What were the challenges in taking on the task and responsibility of organising Mark’s archive?
Mark’s music needed to be archived, which was no small task. It took time to gather everything and properly archive it. Mark recorded on various mediums such as cassettes, micro-cassettes, DAT, DTRS, two-inch tape and RADAR. There was a lot to go through. Melissa [Moore Linkous, Matt’s wife and Mark’s sister-in-law] did the work of organising, documenting and cataloguing everything. Tapes can degrade over time and it was important to have them digitally archived. The tapes we received were in various states and we did everything we could to retrieve and preserve what we had. We brought everything to Bryan Hoffa, who’s an audio preservation specialist. He knew Mark and had worked with him. I felt it very important to have this work done by people who knew Mark and who would respect the significance of what they were working with. I didn’t want to just have it sent off somewhere and cross my fingers hoping it might be done right.