Before time passes on and gets too close to October 5th when we hit the studio, I wanted to announce the final artist who will be in the studio that day. He should be familiar to you all by now, as he is September’s Artist of the Month and a good friend of mine (plus one hell of a songwriter), Mr. Connor Millican.
Connor’s delivery and his attitude in his performance is unrivaled. Hanging out with him off of a stage, talking, or working on a project he is mild tempered, almost quiet and choosey with how many words he gets in. But on stage, he is a force to be reckoned with. His songs are story telling at their very finest and the arrangement of the stories that he tells are interesting and exciting. As mentioned in the “Evolving and Revolving Band” feature I recently wrote, Connor keeps the live performance of his songs extremely fresh. He mixes up instrumentation and the line-up for his shows. It’s really something quite admirable and exciting. Connor isn’t all that much younger than I am so it feels strange to use this term, but I truly believe that he is one of the most promising young songwriters in the North East today.
Ok, ok…great songwriter, great performer, you get it. Check box number one for why he is invited to be a part of this project. But something else you may not be aware of is that for the studios sessions for volume 1 of Locals Covering Locals, Connor was there for the whole trip…behind the lens of a camera. He shot a mini documentary of the process of the record, with interviews and live in studio performance and he did a real bang up job on it. Take that and then couple it with the Old Guitar series that he produces.
An old beat up Kay guitar and songwriters from around the country playing their songs, all while Millican videos and then edits all of the footage into wonderful song-length episodes for his series. Oh yeah, and he does it at no charge to the musicians to date…I mean, I am not sure there are many people involved in music as a whole that are quite as generous with their time and skill as Connor is.
The LCL project is all about creating this family of musicians paying respect to those songwriters that they love and feel people need to know about. Connor has become like a musical brother to me and someone who’s music I think you all need to know. So, to a songwriter and promoter of music that I have the utmost respect for…welcome to the Locals Covering Locals songwriter family dude.