About Mark Farner
Mark Fredrick Farner is an American musician. He was the original singer and guitarist of the rock band Grand Funk Railroad, which he co-founded in 1969, and later as a contemporary Christian musician.
Farner began his career in music by playing in Terry Knight and The Pack , The Bossmen , The Pack , before forming Grand Funk Railroad with Don Brewer and Mel Schacher in 1969. Farner attended Flint Kearsley High School. Craig Frost joined the band in 1972. Farner claims Cherokee descent on his maternal side.
Farner was the guitarist and lead singer for Grand Funk Railroad as well as the songwriter for most of their material. His best-known composition is the 1970 epic "I'm Your Captain ". He also wrote the 1975 hit "Bad Time", the last of the band's four singles to make the top 5 on the Billboard Hot 100.
After Grand Funk initially disbanded in 1976, Farner released his self-titled debut solo album in 1977, and his second, No Frills, in 1978 . In 1981, Farner and Don Brewer launched a new Grand Funk line-up with bassist Dennis Bellinger and recorded two albums, Grand Funk Lives and What's Funk? Farner went solo again with 1988's Just Another Injustice on Frontline Records. His third Frontline release was 1991's Some Kind of Wonderful, which featured a revamped Jesus version of the Grand Funk classic of the same name. Farner became a born again Christian in the late 1980s and enjoyed success with the John Beland composition "Isn't it Amazing", which earned him a Dove Award nomination and reached No. 2 on the Contemporary Christian music charts.
In the 1990s, Farner formed Lismark Communications with former Freedom Reader editor Steve Lisuk. Soon after, Farner began reissuing his solo albums on his own record label, LisMark Records.
From 1994 to 1995, Farner toured with Ringo Starr's Allstars, which also featured Randy Bachman, John Entwistle, Felix Cavaliere, Billy Preston, and Starr's son, Zak Starkey.
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