Marc Moss — Elder Statesman of Local Music

Published by greggkirk on January 2, 2026January 2, 2026

In the early hours of December 31, 2025, the world lost another force of nature in the local music world whose influence spanned five decades. As the new year of 2026 began, we lost Marc Moss.

Marc had survived his father Joe Moss, who passed in 2018 and who was a well-respected professor of art at the University of Delaware for almost three decades and whose ingenious interactive sculptures have been installed in several locations across the state.

Three years later, Marc’s youngest brother Keith Moss passed on April 12, 2021. Both brothers were pivotal influences in the original music scene in the state of Delaware, especially in the 1990s and early 2000s with the opening of Target Studios in Delaware.

I was lucky enough to see Marc’s work and influence over several decades. It was almost as if I had witnessed him moving through three different lives or incarnations of himself. When I first relocated to Delaware in the mid 1980s, it was impossible to ignore Marc’s band Bad Sneakers who played all of the local clubs in the Delaware Valley, the wildly popular Outdoor Cabaret in Wilmington, DE, and was featured on local TV shows like “Dancing on Air” and “Focus Delaware.” Their star seemed to be on the rise until about 1986 when the band broke up.

Later that year, Marc pivoted into his next incarnation… recording studio owner. He opened Target Studios in 1986 and immediately began recording the music of local and area bands. The studio quickly got word-of-mouth recognition as having low rates but high-quality results. When I co-founded Big Shout Magazine in 1989, Target Studios was one of our first advertisers and that relationship continued until I sold the magazine in 1996. During this time, I had multiple interactions with Marc (all positive, of course) and we always featured his studio in our annual local recording studio profile we called “Studio Tan.”

It was interesting to me to see how the sometimes-wacky front man from Bad Sneakers had transformed into a soft-spoken, trustworthy, and extremely knowledgeable owner of probably the most popular 16-track studio in Delaware in the 1990s. It was here that I had my closest interactions with Marc because one of my bands used his studio multiple times, as well as the expertise of his brother Keith.

The last time I recorded at Target Studios was in their newer location in a strip mall at the Delaware/Maryland border in 2002. I had moved from Delaware back in 1999, but I made the trip down from New England because I knew I could get the quality of recording I wanted without it costing an arm and a leg.

As the years went by, I heard Target Studios closed down in the Delaware area, but Marc had relocated himself and his studio gear to a new location in Red Hook, NY. Along the way, he also formed a band with his fiancée and his eventual wife, Ency Austin, called the Mosstins, and they produced several releases right up to the time of Marc’s passing. It seemed Marc had transformed once again, but now he had fully embodied the role of musical elder statesman and purveyor of well-crafted songs steeped in Americana. Here’s a video of one of my favorites…

About ten years ago, I happened to be in Rhinebeck, NY at the outdoor food market, and while at one of the vegetable booths, I heard a soft-spoken voice come from behind me… “Is your name Gregg?”

I turned around to see the smiling face of Marc, who was starting to look like the spitting image of his well-known father Joe.

Because I have friends who live in Red Hook, NY, I frequented their Hardscrabble Days festival in the late summer and sometimes coordinated a meeting with Marc, who lived less than a mile from my friends. In September of 2017, we agreed to meet at Hardscrabble Days at the reunion of the band Patty Smyth & Scandal, especially since we heard our friend Cliff Hillis would be playing guitar with them.

This was the last time I got to hang out with Marc, but I’ve been following his exploits through social media and have been cheering him on from afar. It was also through a post on social media that I found out about Marc’s passing. It was a surprise to hear, and everyone who was lucky enough to have met or interacted with Marc will miss him and the positive influence he had on the local music scene and everyone he touched with his kindness.