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Micah Blue Smaldone was named after a Hebrew prophet from the Old Testament. His first name means “someone who speaks by divine intervention” and his middle name was given to him by his mother simply because “she liked the way it sounded.” With that said, it may come as no surprise that Smaldone, who spent most of the 80s and 90s in the Boston punk scene, is as much of an anomaly as his name. His new release, Hither and Thither, took about a month to record and is being touted as one of the most innovative indie-folk sounds to come along in quite some time. The result is an album that manages to be both sparse and haunting, with a real experiment in sound that is unlike anything currently out in the mainstream. JIVE MAGAZINE recently sat down with the Portland native to talk about punk, folk, and the musical ties in between.
JIVE MAGAZINE: Let's talk about your background, which was largely in the punk scene, in bands such as the Pinkerton Thugs and Out Cold. What made you take the leap from punk music to folk/accoustic music?
MBS: Oh, I always listened to folk music. You know, I think Woody Guthrie was as big a hero to me growing up as The Clash or the Dead Kennedys. I don’t know, I think I really started playing by myself at a point where I was, I really kind of withdrew from my life. Kind of just locked myself away in my room for a while, searching for something that maybe I found in music, maybe I didn’t. I don’t know. But I came out of that period having a new voice in my music, I think. I think the idea of being self-sufficient, not relying on other people. Being able to just jump in my car and go and play somewhere. I was playing on the street a lot at that point so that really was critical for that. I was a little tired of band dynamics and having to commute to band practice and that sort of thing. Being able to accompany myself on one instrument was a large part of it.
JIVE MAGAZINE: Hither and Thither is beging described regularly as music from another time, as if it had been recorded in the 20s, how did you capture that and where did you record the album?
MBS: I recorded it in all sorts of different places. I basically found rooms that I thought sounded good and took my little four-track machine over there and recorded it. It’s all done live, there are no effects on it. It’s just how the room sounded.
JIVE MAGAZINE: You once said that you can see a “thread from Black Flag to Sun House and Charlie Patton.” What is the thread that you are referring to?
MBS: Well, I think the urgency. People are making music because they have to, not because they want to. And I think that’s true of a lot of the stuff from the 20s, definitely the more religious or spiritual stuff of Sun House or Charlie Patton.
JIVE MAGAZINE: There is certainly a case to be made for the link between punk rock and folk music. They both share the need to express and one can feel this in the music.
MBS: There’s a lot of music out there that’s deliberate, that has a point to it that’s outside of the musician, you know, and I feel like that about a lot of folk music, older folk music. Punk rock, it happened because it had to, because people had things they had to express.
JIVE MAGAZINE: Your new album is not what’s being played on mainstream radio or what is being sold in most popular record stores. That type of marketing tends to promote "success" in the music world. Instead, you travel and seem to be getting known for your live shows. How do you rationalize your definition of success when confronted with the mainstream process?
MBS: Well, [playing live -] it's a medium that allows me to travel and meet people. This level that I’m at now, playing music, I make dear friends everywhere I go. I meet people, get to stay with people, and get to share this experience with music every night. There’s no barrier between any of that and there’s no barrier of money or notoriety so, in that respect, I feel very successful and very grateful to be able to do this.
http://www.northeastindie.com/micah/
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