Micah Scott
“After listening to Dark Horse two times back-to-back, I felt my shoulders drop and my breathing deepen. I was in good company here, with a working-unit band of crack session players and an honest, generous new voice—Micah Scott. This is a rare fully-formed debut album, meticulously produced by Grammy-Award winning Glenn Barratt and industry veteran Jock Wanamaker Leas. Everything is right and true about it, from the richly harmonic, open sound to the tunesmithing and song order. Micah is an old soul with fine taste; he includes two spot-on covers of Taj Mahal and Skip James chestnuts. All in all, it’s a sweet, wistful, exhilarating ride over a distinctly American topography that visits country-blues, heartland rock, folk rock, and leaves us off with as pretty a minor-chord ballad as I’ve heard in a while. Highly recommended.”
– CD Baby
Micah Scott is a singer/songwriter with a minor prophet’s name who was raised in a small northern New York State town with Revolutionary War bones in its fields. Born in 1978, he had retro taste early, drawn to The Ventures, Creedence Clearwater Revival, and the Beatles, when the rest of the world was listening to Debbie Boone and Meat Loaf. He lost the plot in his hormonal years, detouring briefly into Pantera and later, an Alice in Chains phase. When his guitar teacher turned him onto Blind Lemon Jefferson and Robert Johnson, the die was cast. Today, he counts as seminal influences Muddy Waters, Big Bill Broonzy, Mississippi John Hurt and John Fahey.
An attraction to Piedmont and Delta sounds drew him south—way south, to Jupiter, Florida. Armed with an honors degree from the Crane School of Music, Micah began getting roots-music cred playing every gig he could. Dim, greasy dive bars. Then more upscale blues clubs; and finally, music festivals. Seven years later, he co-founded a popular South Florida band called The KillBillies, which has grown a grass-roots following along the coast. This year, Micah made his first album, Dark Horse, on a break from an East Coast solo tour. It was recorded over three weeks in Philadelphia—another place steeped in American history. The album debuted at #1 on the Amazon Roots-Rock chart, and the single, Step Outta Line, came in at #1 on the Amazon Alt-Country and Americana chart.
Micah’s debut arrives fully-formed; not in the auto-tuned, quantized, Pro-Tooled fashion of the 21st-century digital download, but in the old-school way. Dark Horse succeeds on solid writing, honest talent, ace musicianship, and hand-crafted production. It’s deeply reassuring that an old soul like Micah Scott is the artistic engine behind it.