Michael Jarrett
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Michael Jarrett

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Band Folk Acoustic

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Music

The best kept secret in music

Press


"Michael Jarrett Review"

"Vivid as Guy (Clark), as poignant as Townes (Van Zandt), Michael Jarrett's songs capture Texas Hill Country life like pieces of a movie."
---Matt Reilly, 107.1 KGSR Austin, Texas - 107.1 KGSR Austin, Texas


"MJ in NY"

"Michael Jarrett is a lyricist through and through. He has a way of combining small town Georgia wit with poetic mastery that results in songs that paint a picure for the listener. Drawing inspiration from the likes of Townes, Guy, and (John) Prine, Michael's songs are honest and personal. The kind you'll want to hear again... and again... and again. There is nothing fancy about Michael Jarrett. He is just a southern boy who writes great songs, and has a hell of alot of fun sharing them with you."
---Ben Edgerton, Shadetree New York Concert Series - Shadetree New York


"MJ in Chi"

"As you listen to Michael Jarrett something grabs you. He has a delivery style that leans more towards poet (speaking) than singer. Usually this is something that would bother me about a song. But not here. What grabs you is the lyrics and the sincerity of the songs. Lyrically he falls somewhere between the styles of Bob Dylan and Townes VanZandt. One simple guitar strumming for backup and lyrics that, like Dylan and Townes, use allusion and illusion. There is something in the water down there in Texas that makes great songwriters. Maybe it's the heat or maybe it's the boredom, but Michael is proof, they write great songs. [Love and Poetry] has a haunting quality that hasn't struck me in a song for a while. It hit's me something on the order of the first time I took a road trip and listened to Bruce Springsteen's Nebraska album specifically "State Trooper". I will say that listening to Michael I feel as if we're standing at the foot of something big."
---Charlie Watson, Chicago Songwriter's Scene - Chicago Songwriter's Scene


Discography

Untitled coming Fall 2007!
The Authorized Bootleg - 2001
Come On - 2000

Photos

Feeling a bit camera shy

Bio

In October of 1973, with an off-rhythm magnolia branch tapping on the window of the Piedmont Hospital in Fulton County Georgia, I was born; the first child in my family. Next thing you know, my folks packed up their '66 Mustang and moved us south about 100 miles to the borderlands with Alabama. Some of my fondest early memories are looking from a sideways angle through the windshield over my parents' shoulders or up through the backseat window at the tops of trees. Things were bigger then; that's about all I can really recall.

I grew up in Columbus, there on the Chattahoochee river, in Muscogee County, the home of Muscogee County Jail, the new name of the Columbus Stockade, and you probably know the song about that. It's one of the many cover songs I don't do. Columbus is a wonderful place to be from. I discovered at my high-school graduation that, somehow, there aren't any roads that head into Columbus, they all seem to lead away. I hitched a ride on one of them up to Tennessee to be liberal-artfully educated and started writing songs about the trip.

Four years later, I moved to Texas for the first time, bought my first car, a '74 Chevy pick-up that broke down six months later, and started trying out some of those songs on Texas ears. It took. So I wrote some more, learned a new chord and decided to move back to Tennessee... just to be sure. I had to buy another truck for the trip, it broke down six months later, so I stayed there a couple years working on my new chord.

After taking some classes in automobile mechanics, I was ready for a new truck purchase, which I proceeded to make. All this time, I traveled one way or another down to Texas about every two months. Naturally the next step was to take a job in New Mexico, which I did. But despite all my new mechanical abilities, my truck broke down on the way there in Grambling, Louisiana. I sold the sucker for $400 to the mechanic who tried to fix it (and let me stay in his single-wide with him and his family while he did) and rented a '96 Mustang, loaded it with everything but my pride and my busted-spring mattress and rolled into Austin with twenty-seven dollars and thirteen cents.

After a while, I moved to San Angelo and started playing shows in Austin. So I moved back to Austin to find the shows were now in all the other parts of Texas. So I switched houses in Austin... just to be sure... and found the shows were now in New Mexico, Arizona, and California too. Fortunately, those mechanics classes started paying off.

There's plenty more I could tell some other time. And, of course, there's still the traveling stories...