Mr the Invisible
Artist Bio
For over twenty years, Rick Bauer was a popular performer, singer/songwriter and record producer based in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. With a distinctive baritone voice and towering the 2-meter mark, Rick entertained audiences in Europe and America, in tiny coffee houses and giant festivals alike, performing over 250 shows per year. Performing on stages since the age of six, Rick Bauer was raised in a musical household by a father who was a professional bassist and a mother that encouraged his early expressions of interest in music. Joining his father onstage as a child, Rick regularly sang with the band and began sitting in for his dad on bass and vocals by the age of eleven. By junior high, Rick had his own gigging band, played trumpet and baritone in concert band, bass in jazz band and started developing skills in songwriting.
Throughout high school, Rick continued to grow as a musician by joining county and collegiate honor bands, performing classical recitals, conducting the school orchestra, playing bass in the jazz band, singing rock music and performing pop ballads on vocal and piano at school assemblies. While in college on a full academic scholarship to Nova Southeastern University, Rick co-wrote and performed the soundtrack to a nationally aired television commercial for the Quetzal Foundation environmentalist group entitled "Environmental Revolution" and recorded professionally with the bands Mourning Son and Crave. After graduating with a Bachelors of Science in Legal Studies, Rick took to the road, touring Florida non-stop as a lead singer and bass player with the popular cover bands the Bleeding and Vendetta from 1997 until 1999.
Growing tired of the road life, Rick entered graduate school at Florida International University in the Masters of Religious Studies program and started to write/record and perform as an acoustic solo artist in 1999. After hitting the studio with Dashboard Confessional producer James L. Wisner, Rick Bauer was a featured solo vocalist and semi-finalist on the national television program, Ed McMahon's "the Next Big Star" in 2000. That same year, Rick recorded with and co-produced Florida band, Freax, at Miami's "Hit Factory", (where Eric Clapton originally recorded "Layla") and was an award recipient in the John Lennon Songwriting Contest for the song "Pave Me Ground". After being approached by an overseas talent agent, Rick began performing in the Scandinavian troubadour circuit and joined the independent European label Gritt Records in 2001. Over the next few years, Rick completed his Master’s Degree and performed throughout Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland and the United Kingdom during summers and taught courses in Religious Studies back at Florida International University while performing solo gigs and doing a brief stint with local super group Strange Daze. While still teaching at F.I.U. and working as a soloist, Rick did an album with the original Metal group Stillborn Panic en route to forming the longstanding Rick Bauer Band. Joining forces with drummer Rich Pistocchi and reuniting with his father, Bassist, Rick Bauer; Rick formed a power trio that garnished local and international acclaim as one of the most eclectic and capable three pieces anywhere. From 2003, the group successfully launched three European tours and consistently maintained a busy schedule by performing well over 200 shows per year in venues as diverse as the musical capabilities of the group.
Since 2004, Rick Bauer has been the proprietor of Production Company and Independent Record Label 'Roads to Rome Productions' where he helps with administrating, producing, writing, engineering and packaging work for other artists. Writing, performing and producing original material from this studio, Rick Bauer crafted the “Daybreak”, “Mr the Invisible”, "the Jordan" and "Fetter" albums in almost their entirety. Their melancholic and introspective sound takes root in the inspired singer/songwriter tradition and finds shape in a modern production approach that blends the organic and synthetic. In other capacities, Rick was hired as Keyboardist/Backup vocalist for Sony hopeful Paris Dozier (son of legendary Motown writer Lamont Dozier), by London's Mama Stone management in 2005 (Mother of popular singer Joss Stone). He was a Guest Artist for international DJ Markus Schulz and licensed his original track “Let it Go” to Netherlands record label Armada Music in 2007. That same year, Rick Bauer formed the Modern Rock group Science & Fiction with guitarist and producer Steve Morgan (Capitol recording artist with Stellar Revival) and the album “Contradictions” followed in 2008. Adopting the name of the primary protagonist from his second solo album, Rick assumed the artist name Mr the Invisible and released the full-length albums “the Jordan” in 2012 and "Fetter" in 2014. Gaining momentum on internet radio and on YouTube, Mr the Invisible became a new brand in Contemporary Spiritual Music with a support team that included the faith-based management, TK Promotions and Toni Koch in Los Angeles and Kari Thompson (Gypsy Raven Productions) in the Pacific Northwest.
Rick Bauer served as an Ordained Minister with the American Fellowship Church, a BMI Songwriter and Publisher as well as a Voting Member of the Recording Academy (Artist & Producer wings) through 2014. In 2015, Rick relocated to Alexandria, Virginia to train for the Episcopal Priesthood in the Master's of Divinity program at Virginia Theological Seminary, and produced the full-length discs: "On the Backroads of My Mind" for folk singer Dan Duggan, "VTS Seder Music" as part of an Independent Study in Biblical Hebrew, and a collaboration with songwriter Randy Bailey that yielded "the Bailey Translations" from Mr the Invisible.
In 2018 Rick released an album of his beloved, late father's original songs entitled "My Father's Son", and accepted a call to serve as the Associate Rector for Saint James Episcopal Church in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. On a hiatus from public performing, Rick immersed himself in ministry and fatherhood while engaged in research writing for the Doctor of Ministry program at Duke Divinity School.
In February of 2020, Mr the Invisible returned with the release of a new album of all original "theological indie-rock" tunes entitled "Red Rock" featuring Father Rick on all instruments and he accepted the call to serve as Rector at Saint Edward's Episcopal Church in Lancaster, PA. After completing his doctorate, Rick returned to the creative well in 2021 to craft the songs that would become 2022's "Begin Again". This album represents a return to early musical influences and was done in its entirety (all writing, instrumental performances, recording, mixing and mastering) by Rick from the newly designed Red Room III studio in Lancaster, PA.
The journey continues...
