Licks" was formed with Jamie Fehr on lead guitar, Mark on bass, Ron Moser on drums and Steve Radtke on rhythm guitar. They eventually added Kurt Lang on lead vocals.

After traveling around the country playing such classics as Aerosmith, Foghat, Doobie Brothers and such, the band restructured itself and formed "Headliner" by adding Gary Mossak on lead guitar and dropping Fehr and Radtke. They replaced Moser with Ken Gilkenson on drums, who was later replaced by Tim Lind and then Ed Streight.

"Tim Lind was a great guy to be around and a fun drummer to play with. He had an impeccable sense of time and rhythm, and to this day, I still miss playing with him." Mark was quoted as saying when he heard of the news of Tim's death in 2000.

Headliner toured all over the U.S. and Canada playing to big concert crowds and small bars alike. They played a variety of heavy rock music like Pat Travers, Rush, Led Zeppelin, Jeff Beck and more.

After Headliner and living for years out of the "band bus", Mark moved to St. Louis to work as a commercial artist. While there, he was employed as a "bass player for hire" picking up gigs throughout the city and outlying areas at a moment's notice. Mark also worked as a studio musician where his work made it on many tracks of various musical artists in the area. Mark moved back to Wisconsin in the mid 1990s.

Throughout Mark's career he played bass for a variety of other musicians notably with Mike Kleinschmidt in Sundog, on and off, for about 20 years. Mike's music was all original and was a mix of blues, folk, rock, reggae and country as well as some jazz. This allowed Mark to explore different musical styles and bass playing techniques as well as creating his own musical style.

In 2001 Mark joined up with "Blindside". Playing with Lyle Vickerman and Jeff Bushman on guitar and Jason Turk on drums, the band played many blues songs by Stevie Ray Vaughn and Storyville. It was Double Trouble bass player Tommy Shannon and drummer Chris Layton that really inspired Mark to play more within the rhythm section of the blues.

In 2003 Mark joined "Andy Z and the Spankin' Monkees" and played with guitarist Andy Zynda. They played a lot of blues and rockabilly with Brian Setzer and Stevie Ray Vaughn being the main influences. Traditional rockabilly bass players play double bass and trying to simulate that on the electric was a whole new experience for Mark.

2006 brought in a whole new era in Mark's career as he joined Montazh. Though Mark grew up and went to school with Al and Lorri, they never played in a band together. Mark has seen Gunnar play with a variety of groups over the years. Now Mark is kind of going back to his musical roots with a group that plays a lot of the songs he grew up on.