{"id":20853,"date":"2024-05-17T14:43:49","date_gmt":"2024-05-17T19:43:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/online.berklee.edu\/takenote\/?p=20853"},"modified":"2025-10-15T09:53:46","modified_gmt":"2025-10-15T14:53:46","slug":"roots-bassist-mark-kelley-on-completing-his-degree-with-berklee-online-20-years-later","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/online.berklee.edu\/takenote\/roots-bassist-mark-kelley-on-completing-his-degree-with-berklee-online-20-years-later\/","title":{"rendered":"Roots Bassist Mark Kelley on Completing his Degree with Berklee Online 20 Years Later"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

How The Roots\u2019 Mark Kelley Finished His Berklee Degree While Playing Nightly on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon<\/em><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

When Mark Kelley reached out to a Berklee Online advisor about returning to school after a two-decade hiatus, he didn\u2019t just ask for a second chance\u2014he made a compelling case unique to his position:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI am currently the bassist in The Roots on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon<\/em> and am now in a place that I feel that I can complete my bachelor\u2019s degree.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kelley walked during the Commencement ceremony in 2003, but he was just shy of completing his degree with less than 20 credits remaining. The opportunity to tour with John Scofield\u2019s \u00dcberjam was too good to pass up. That lasted two years, and then he crossed paths with Meshell Ndegeocello (thanks to his doorman in NYC) and embarked on a six-year journey touring with her. In 2011, he landed the gig with The Roots, and this year he reaches the milestone of the longest-serving bassist in the band. Yet, despite his success, he felt like something was missing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt would always be this thing that would come up,\u201d says Kelley. \u201cAnd then maybe within the last couple of years, both of my parents started having health issues, and we\u2019re all getting older and seeing life play out, so that started to roll back into my mind like, \u2018You know what? I want to finish this.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kelley reached out to Berklee\u2019s Alumni Degree Completion Program<\/a> and resumed his journey, taking two history courses through Berklee Online in the spring semester of 2023. After enjoying his experience with online learning, he doubled down and enrolled in three Ableton courses along with his capstone project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMy advisor was like, \u2018Are you planning on breaking this up into two semesters? Or are you hoping to do this in one?\u2019 I was like, \u2018One,\u2019 and I heard her go, \u2018Oh, that\u2019s a lot.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kelley laughs as he reflects on that day. \u201cI was like \u2018what am I signing up for?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Writers\u2019 Strike While the Iron\u2019s Hot<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

But then a unique turn of events made it easier for him to balance his heavy course load with the prospect of appearing on national television five nights a week.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWith The Roots, we\u2019re in a small room in the corner of the studio, and down the hall is where all the writers are,\u201d he says. \u201cAnd somebody mentioned that there was a possibility of a writers\u2019 strike maybe two weeks or so before it happened, but we didn\u2019t really know very much about it. There had been one other time that there was potentially going to be a strike and it got averted the day that they were going to strike, and so I just felt like that was what was going to happen again.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the Writers Guild of America did strike, and the labor dispute with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers meant that The Tonight Show <\/em>was off the air for five months<\/a>. Mark Kelley suddenly found himself with a lot more free time for his three Ableton courses and his capstone project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt was almost like the sky opened,\u201d he says, smiling. \u201cIt was like, \u2018I\u2019m blessing the journey.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With his journey blessed and his job on hiatus, Kelley threw himself into his schoolwork. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cFor me, it worked well just because had I had the schedule that I anticipated, I could sit down and there was a strict lesson plan that I could watch whenever. I could watch it over again, too,\u201d he says. \u201cThere were exercises, and the lessons were very thorough. I had previously taken a lot of online tutorials that didn\u2019t really go in depth. And the fact that you can also access it for a year after you\u2019re done to still go back and go over those things is really great.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kelley says the biggest difference between his campus experience 20 years ago and his recent online learning experience has been where he worked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cTo be able to do it in your home, in your own setup, makes it even better,\u201d he says. \u201cWhen you\u2019re at school, they\u2019ll give you a workstation and whatever they have, but to be able to do it in the place that I\u2019m actually working from was really helpful.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Creature comforts such as this led to him doing some collaborations with his three-year-old son. For one Performing with Ableton Live<\/a><\/em> assignment he set up a monitor mix and guided his son to continuously count in the beat of the song. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI figured if I could get a three-year-old to hear and perform with the monitor mix that I must be doing something right,\u201d says Kelley. In Ableton Live: Sampling<\/a><\/em>, he mixed tones from Simon<\/a>\u2014the 1970s electronic game\u2014with a loop from the Incredible Bongo Band\u2019s \u201cApache<\/a>,\u201d while a cut-up sample of James Baldwin talking to an interviewer<\/a> tied the whole piece together. <\/p>\n\n\n\n


Mark Kelley\u2019s Appropriated Composition assignment from Ableton Live: Sampling<\/a>, in which Kelley says: I chose James Baldwin’s sample which states,\u201dFrom my point of view no label, no slogan, and no party and no umm skin color and indeed no religion is more important than a human being.\u201d I chose this sample and replaced the last word human with a robot generated voice saying \u201chuman.\u201d I chose this sample first because it\u2019s true. Second, it is something that is a reminder although it shouldn\u2019t have to be. I chose to replace the human voice with a robot saying it as a statement about AI and all that is currently happening because of it. I chose the drums which displayed a strong drum beat and bongos which always reminds me of war. Baldwin is a soldier and his words are bullets in the ongoing war being fought daily.<\/em><\/strong>
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Mark Kelley: Speaker Buster<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

His instructors and classmates were always complimentary of his work, but nobody seemed to recognize him as the bassist for The Roots. That could be in part because his student bio simply stated: \u201cI like to bust speakers.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cEverybody used to always tell me, \u2018Just turn down,\u2019\u201d says Kelley, recalling an anecdote from his first stint as an undergrad when he was gigging at Wally\u2019s Caf\u00e9 Jazz Club<\/a>, the legendary Boston venue where greats like Cannonball Adderley and Duke Ellington played.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI was always borrowing everybody\u2019s amp, but I got some money from a wedding gig, and I decided I was going to spend it on an amp,\u201d he says. \u201cI went to Wally\u2019s, and I was playing, and this thing was so heavy. I got this thing set up, and I\u2019m playing real loud. I turned this thing up and I didn\u2019t match the ohmage from the head to the speaker. And all of a sudden I hear the amp start shorting out. And I look and there\u2019s smoke. The head of the amp is on fire. I unplug it and I kick open the fire escape door and just throw this head out into the parking lot.\u201d
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