Micah P Hinson
Woke up this morning: It sounds like the lyrics to a typical blues tune: boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy loses job, money, friends and sanity. But for singer- Songwriter Micah Paul Hinson, this wasn't a fictional song about love gone wrong - this was the soundtrack to his life. It all began when the teenaged Hinson moved from his Memphis home to the Texas town of Abilene, and immersed himself in the local music scene. He met a model who had graced the cover of Vogue magazine, and was totally smitten. The young temptress was also the widow of a local rock star, and she became Hinson's muse, inspiring him to write songs and pursue a music career. But the relationship also saw Hinson become addicted to valium. Eventually he was jailed for forging prescriptions: "I ended up losing my car, my home, all my money, my instruments and recording equipment, and basically my entire family."
Early works: So, how did a nice young man from a Christian fundamentalist family end up bankrupt at 19, sleeping on the floors of friends' homes, and working menial jobs to try and get his mojo back? He may have blamed his former flame, referring to her only as the Black Widow, but Hinson took full responsibility for getting back on his feet. During his "lost" years, Hinson recorded a bunch of songs, using a beat-up old 4-track unit. He took them to his friends Brandon Carr and JM Lapham, who knocked them into shape. The resulting album, The Baby and the Satellite, however, didn't see the light of day until a couple of years later, when the trio re-recorded the songs, keeping just the original title track from the original sessions. In the meantime, Carr and Lapham formed acclaimed band The Earlies, and Hinson's debut album proper, Micah P Hinson & the Gospel of Progress, released in 2004, garnered raves from the music press. NME hailëd it a "country-noir" classic, while the London Times put it "up there with Bob Dylan".
Blonde ambition: With his turbulent teens behind him, Hinson has put all his energy into songwriting and performing, and impressing with his fine, broken voice, which is up there with Smog, Will Oldham and M Ward. The debut album features such fine, acoustic-tinged tunes as Close Your Eyes, I Still Remember, The Nothing and an eight-and-a-half-minute closing epic, The Day Texas Sank to the Bottom of the Sea. In 2005, Hinson covered a Jeff Buckley song, Yard of Blonde Girls, for the Dream Brother album, a tribute to Tim and Jeff Buckley.
The right chord: Last year, Hinson was laid low by a serious injury that required major back surgery; while recovering, he wrote the songs for his new album, due out later this year. He's also working on a collaboration with Lapham called The Late Chord. Hinson plays Róisin Dubh in Galways next Tuesday and Crawdaddy, Dublin on April 7th.
