A CONVERSATION WITH THE SHERPAS (continued)
PM: And what about your path, Michael?
ML: Well, similarly to Tom Prasada-Rao, I feel like the Catholic Church is kind of responsible for me learning to play the guitar--well, not responsible, but my first guitar lesson was from a nun in seventh grade.
TPR: No kidding!?
ML: Sister Clare, who's still a very good friend, lives in Baltimore, comes to hear my other band a lot.
PM: She's still a friend, wow.
ML: She's a great friend. And she's working with children from drug-addicted parents in the inner city in Baltimore. She's an awesome, amazing woman.
PM: Does she still play the guitar?
ML: Yeah, and she was never much of a guitar player, but she was a strummer who knew a handful of chords, and played at masses.
PM: Amazing.
ML: And one day I stayed after, and then I just fell in love with the instrument, from the first day. It was never a struggle--I mean, it was a challenge to learn, but I never thought it was something I was going to set down. I knew it was something I was going to keep doing. And I joined the church folk group six months after that. It was actually a good folk group. I learned from the other guys how to put a capo on and play in a different position.
PM: That early you knew that trick.
ML: Yeah. I was fifteen, and I was playing in a bar.
PM: Oh, wow.
ML: I got a gig playing in a bar with another guy. And I was 6'2", so I could walk in. The drinking age was 18, so I'd just kind of duck my head and hide my baby face and walk through. I really fell in love with playing the guitar. I stopped going to Catholic church after I went to college. I grew up in a family where my mother was a very devout Catholic. Every Sunday morning, she'd get the family up, get everybody dressed and go to church. My dad would be recovering from a hangover on the couch watching roller derby. So it was a very divided home in terms of who thinks this is the right path and who doesn't. But we were under our mom's thumb, so I went. But then, in later years, I stopped going to Catholic church, and I really haven't ever returned regularly. I've gone occasionally.
But as far as a spiritual path now, I think I'm still searching for it, frankly. But I've had things that I feel have brought me closer to it, and certainly music is one of them. The other one is the river. That's where I see God, is on the river. There's probably too many ways for me to even try to describe it, the movement of the river, the power of the river, being out in nature.
PM: I know you and Tom are major kayaking cats.
ML: Well, we're not major in comparison to the people we know who are, but among songwriters, we're probably major kayaking cats.
PM: [laughs] Good distinction.
ML: If you would measure the love of it, yeah, then we're absolutely major cats. But we're not going to go running water that's beyond our abilities, because this would be our last interview if we were.
TK: Michael's right. It's all relative. Michael taught me to kayak, for which I'll be forever grateful. And I've taught a bunch of my friends around here to kayak. And looking at them progress and looking at how I've progressed, and the stuff that we were doing pretty quick--it's all relative. Compared to the casual kayaker, I mean, we've been over the Himalayas kayaking twice. We just kayaked the Grand Canyon, the whole damn thing. That's major for me.
PM: Absolutely.
TK: But we go with guys who make us look like--
ML: Well, they kayak the way we can sit down and play guitar and sing a song. I mean, playing music is what we've done for thirty years. They've been kayaking since they were kids.
PM: Right.
ML: But that sport has also brought me to places where I felt spirituality--I mean, in Bhutan and Nepal, and just being around that Himalayan sort of vibe, and the Buddhism, and that Indian influence, it's hard not to have it rub off on you. Meeting people in those environments, people who don't have the kind of opportunities or the amount of freedom we have as Americans, or as Westerners, and to see the joy in those people, man, it is such a lesson. It's the ultimate lesson to me.
PM: You mentioned last night that on one of your kayaking trips, you and Tom actually played at the birthday party of the king of Bhutan.
ML: Yeah, we did.
PM: That's unbelievable. How did that come to pass?
ML: We were on this paddling trip, and we had flown in, and had one day of sort of outfitting boats, getting all the gear together, meeting the group, paddled one river, and pulled into the only city, Thimpu. And as we were having beers and having our food at about 9 o'clock, our guide, Ugyen, comes in and says, "You guys want to play?" And we really hadn't seen outside yet. There was a big square and we thought, okay, there's probably five, maybe 600 people in there. But it extended throughout this sort of veranda of concrete walls. And there were more like six or 7,000 people there. And they were just partying. There was a band on the stage playing Bhutanese music.
PM: What did that sound like?
ML: It sounded like meditative kind of music, very hypnotic, very droney. So we thought he was sort of joking. And then we said, "Okay." We agreed to do it. So he walked us out there, and talked to the guy putting on the event. It's a three-day celebration, it's a big party. And the next thing we know we're up there, and we played three songs. We played "Himalayan Rain," "One Heart," and "Walk the Walk."
PM: Wow.
ML: And, you know, we climbed up with these little guitars.
PM: What, little travel guitars?
ML: Little travel guitars with a vocal mic and a guitar mic, a little Peavey system. I mean, it was not a concert rig. And they're looking at us like, "What the...?" And so I threw my arms up in the air and I said, "Hello Thimpu!" and they just went nuts. Everybody was dancing while we were playing, it was unbelievable. And the place started chanting "We love you, we love you!" And all these little kids were there, like fifty little kids gathered around after we played, swinging off our arms and stuff.
TK: It was surreal.
PM: Amazing.
TK: The kids were much more intrigued with him. [Lille is huge, like Paul Bunyan, and blond.]
PM: Yeah. Thor, the thunder god, sure. continue
