Michal

by Alex Teitz

Nineteen-year-old singer-songwriter Michal is a voice of the next generation. Inspired by the works of Soul Asylum and Nirvana, she is making her own path with her debut CD Sky With Stars. Michal is skilled in everything from percussion to keyboards but is most heard with her guitar. Sky With Stars speaks of being the outsider, and the rebel. FEMMUSIC was able to catch up with Michal for a few minutes one morning.

FEMMUSIC: Can you describe your songwriting technique?

M: Alright let me think. Well I don’t exactly have a process. I don’t like write the music first or the lyrics first. Whatever happens first I just take it from there like sometimes I get a little snatch of melody or sometimes I’m reading and I find something really poetic and I’ll jot it down. I don’t have a set process.

FEMMUSIC: How was it working with Tony Shimkin & Dave Pirner on the CD?

M: Working with Pirner was really great because I’ve always really loved his level of craftsmanship. I’ve always thought that Soul Asylum was a great band. I really admired him. I was really into their music before I ever met him. Working with him was really quite an honor.

Working with Tony Shimkin, he was a really good engineer and he was really good in the studio and gave me a lot of great ideas for production because what ended up happening was when I did the record with Pirner, I spent like two weeks at Bearsville and we recorded a bunch of songs there and then Pirner had to go on tour with Soul Asylum. He wasn’t around for the finishing of the record. Then I went back into the studio and did demos which later became the second half of the record by myself with Tony Shimkin being the engineer. So they both acted as guides for me since I’d never really done this before and they taught me a lot about working in the studio.

FEMMUSIC: What was the best experience making the CD?

M: I think every part of the process was really great. I love being in the studio. I love writing. I love performing live. I think all of it has its charm. I think I love performing the most out of all the different aspects of being an artist.

FEMMUSIC: What was the biggest challenge making the CD?

M: I think for me it would have to be eliminating songs because I’m really prolific and I have hundreds of songs and just narrowing down what I really wanted to put on the record and try to make it representative of the last five years of my life, that was really difficult.

FEMMUSIC: You’ve come into your own in music at an early age. How has that affected you?

M: I think that I’ll always be in music no matter what happens. Whether I have success or ….I’m never going to be able to separate that from my life because it’s always been there. It’s always been a huge part of my life. My parents were both into the arts. They’re both visual artists. My sister’s a ballerina. I’ve always been around the arts and there’s no way that I could ever separate myself from that.

FEMMUSIC: A lot of your songs focus on being an outsider to the world. You’ve taken a different route to where you are. How do you view the modern world?

M: Well I think from the perspective of my CD, when I wrote these songs, and when I recorded them was during a period in my life when I finding my identity and going through all of my teen angst. I started writing when I was thirteen. I wrote when I became a teenager. I started being creative. My high school experience was a bad one, but I think I would have had a bad high school experience wherever I went because I was really introverted and I was much more concerned with what I was doing than what was going on in the mainstream.

The way that it affected me in my writing was since I wasn’t part of the “in” crowd and I wasn’t really wasn’t popular with the kids in high school it made me much more introverted and it made me think about my feelings and it made me really try to express myself and the way that I was thinking about my own life through music rather than concentrating on what was going on the radio and what was going on with other kids. I kind of had to create my own outlet for my creativity.

FEMMUSIC: What one thing would you like to change about the music industry?

M: Well I think that music tends to go in ten year cycles, and about ten years ago Nirvana broke onto the scene and that’s really a band that inspired me. I think of lot of what’s on the radio…I basically don’t listen to the radio that much. There are only a few groups that I’m really into. A lot of the stuff is disposable, interchangeable pop right now. I think that there’s a demographic not being represented by Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera because I fit into that demographic. I definitely feel that doesn’t represent me, and I think there are people who need someone to represent their voice out there. So I hope to bring back “rock” a little bit, and bring back the value of being a songwriter and playing your own instruments and not just being a performer because I definitely think that there’s a need for that right now.

FEMMUSIC: As a woman in the music industry, have you been discriminated against?

M: I think it’s a lot less than it would have been a couple of years ago. I think that women have made a lot of progress in the last couple of years. I think that people like Fiona Apple have really opened a lot of doors for us. Sheryl Crow…but I think there’s always going to be a little bit of a difference in the way that women musicians are perceived. I think a lot of the problem has been up until recently there really hasn’t been a lot of good female musicians. You know that there aren’t any women who rock out there unless you consider Shirley Manson or Fiona Apple. I haven’t really experienced that much discrimination because I’ve been on a very small level. I haven’t really toured that much. I’m sure once you get up there it definitely is harder to be a woman. I think I’ve been discriminated more against for being young because when I started I was thirteen and people tend not to take you too seriously when you come out and you’re a thirteen year old. I think as long as the songs speak for themselves and the music speaks for itself people come around.

FEMMUSIC: What are your plans for the future?

M: Well I want to see how this record does and I want to tour with it. I want to make many more records. I want to have a career as a singer-songwriter. That’s basically what I want to do with my life and hopefully I’ll be able to make a comfortable living at it. I don’t know how much success I’m going to achieve but I know it’s something I wouldn’t be able to live without doing. There’s nothing else that inspires me much and it’s my passion. You know I could never become a doctor or a lawyer or anything like that ‘cause it’s all about music for me. I just want to be a rock star.