Gary Marks Releases 'I Guess It Never Stops' and 'Castles' Singles

Singer-songwriter Gary Marks today releases his two new singles, 'I Guess It Never Stops' and 'Castles,' accompanying the publication of his flagship political novel, The Dance and the Diamond Sky.

Today's release follows Marks' recent LP, Crossroads (Lantern Heights Records), a 2026 Record Store Day UK / Europe selection.

Reflecting on 'I Guess It Never Stops', Marks explains: 'I wrote this song in 1988. Political lies, corruption, corporations eating the planet alive. Almost forty years later — same story, bigger stakes. We keep tearing down the place we live in and calling it progress. Future generations aren't going to ask what happened, they're going to be living in it. I called this song I Guess It Never Stops. I meant it as a warning. In 2026, I'm still hoping my guess is wrong.'

Reflecting on 'Castles', Marks explains: 'I wrote 'Castles' in 1976, right after Nixon's presidency imploded. He was a president so drunk on power he didn't care about the laws or the country he was supposed to protect. Exactly fifty years later, and we're living with Nixon 2.0. This country's starting to look like one of the ones they warned us about in grade school — a country with no heart, no care about future generations. The last line of the song still holds true: 'Lack of compassion has in the past sunken castles like yours beneath the sea.''

For five decades, Marks has written songs about power, compassion, democracy, and freedom — themes that feel strikingly current in 2026. Beyond music, Marks is a prolific author, having written more than twenty novels and novellas, including his flagship political novel The Dance and the Diamond Sky, set in a fractured 1960s America whose parallels to 2026 have struck early readers.

Gary Marks's novel The Dance and the Diamond Sky focuses on young pacifists, a college-dropout songwriter, and political radicals confronting war, injustice, and an intensely divided culture in 1969. But this is not a nostalgic trip back to the sixties. It's a warning from one divided America to another.

The questions raised in the novel — what to do when powerful politicians insist their lies are facts, and those lies begin to affect your own life; whether mass protests can be as effective as acts of resistance; and the bigger question of whether one person can change anything — have become urgent questions again in 2026. This time with democracy itself on the line.

Paired with Crossroads, Marks's Record Store Day UK/Europe vinyl album, the novel distills what Marks has learned through five decades of examining his own life, human nature, American politics, and the helpless majority who want democracy to survive.

What does conscience require when a country is coming apart? The ending of The Dance and the Diamond Sky is more than a metaphor. It examines war, politics, and reality itself through the free-form thoughts of an unwitting hero with only moments left to live. And what he decides to do when fate saves him.

'I Guess It Never Stops' and 'Castles' is out now.

About Gary Marks

Gary Marks first emerged in the 1970s with three albums blending folk, rock and jazz. Those recordings brought together a remarkable group of young musicians who would become major figures in jazz and contemporary music. Guitarist John Scofield made his first studio appearance on Marks's 1974 album, Gathering. On the following two albums, Marks was joined by Paul McCandless of Oregon on oboe and saxophone, ECM pianist Art Lande, vibraphonist David Samuels and trumpeter Mark Isham.

Those three albums have since been reissued seven times across Europe and Japan and continue to attract serious record collectors decades later.

Marks stopped touring in the 1980s, stepping away from the conventional music industry. Instead, he spent the next several decades writing and recording eight more albums entirely on his own terms and releasing them independently with no formal distribution.

Throughout his catalogue run consistent themes: freedom, democracy, environmental responsibility and love in its highest form.

That same through-line leads directly to Crossroads, Marks's 2026 Record Store Day UK/Europe release — a collection of songs written across five decades that feel uncannily suited to this political moment ahead of the midterm elections, when Marks's lyrics sound less like themes and more like news.

More information is available at garymarksmusic.com.