It’s certainly been a big week with religious bands like Switchfoot and Anberlin playing at the University on Wednesday. Adding to the genre of music is alumnius Mark Kroos.
Kroos can play a double-neck acoustic guitar at once with both hands. He travels the country playing shows almost every night and graduated from the University in 2008.
“I learned some very valuable things while attending BGSU,” said Kroos. “I had some really good professors there and a good amount of guidance. I made some really phenomenal friends at BG, and they are going to be friends for the rest of my life.”
Getting to the spot where Kroos sits now in his career didn’t come with ease. It took effort and time.
“What I did to get my career off is that I gave up my apartment to tour and play shows,” said Kroos. “I would wait until people at my shows [asked] me to stay at their place. The last three years I’ve slept in my car like 30 times.”
During the first two months of touring in the beginning of his career, Kroos said he realized how much people are willing to help other people in need.
“I saw so much of human kindness of people asking me to crash at their place,” said Kroos. “When you’re in a position where you don’t have a lot, it’s kind of like you are forced to put your faith in God, and from that I learned a lot about myself during these times.”
Kroos tends to play at various locations such as churches, coffee shops and bars, and he appeals to a huge selection of people at the shows.
“The people vary from city to city, and part of it is because I’ve played to so many churches,” Kroos said. “I mostly appeal to middle-aged people because they have longer attention spans for instrumental music more than younger college students.”
Flip Arkulary, guitarist for the band The Half Hearts, has been a longtime friend of Kroos and considers him to be inspirational.
“Mark really influenced me to work harder at my guitar playing,” said Arkulary. “I think that he’s probably the greatest guitar player in the country considering how he just won first place at the Guitar Player’s Magazine 2011 International Guitar Superstar Competition.”
Kroos took first place out of a total of five people at the competition this past July, which earned him large amounts of press and a feature in Guitar Player Magazine.
“Our styles of music are different, but Mark is a great guitarist and knows how to control a room with his talent and charisma alone,” said Arkulary. “I first met Mark at a concert at Howard’s in Bowling Green, and it was when we were first starting out as musicians. He let my band stay at his place after the show, and I’ve just always thought of him as a pleasant person to be around.”
Students have also taken notice of Mark Kroos’ career. Junior Steven Castillo thinks that it’s pretty cool that Kroos is a University alumni.
“From what I’ve observed here in Bowling Green, there is a wide variety of musicians,” said Castillo. “I feel that BG really does produce a wide variety of successful musical artists.”
Kroos is currently traveling the country playing a show in a different town almost every night. He is living his dream as a musical artist and serves as an inspiration to many people.
