MUSIC 'Cleveland Fats' goes global with tour dates round world

The guitarist learned from a legend, Robert Lockwood.
By JOHN BENSON
VINDICATOR CORRESPONDENT
Mark "Cleveland Fats" Hahn has had the blues since he was a young boy growing up in Ravenna. However, in retrospect, he has no idea why.
"To this day, I sit and think why of all things when I was 12 years old was I fussing with the guitar," Hahn said. "Of all the music that was around me, why did I pick that? I don't know. I went to buy an album by B.B. King and couldn't find one, so I bought Albert King. I took it home and learned every lick of it by ear. I wanted to learn more and more about it."
What began as an earnest fascination of the American genre quickly became a passion when Hahn found himself jamming to blues standards in bars at 14.
"It's been kind of a learning path, kind of like a lifestyle of education in the blues," Hahn said. "Like the old saying, you're paying your dues. I started working with Robert Lockwood in 1974 when I was 18 years old and worked with him inclusively until 1992."
Learning from Lockwood
For years, Hahn learned the craft from Lockwood, a Cleveland legend who in turn learned from the music blues great Robert Johnson. In 1992, Hahn began his solo career, which eventually led to his 1997 debut effort, "The Other Side of Midnight."
"That album was the beginning of my own personal identity," said Hahn, who hasn't looked back. The Ravenna resident recently released his fourth studio album "The Way Things Go," which features nine original tracks and three covers. Among the songs Hahn decided to record from other people's material is an apropos Lockwood track on which he originally performed in 1990.
"We decided to do 'Dead or Alive' again with just a back-porch feel," Hahn said. "That's just Robert, myself and harp player Billy Branch. It was almost like back-porch home blues."
He added, "I think if you wanted to narrow it down, I'm almost like an ambassador to the blues, I want to introduce people who may not have listened to it or paid it much mind. I wanted to try to make it when they put their CD in their automobile, they wouldn't jump from one song to the next. I wanted them to say each song has something a little different. You've got just a little bit of a different thing happening and you keep them interested from cut one to cut 12."
The fun part
It's this dynamic that he feels he's accomplished with "The Way Things Go." Now comes the fun part for Hahn with tour dates scheduled all over the world. Regionally you can see him Saturday at Nick's Inn 62 in Hermitage, Pa.
For decades Hahn has played nearly every venue possible in Northeast Ohio, which is why he's actively seeking dates with his band outside the area. "I pretty much milked every cow in that field," laughed Hahn.
Still, Hahn knows his bread and butter -- and his green too -- are based on his live shows, where he enjoys most of his CD sales.
"I think that people would really find it a whole lot of fun and entertaining," Hahn said. "Plus, I have to think it's not something you'll go around and see a lot of. There are other bands around, but I think Cleveland Fats has his own little twist on it. We have a lot of years of doing it and we don't like to see a sad face going away."