Mike Spine is a critically acclaimed Seattle born musician known for his captivating live performances, intelligent songwriting and support of humanitarian issues.For twenty years, Spine bounced between the worlds of folk rock, underground rock and punk, while simultaneously working as an inner city language arts and social studies teacher in Seattle, Portland, New York and London.Since retiring from public school teaching in 2011, Mike has spent his time focused on music, having performed hundreds of concerts and benefit shows in multiple continents, ranging from Italy to Vietnam, Cambodia and Costa Rica. The last few years he has split his time between the US and Europe, touring extensively throughout the EU and often living out of a motorhome for months at a time.
On June 1st Spine will release, Forage & Glean, Volumes I & II, his 10th full-length studio album on Global Seepej Records. What makes this album different than Spine’s previous work is the sheer scale of it – a 32 track double anthology containing the best of Mike’s songwriting and recordings from the last two decades.
Volume I is a collection of Spine’s best work of folk rock and rock songs, including the memorable and more relevant than ever “Crumble”, personal political songs such as “Meteorite”, and the labor themed “Sand in Your Teeth”. There’s also a hauntingly beautiful version of “The French Girl” and the stripped down “Black Diamond”, the lyrically dense and moving tale of families immigrating to work in the coalmines outside Seattle in the early 1900’s.
Volume II contains Spine’s more explosive rock and punk material. It opens with the dynamic anti-war song “Kiss and Remember” and then launches into fiery, complex and catchy rockers like which touch on the themes of global warming with “Second Hand”, empire “Transylvania” and the anti-corruption song, “Power Broker”, before transitioning into the hook filled songs like “Iron Lake” hybrid country punk song “Another Day” and the rocker version of “Meteorite”.
Today Glide is excited to premiere “Meteorite”, a standout tune from Volume I. The song kicks off in raucous fashion with a machine gun drumbeat and crashing guitars before going into a melodic lyrical verse. Spine balances punk energy, his own political frustrations and bursts of guitar shredding with catchy harmonies, making for a sound that brings to mind the likes of Joe Strummer and Ted Leo but with a slightly gritty edge. While years of touring the world and recording original music have turned Spine into a musician capable of drawing from a wide range of sounds, “Meteorite” best captures his ability to write and record catchy and simple yet hard hitting punk music.
LISTEN:
Mike Spine releasesForage & Glean, Volumes I & II on June 1. For more music and info visit mikespine.com.
About the author: Glide
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Mike Spine is a critically acclaimed Seattle born musician known for his captivating live performances, intelligent songwriting and support of humanitarian issues.