micah p

Micah P wears a solid looking baseball hat low over his eyes. He wields his guitar like a chainsaw. He smokes as he plays, fingers never leaving the fret.

When I first heard Micah P I imagined him a long haired goth. Out of joint in Texas. Wearing black dresses over black jeans with scarlet nail varnish. Emaciated, as torn apart as his voice. Barely able to walk.

Micah P doesn’t look anything like that. He looks someone who comes from Texas.

I probably thought he looked like that because of the circumstances under which we bonded. I was leaning against a radiator in the middle of the night crying my eyes out. Something in the tone of his voice made me feel as though he might have behaved in a similar fashion, in a trailer someplace like Abilene, Van Horn or Anthony. A trailer which felt like the way his songs sounded which was also the way I was feeling at the time.

During the gig Micah P chatted to the audience quite a bit. He had some wry one liners. Someone called out for him to play a song called Patience, and he said into the mike, ‘I just might if you have any’. Later he looked at the crowd of Londoners and told us it was like a miracle the way things had changed. Only two and half years ago, he was living off a woman, with his life ‘not going... not going anywhere good at all.’

At the end of his last song, Patience, Micah P basically gives up singing and starts howling. His gravely voice sounds like it’s had enough of having to put feelings into words. There are more expressive ways of doing it. He chops down mike stands with his chainsaw. It doesn’t feel like an act. It feels like the sound of someone who’s been there.