Throughout my daily search for aspiring local singer-songwriters, I came upon Rocky Michaels, a talented musician from Danville, CA. I don’t remember which website led me to find this amazing musician but I’m so glad I did. When you visualize the concept of what a singer-songwriter might look like, you always end up with a musician on a stool playing guitar, and on a very rare occasion you might end up having the vision of a piano player singing, but not Rocky Michaels because he is one badass guitar player and an amazing piano player.
I send Rocky an email one morning and got a reply saying he was interested. We traded emails for almost half of a day and we ended up trading phone numbers, and history was written from that point forward. Rocky Michaels and I talked on the phone for quite some time and as much excitement I had while talking with him, he sounded very interested in the concept of Singacoustic, and that just made my day. It was quite challenging at the beginning trying to convince local artists to participate in an unknown show. There were lots of “thank you but I’m busy that day” kinda replies at the beginning, and I totally understand it. I had no content to convince artists to join me on my quest to provide a bit of exposure to the local hidden talents in our communities. You see, I’m a true believer in the locality of talented musicians and hard-working recording studio owners as well. This is our industry and we care for each other.
I told Rocky that if I have more than one musician on the show that would play the piano, I would gladly rent a grand piano for them. I wanted Rocky to feel free to play the guitar and the piano to show off that talent and sure enough, we ended up with 3 amazing artists (Rocky Michaels, Roziht Eve, and Lindy LaFontaine) playing the fabulous Ritmuller GH160 5’3″ Baby Grand Piano.
The piano was invented in Italy in 1709 by harpsichord maker Bartolomeo Di Francesco Cristofori. The word piano is the shortened version of the word pianoforte, which means soft (piano) and loud (forte). One of Cristofori’s original pianos is at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.
For those who are unfamiliar with the piano, if the piano is moved then it must be tuned. A piano can stay in the same location for many years without the need to tune it however, once it is moved it would go out of tune and must be professionally tuned. Moving a piano requires professional movers that specialize in piano moving. It is done with the ultimate care and respect for such an amazing musical instrument. I remember mixing entire festivals for days with a piano on stage, and if one musician requires that the piano moved to another spot on the stage, there would always be a tuner available for us to call to have the piano tuned again.
Rocky Michaels shows up at the Panda Studios where we had our first Singacoustic and we had a great time. Rocky is a professional badass musician, with exceptional talent. I truly admired his positive attitude that manifests in his lyrics and singing style. He’s an optimistic and charismatic singer-songwriter that promotes positivity and unity in his songs, a great dad who talks about his family with love, and it all shows in his composition and lyrics. Did I mention that he’s one badass piano and guitar player?
Rocky’s performance was amazing, and an inspiration to singer-songwriters out there. Please check out Rocky Michaels and his music, he is an amazing singer-songwriter and we are fortunate for his performance at the Singacoustic Bay Area. Thank you, Rocky Michaels, you are a rock star. Cheers!