Michael McDermott:vocals, guitar, piano
The extraordinary American folk-rocker returns to popular acclaim
Michael McDermott's career began in 1991 with the masterpiece album "620 W Surf" still considered by critics to be one of the best albums ever in world rock. The critics welcomed it with unusual acclaim, calling it "the next big thing". An album that made people shout about a miracle and that impressed the famous writer Stephen King to such an extent that he wrote: "No one since I heard Springsteen sing "Rosalita" had ever thrilled me to this extent. No one until Michael McDermott has made me so fucking happy to have two beautiful ears". A friendship and relationship was born with Stephen King and the writer in his novels has often drawn inspiration from the lyrics of McDermott's songs. With his heart in the folk of the Village and his soul in the rock'n'soul that from Springsteen crosses three decades of great music, McDermott has over time settled other excellent discographic chapters, all welcomed with great enthusiasm by Rolling Stone, The New York Times, CNN and The Washington Post, just to name a few, and has slowly found his own artistic dimension, far from the clamor of his debut but more in keeping with his current nature as a mature storyteller. The consecration comes with the album "St. Paul's Boulevard". An existential work in which Michael McDermott finds the great guitarist David Grissom and above all looks straight in the eyes without hesitation all the skeletons of his glorious and tormented past, in a personal and universal journey that sends a message to the new generations against the desire for success. Music creates a deep connection when it hits that delicate nerve that separates the personal from the universal. If the listener can use songs as mirrors, then the artist has succeeded in communicating his art, and Michael - who has spent decades riding that artistic balance - does so with renewed power on “St. Paul's Boulevard,” a kind of concept album that gathers his creative momentum and introduces characters lost and found, rich and poor, young and old, struggling to survive on an imaginary street that could be anywhere. “Everyone has their own St. Paul’s Boulevard, where we left pieces of our hearts, our innocence, where we suffered heartbreak, where we knew shame and struggled to find our place in this world,” McDermott says. “It’s where we struggled to cultivate love and light in a dark world. It’s where some of us were, stuck in our social and emotional development and intelligence.” The heartfelt folk-rocker continues to make music, but always on his own terms. McDermott has lived the songs he writes, that place and those shattered hopes. “Those days are now just washed-out dreams of characters, drunks and drug addicts, who spend their nights wandering the city in search of an angry fix, driven by love, lust, desire or connections,” he says. “I lost a lot of people on St. Paul’s Boulevard. A lot of them didn’t make it. I’m lucky I did. It is a place that brings out our best and our worst equally. It is the landscape in which the obstinacy of the spirit rises above the reality of darkness that surrounds us”.
Michael McDermott received the Tenco International Lifetime Achievement Award in October 2022. A prestigious Italian recognition, which deservedly places him in the Olympus of singer-songwriters together with Tom Waits, Joni Mitchell, Leonard Cohen, Willy DeVille, Jackson Browne, Caetano Veloso and Fabrizio De Andrè. The Sanremo award was followed, at FolkClub, by his only Italian concert after 10 years of absence. An intense, amazing, memorable concert, certainly unforgettable for all those present… who loudly asked for his return!
Michael returns to Italy to present a new surprising album, “Lighthouse on the shore”: 20 new songs collected in a double CD that confirm the high creative moment of the Chicago rocker who alternates powerful songs with his intimate and painful piano ballads that touch the hearts of listeners.
Michael McDermott at FolkClub will perform again alone, voice, piano and guitar, for another unmissable evening.
