Mikki Brisk

“You don't know what you have here.”
ese are among the rst bold words on Distance and Miles, a debut album
of startling honesty. e same words could be said about the album’s
singer-songwriter, Mikki Brisk. She's a secret she's largely kept to herself.
e words match the direct and forthright stance she displays on the CD
cover, both declaring herself to the world. She seduces with a voice as sweet
as the sourwood honey of her native Georgia, equal parts crystalline pure
and golden huskiness. A voice pollinated with heartfelt emotion and
sweetened with experience. In that voice, you can soar to the heights of
hopefulness and freedom, and plumb the depths of heartache and longing.

With a stunning breadth in her writing style, with story songs and breakup
songs, drinking songs and road songs, Mikki cra s lyrics that put one wholly
in the mind of a heartbroken – but not broken – woman. Smothered with
standout melodies and layered atmosphere like a healthy dose of southern
gravy, many of the songs hew closely to the confessional and female
empowerment messages of Shawn Colvin or Melissa Etheridge. As an artist,
Mikki could most closely be compared to Mary Chapin Carpenter or
Rosanne Cash. But instead of being the o spring of Johnny Cash, Mikki
could be the bastard love child of Merle Haggard and Emmylou Harris.
(To which she replies, “I wish!”)

Produced by Los Angeles-based honkytonk
hero Chad Watson, and featuring some of the city’s nest session
musicians, Distance and Miles makes good use of the typical instruments of
folk and country music – acoustic guitar and bass, harmonica and
accordion, mandolin, ddle and pedal steel – but o en in unexpected ways.
With that voice and those words, all her own, she continues to declare and
reveal herself, song by song, until the end of the record, with its closing
refrain, “I go walking with my red boots on,” this time matching the CD's
back cover. By then, you’ve been on a musical journey, of distance and miles,
with a bright new guide star in the musical universe.