Michael's career as a performing and recording artist began while still in his teens in Alaska. Coming from a musical family, he performed upright bass in classical ensembles while recording and performing in his high-school band, The Freeze. Winning multiple creative awards while still in high school, including the Bank of America Achievement Award, Michael felt a musical calling as he made his way toward the musical mecca of Los Angeles.
After meeting the late Maynard Ferguson, Michael truly found daunting opportunities while backing stellar members of the Benny Goodman orchestra and as a sideman to reggae singer Leaford Henderson while still in college.
All the while, imaginative hard rock was brewing just under the surface, and Michael started to explore the possibilities of the recording studio like a painter layering colors on a canvas. By the mid 90s, Michael was creating lo-fi masterpieces like 'Big Open Land' and then later the hard rock CD 'Millennium Overdrive' (MO) album, which opened up opportunities to place music in independent film and multimedia.
Working with MO cohort, Dave Keeley (check out Dr. Mellow and the Mojos for info on Dave's latest project), Michael crafted instrumental loops, acoustic music and began creating a trademark layered guitar and vocal sound on pieces like 'Beautiful One' and 'Neil Peart Fu Manchu' from the upcoming 'Hey Lucy Nation' album. After a brief stint in Hollywood at Musician's Institute studying music business and writing for tv and film, Michael set his sights on creating work not just for CDs, but for tv, film and emerging multimedia.
Expanding out into ambient electronica, Michael began to create unique music for film and tv, using massive sheets of sound to create the album 'Icemine Firelight', with pieces like 'Sailing the Ancient Seas' creating underscore for the indie sci-fi film 'Frakie Died' and 'Abyssal' giving dark, unsettling depth to the controversial Sundance hit, 'The Paralyzing Agent'.
Michael now lives in Washington state, creating a music library for tv and film and performing 80 dates a year withe the band, Firecreek. Multiple albums are in the works, and finding time to complete each disc proves to be a daunting but eventual task as Michael takes on new, guitar-driven electrica via the CD 'Guitarrrrs!' which is still in the works.
Samples of Michael's other work may be found at his website: www.m-overdrive.com
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