Press:

“Mad Dog is a monster on harmonica, one of Colorado's best.”
Tarry Underwood - Hollar (from the Colorado Blues Society)

"Mad Dog's traditional acoustic blues harmonica playing on his song 'Shining Through' is a delight to hear."
Peter Madcat Ruth - Harp-L

"Landing!!! It's as if E.T. plays the harmonica!!!! I dig your take on the instrument, seeking and speaking!!"
Sugar Blue - Blues Man

“Mad Dog Friedman’s ghostly and weathered voice is a perfect match of the been-down-this-road-too-many-times-before blues...”
Charlie Englar - SCENE MAGAZINE

"...creative and unusual, I liked the varied use of color intensity and positive and negative spaces. I was struck by the masterful use of value. ..."
Susannah Vandyke - 13th Annual Lafayette Community Art Show

“Where We Reach is passionate, well-crafted, & deeply insightful poetry. [M. D.’s] control of sound and language is excellent. … a particularly unique, very powerful voice & set of insights as well…[His] understanding of the cross-connection of the arts is both extraordinary & very, very moving”
Jared Smith - Lulu Reviews

“M.D. Friedman and Papa Juke, solo or as part of group he’s very cool.”
Heidi Short - Listen. Music. Sound

“Freidman, poet, photographer, digital artist and web designer; he created a new genre of digital poetry that represents the poetic fusion of all of his creative pursuits into one.”
Shelley Widhalm - The Reporter Herald

“The poem ... captures a dying mother's fear, a grown child's memory of a key connection in the past, and a satisfying image of inked generations. But the poem does not rest there: the final line holds the combination of beauty and terror that lies at the heart of poetry.”
Veronica Patterson, Judge - Columbine Poets of Colorado 2009 Contest Winner

“... M.D. Friedman's "Spring of Springs," a passionate, lyrical expression of birth and desire, comparing humans and birds. "It is time to return to our longing/ like birds to the branch, mouths heavy with twisted twigs." In this I had the sense that the poet and poem are one.”
by Pat Maslowski - GREEN FUSE NEWS SPRING 2009

“. It is a wonderful, meditative poem that balances elegantly, and it speaks very clearly of those realms we inhabit that are so hard to speak of to other people who are not poets. ”
Jared Smith - Poet

“Multi-faceted artist and technophile Mark Friedman is always looking to synthesize and integrate. “I want to use technology to create art that you couldn’t make otherwise.” Consistent with this enthusiasm, Friedman is both a photographer and a digital artist, using several types of specialized software to “paint” digital originals. ... Friedman got interested in art at the age of fifteen, when his mother “dragged” him to a Van Gogh exhibit and the work “blew him away.” He began working with images through photography as well as expressing himself through poetry and music. It was the poetry that led to his interest in digital art. “I was designing the back cover of a book of my poems and got carried away.” ... The featured piece, “Swimming,” won first place in the Lafayette Community Art Show in 2011. “I had been to Key West that year on tour with my band and was blown away by the underwater world. The colors haunted me until I did this piece.” ...”
Laura (Mickel) Jajko - A Good Frame of Mind

“In “Poets Two,” one of the introductory poems in Leaning toward Whole, M.D. Friedman concludes with these lines, “The birds that sing so having sung fly on./We all fall into song until we’re gone,” and fall we do, again & again throughout this short song-book of poems. It is not a coincidence that Friedman is a professional musician; he brings a musician’s ear to his poetics in poems such as “The Great Clock” and lines like “the clock tower…/collapses with a heaving sigh,/ a litany of ash, a chiming of embers.” We can hear everything—the hard “c’s” of “clock” & “collapses” crunch in our ears—the cry-like “a’s” of “collapse” and “ash” sound the human response—and yet, paradoxically, it is all still an irresistible song, a spiritual song, a “litany,” a “chiming,” endless and unavoidable. All life then, is the clock, the song, the poem, until the book of poems itself becomes a metaphor for the poet’s ongoing theme: “the b”
Katherine West - Green Fuse News Winter 2012

“Hand in the Machine. Filled with scapes. Land scapes, mind scapes, e scapes. Not all of terrestrial origin.”
Stephen Hartman, with Franklin' Stove - Email

“FIERCE WITH A RHYME AND A HARP”
Dylan Otto Krider - Broomfield Enterprise

“...Mad Dog Friedman who is absolutely an incredible harp player...”
Kevin Beale - the Blues on the Marsh live radio show on Looker Radio, New Romney, Kent, UK

“Friedman rules the harp...”
Ashley Wilson - The Mountain Times

“...Mad Dog Friedman’s searing, yet unobtrusive harmonica lines... ...Friedman has a dramatic actor’s flair to his vocal performance...”
Dan Wiilging - Colorado Blues Society Magazine, "The Holler"

“listen to this ! M. D. Friedman is a man obsessed with creativity--a brilliant bluesman poet sound-painter multi-media! i love this!”
Wayne A. Gilbert, Jazz Sufi Poet - Facebook