About Me
Born in Toledo, Ohio, Michelle was raised by a single mother in South Florida. There was talent in her genes, and when her mother married a musician she had met at the Baptist church where she played piano, Michelle, all of eight years old, sang at their wedding. Her stepfather, who had played steel guitar with Charley Pride, Billy Walker, Donna Fargo, and as a regular on The Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, organized the family into a four-piece band. They played at the Ft. Lauderdale Swap Shop, churches, retirement centers, private parties and the occasional club, and when Michelle was eleven, they cut their first record.
As high school neared its end, twin temptations pulled Michelle toward Nashville. The aeronautics program at Middle Tennessee State University kindled her ambition to become a pilot, while her stepfather's connections in the music industry opened the door toward her playing the music she had come to love. "I had learned to sing by listening to all my favorites on the radio in my car," she remembers, and then she counts 'em down: "Roseanne Cash, Patty Loveless, Emmylou Harris, Linda Ronstadt, Dolly Parton, Ricky Skaggs, Steve Wariner. I loved Shenandoah and Earl Thomas Conley. I was a fan of Journey and Foreigner and all those eighties groups too, but country really hit home. I was always jammin' it out of the speakers in my convertible Mustang instead of rock and alternative, so I didn't really fit in with my peers that well."
And so, without second thoughts, she and her mom joined her stepfather, who had moved back to Tennessee to help her qualify for state resident tuition at MTSU. "He took me to all the local joints and dives," she says, "and gave me a good introduction to his network of musicians. When I was nineteen I was playing at Lonnie's Western Room, The Carousel or Skull's Rainbow on Printer's Alley. I'd get home at around six in the morning, and then by eight I'd be in class."
Michelle headed back to the clubs. She joined a band called Cactus Rose. She nearly landed a record deal with the Loners, a band fronted by James House. She worked with the Ken Taylor Band at Tootsie's three nights a week for four years. She toured with Curb recording artist Steve Holy. She played with other acts whose names she doesn't even remember -- "that was many beers ago," she jokes. Even now, when not working up her own act, she's still doing band gigs, most recently singing and playing bass on the road with Hank Williams Jr. While playing with Dierks Bentley they spent 2003 playing in honky tonks all over the country and kicked off 2004 on tour with George Strait and Kenny Chesney.
Whether playing out of town or wedged against her bandmates on Tootsie's tiny stage, she relished every moment spent in the spotlight ...
Or, more accurately, just outside of the spotlight. "I loved being a part of a band," she smiles. "I'd always been backup. It was satisfying to me, to be kind of in the shadows, with just the occasional moment up front. But after playing at Tootsie's for so long I got a lot more exposure than I'd ever expected and became increasingly comfortable with the idea of fronting my own band."
So it was then that Michelle met Alex Torrez of Sony ATV Tree Music Publishing. She was playing her last gig with the Loners at the Exit/In. When he found out she was packing up to play right after that at Tootsie's, he followed her there. Later on he brought Sony Tree's chief creative officer and senior VP, Don Cook, to catch her act and, after introductions, sign Michelle to her first writing deal.
Eventually Cook brought Michelle's four-song demo to James Stroud at DreamWorks; that was enough to speed the artist and the label together and hasten the creation of the album "Just One Of The Boys".
Michelle Poe is just beginning to fly....SO HANG ON!!!!!
