The Return of the Story Teller
(He's 62 and he still has the "chops" to keep his audience well entertained)

    As a young man, settling into my new life in North Carolina's Triangle, I would take my young wife to see whatever shows were available within two hours drive of our one bedroom walk-up. While we lived in Raleigh and then Cary, North Carolina, we saw the live shows of Led Zeppelin, Eric Clapton, the Eagles, the Moody Blues, James Taylor, Fleetwood Mac with Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham and the Allman Brothers without Duane, just to name a few. Closer to home and a lot less fee per ticket, with the benefit of the purchase of adult beverages, to quench one's thirst, were the live shows of a young Mike Cross.



    Mike Cross lived in Chapel Hill; and he enjoyed playing close to home, and clubs like The Pier in Raleigh and Cat's Cradle in Carrboro, North Carolina loved having Mike to perform his fresh, eclectic blend of country / bluegrass/ folk / rock. One issue that was never in doubt: Mike Cross loved to perform by talking as well as playing, and he loved to spin yarns - in his songs and between them. His trademark jocularity kept his audience in touch with his music and its message, which was more about a good laugh than being enlightened; however, if Mike wanted to further a point, he would first make you laugh or at a minimum give one the irrepressible urge to dance a jig.

    Mike's ditties usually found their mark, and more often one's funny bone. Tunes like: "Elma Turl," "Whiskey 'Fore Breakfast" and "The Scotsman" were hilarious tunes set to a traditional country / bluegrass melody that went straight for the belly laughs, and were a welcome refuge in a musical time when Disco raged and the seriously silly "Hair Bands" were still in their infancy. In my rebellion to defy Disco and I never understood the "Hair Bands," or the "British Wimp Bands," I would visit a Mike Cross show at every opportunity.

    When I learned that he would visit us down east at the renovated Turnage Theater on June 19, 2009, my still beautiful, but not as young wife purchased our center mezzanine tickets, where the view is always good, the seats comfortable and the acoustics, well, perfect.



    My initial observation of the show: Mike Cross and I have both gotten older since those salad days of our respective youth. My wife and I (I include ourselves because Mike always makes the collective audience feel a part of his experience) were childless then, and now we have a 27-year-old leading the pack of our four cubs. Mike has put on some weight (about "40 extra pounds" he offered to me after the show), but his music has not suffered from his hiatus.

    His fret fingering is still nimble, his picking remains purposeful, and his voice is still clear and remarkably strong. Mike plays the six string and the twelve string (Mike says, "the extra six strings help me to not miss the notes so bad") guitars and the fiddle. Mike's acute physical and mental dexterity allows him the ability to move easily between the instruments, the vocalizing of his lyrics and his incessant story telling.

    The stories weave in and out of the lyrics of his finely crafted ditties and Mike's life as a musician to such an extent, one does not know where the messages of the songs begin and his extraordinary life, as a traveling troubadour, ends. My impression: Mike is every character in every song he has written. It's just in the tunes, he allows his artistic license to embellish the characters a bit, and embellish them he does.

    From the philandering father in "Elma Turl" to the earthy young survivor sustaining himself on "Tanner's Farm," to the surly pimp as "Nobby," Mike is these colorful characters. I actually believe Mike believes he could be the robust sleeping Scotsman in the "The Scotsman" - but in another life, or his dreams, of course.

    Since I am, obviously, in the practice of analyzing Mike, I also believe Mike fashions himself as an Irish Fiddle player playing the ancient Celtic reels that are channeled through his bow. Moreover, this is where I believe that Mike is most comfortable and at his best in communicating his musical message. Mike broadens our collective melodic state to an imagined place where grinning men, in a stiff Irish brogue, guide us down a dusty road to a quaint country pub, and musically by the stroke of his fiddler's bow, we are transmitted to that emerald isle of the North Atlantic Sea - we know as Ireland.

    Mike sincerely appreciates the great folk music that has come before him, with its roots sunk deep in the Carolina soil. Now, you do realize that I am not referring to the Kingston Trio or the New Christy Minstrels, but to the great folk music of the mountains and the hills of North Carolina and the ancestral forbearer of that fine music: the aforementioned Ireland and Scotland as well. After the concert, Mike opined to me, "Some of the best American music ever made is within a one hundred and fifty mile radius of Wilkes County."

    Think about it: Wilkes County is on the edge of northwestern North Carolina and that encompasses all of the great blues and soul musicians along Tobacco Road from Raleigh / Durham to Winston Salem; much of the biggest mountains and a great bit of the finest bluegrass in Virginia; almost all of the mountains of North Carolina, which includes many of the bluegrass legends; and also included within that cone is the northeast to central Appalachian Mountains of Tennessee, and you get the picture Mike painted in his quote. Mike, himself, hails from Lenoir, North Carolina, which is tucked into the lower Brushy Mountains, at the toe of the great Blue Ridge Mountains of the "Old North State."



    The influence of his home territory was regaled to the audience in a story before he launched into the hazards of inbreeding in the infamous tale of "Elma Turl." Moreover, the better influences for Minstrel Mike are the Irish folk ditties; he loves to create, like "Pig Fair Sailor," which he performed early in the show. This humor flavored tune is from his most recent CD entitled, "At Large in the World," recorded in 1999. "At Large in the World" is an eclectic blend of Irish fiddle reels, humorous ditties and reflective ballads, which has long been the staple of a Mike Cross compilation, such as his earlier albums: "The Bounty Hunter," "Rock 'n' Rye," "Born in the Country." The one exception from that formula in "At Large" is Bill Monroe's "Walking in Jerusalem," which needs no explanation. It is the ultimate inspirational spiritual.

    And speaking of the spiritual, Mike Cross still gives a great show, and as North Carolina's greatest wandering troubadour and raconteur of great tales, he is a welcome gentleman to Beaufort County and a wonderful artist in our time. I pray that Mike enjoys a long and healthy life, and may hurry back Down East to share his melodic music, his humor and his fine stories of simpler, if not simple, times for some of us.