Michelle McAfee

Profile Information:

City & State

Ashland, OR

Country

USA

Music Genre(s):

Folk

Bio:

I'm from the mountains of Nederland, Colorado. A local radio station played my first original song demo when I was seventeen...... few years later I wandered to Nashville to "be" a songwriter. I am grateful for the publishers, musicians, songwriters and artists I have had the pleasure of working with. Signing as a staff songwriter from '92-2003 for Bluewater Music, Sony/Maypop Publishing then Warner-Chappell Music, led me to Los Angeles in 2000 to work in Warner’s Pop/Rock department. I was given the opportunity to work with kings and queens of the craft like Van Stephenson, Kim Richey, Jewel, Jude Cole. Started a rock band and performed in really cool venues like The Bluebird, The Knitting Factory, Hotel Cafe and The Roxy. The rock band flame blew out after a couple of years and I returned to my singer/songwriter roots with a move to Oregon. A friend took me to a river and put me in a whitewater kayak. I ran rivers and sea-kayaked the ocean several times off the tip of Vancouver Island, rediscovering my love of the wild. The River taught me to flow with the water through turbulent currents rather than fight it. A line always appears.......... Found a cabin in the mountains, started a bee hive, a garden and started writing full tilt. Opened a show for David Jacobs-Strain and the Crunk Mountain Boys at a summer barn party in 2009. The next morning they invited me back for scrambled eggs, fried potatoes and a living room jam session that magically led to recording my album with the band in the spring of 2010. The album is a rootsy, acoustic driven collection of songs that draw from every phase of my songwriting career. That same year I was blessed with an opportunity to write music for the upcoming Indie Native American Film "Kissed By Lightening" directed by Shelley Niro and was invited to join several Alaskan artist's in taking music inside New Folsom Prison with the Arts in Corrections Program. It was a pivotal experience that led to the 2010 summer tour with Melissa Mitchell in Alaska and a return trip to New Folsom in January 2011 with "One Soul" - the music collective we created to bring Art & Music into prisons & communities. In the last year I've opened shows for The Indigo Girls, G Love & Special Sauce, toured California, the Southwest and West Coast, gearing up for the coming summer full of shows, festivals, songwriting workshops and another Alaskan & Southwest tour. Liberated now from the mainstream music path, I am blissfully happy writing, touring and singing my songs to those who will listen. A late-blooming gypsy in love with stories, the human experience, earth and spirit. Living authentically. Living simple. Living light.

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