Singled Out: Gary Marks' Sky High

07-30-2026

Veteran music icon Gary Marks has released his new single "Sky High," from his 2007 album 'A Whisper Can Change The World', and to celebrate we asked Gary to tell us about the track. Here is the story:

I actually wrote "Sky High" about my wife, Theresa. At that time, in 2007, we had a four year-old boy, and two girls, six and eight. I met Theresa in 1993 after a friend of ours introduced her to my album The Real World. We met at the ferry building in Sausalito, CA. We fell in love so quickly a local magazine recently wrote an article about us called, "Love at First Sound." She has always been supportive of my writing, even when nothing good was happening from it financially. She would literally have dinner with the kids without me some nights if I was writing a song or a novel because "Dad was writing something important." That was true the night I wrote Sky High. I had been in a bit of a writing drought. I was busy being a dad. But suddenly I found myself writing one song a night for seven straight nights. "Sky High" was the seventh song. So I decided to write about how free and creative I felt being married to her... instead of feeling trapped or unsupported creatively.

Some of my favorite lyric lines are, "You and I we never met 'til I woke up from the dead myself." And the bridge: "Once there was a lonely man who watched the birds in flight. Sat in the desert for a hundred years 'til he taught himself to fly and found you... sky high."

The recording of "Sky High" also has a cool backstory. At the insistence of my music attorney, who loved the songs I'd written during that magical week, I called the agent of one of the best mixing engineers in the world, Jim Scott, hoping somehow he would agree to mix at least a song or two. I recorded the eight songs of the album at a friend's house with minimal recording equipment and only a few microphones. Going from there to a Grammy-award-winning mixing engineer's L.A. studio was not something I ever thought could actually happen. His agent told me Jim was booked a year out, and only mixed major label artists. I said, "Would you allow me to send you one MP3 of a song in an email, and if you're not blown away, don't call me back, and I won't contact you again." He said fine. So, I sent him the rough mix of "Sky High".

A few days later he called me back and said, "Who are you, and why are you not signed to a label?" He ended the conversation saying Jim would give me a special rate if time opened up, but at the moment it could be a year out.

A few weeks later, he called me and said that Matchbox 20 was delaying their mix because they were still tracking. Jim had three days free in April. I said I'd take it. And off to L.A. I went.

Jim welcomed me with a miniature marquee outside the mixing room that said, "Tonight... Gary Marks" framed in blinking yellow lights. That made me laugh and calmed my nerves a bit. He had a 1976 Neve board, and the best mixing gear imaginable. But the thing that struck me the most was how he mixed my songs in particular. We started with "Sky High." He said, "You're a songwriter. Anything I do to screw that up is my bad." So instead of starting by mixing the drum sound: kick, then snare, etc. and using that as a foundation to build the track from, he started with my 12-string guitar, then my voice. We listened to just those two tracks together until it sounded amazing. Then he built the rest of the mix around that! He did that for all the songs he mixed on that album. And I've mixed all my songs that way ever since.

When I flew back home I had six of the eight songs from my album A Whisper Can Change the World mixed in three long wildly exciting days. "Sky High" became song 1, side 1.

Hearing is believing. Now that you know the story behind the song, listen and watch for yourself below and learn more here