../Mishka |
| Mishka Shubaly's first songs were written in a grim series of basement apartments, beginning with an unfinished and unheated basement in his mother's rented duplex in a muscle car town in Colorado. Just seventeen, he was working as the night manager of Sonic Burger and attending college full time. "My dad had just left us, our house had gotten repossessed, and my mom and I were totally broke. I didn't have a dresser to keep my clothes in so I just brought a bunch of green pickle buckets home from work and kept my clothes in them. It worked fine, but I always smelled-- strongly --of pickles." The darkness, isolation and chill of that basement in Colorado and the unflappable sense of humor it bred has never left Mishka Shubaly's music. Following the demise of his seldom-lamented New York rock band in 2001 after their opening act got famous (anybody heard of The Strokes?) Mishka Shubaly recorded "Thanks For Letting Me Crash" on a four track in his bedroom and began performing the mostly acoustic music he'd been stockpiling. In the years since, critics and peers have compared him to virtually everyone in the country or indie canons: Johnny Cash, Tom Waits, Calvin Johnson, Nick Cave, (early) Beck, John Prine, Eric Bachmann, Nick Drake, even Liz Phair. But it's still the fans that matter most to Mishka Shubaly. "Every time I play 'The Washington Ballet,'" a song about heartbreak and liver failure, "somebody comes up to me after the show really wasted, looks deep into my eyes with just incredible sadness, then mumbles something incomprehensible and staggers off. That means more to me than I can say." - source mishkamusic |