MARK PROCT Home Today Gone Tomorrow!

When it comes to the music business, Mark Proct is a lifer. He’s not a star, but he is one of those people essential to stars a journeyman working behind the scenes who helps to make what happens onstage under the lights possible. A music industry professional in Austin, TX since 1975, Proct has labored in an array of showbiz infrastructure jobs, from driving tour buses to running sound, running his own lighting company and tour coach businesses and working as an artists’ manager. In the process, he not only helped further the careers of employers and clients, he played a pivotal role in the growth of Austin into a world-renowned hub for music and musical creativity. In those roles, and others, Proct has been present at pivotal moments in the careers of Stevie Ray Vaughan, the Fabulous Thunderbirds, the arc angels, Storyville, Vallejo, and others. A tireless amateur photographer, Proct was seldom without his camera, even as the music business took him and his musical compadres across the country and around the world. Now, after a lifetime of being behind the scenes, Proct is stepping out as the author of Home Today, Gone Tomorrow, a collection of rare, behind-the-scenes candid moments captured, as it were, on the run. These are not the glamor shots of carefully posed, manicured stars. Rather they are moments captured—backstage, in hotels, in recording studios, on city streets, behind the scenes.  It’s Proct’s gift that he was not only present in the moment, but had the presence of mind to capture it for the rest of us. Home Today, Gone Tomorrow not only catches musicians at pivotal moments in their lives, it also tells a larger story of the city of Austin, and its transformation from a sleepy college town to an international hub for music.