Today, I would like to introduce you all to another artist from the Locals Covering Locals Volume 2 project. That man is Michael Poulopoulos…who could also be heard under the moniker M.R. Poulopoulos or Rebel Darling.
I came to know Mike through Club Passim. We were scheduled to have an In The Round set at last Memorial Day’s campfire festival and I listened to some of his music so offered him a gig the night before at Toad. Well, needless to say his songs blew me away. Just give a listen to some of them and you will also be an immediate fan, but the fact that he is also a hell of a guitar player and able to lead a completely improvisational run through of his songs…man, I was hooked. His songs are really fun to jam on, his writing is great, and you would never know that some of them are 3 chorders given the way he plays them and makes them just feel so different and complex with layers. That weekend I fell in love with Mike’s music and being able to play it with him almost immediately. And through the past couple of month’s I have played his record “Harvest the Heart” constantly and had a few more opportunities to play with him again (and will after a tracking session, October 5th at Toad).
But it’s not just the music. If it was, I could have a volume of 100 songwriters for this edition of LCL. What also struck me about Poulopoulos was just how quickly he became a new friend as well. It’s like when you meet someone for the first time and it strangely feels like you have been pals for years. Something just clicks. I got that with Mike and although he lives far away, lucky for us all he swings through town pretty regularly and plays with a few of our other local friends…like Laurence Scudder and Ryan Fitzsimmons. I think I have made a friend for life in this guy and can’t wait to see what the future brings for him within this community and with some of the Boston area folks out in his neck of the woods in upstate NY.
Word on the street is that we can expect some of Scudder’s instrumentation on the track that the songwriter has chose to play. A wonderful addition to this volume of the project. Cannot wait to see what they come up with. So welcome to Mike, or M.R. or Rebel Darling bandleader, doesn’t matter how you know the man’s music, just that you should know it.