michael the blind
Rock / Indie / Rock
Portland, OR
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About
Michael Levasseur, who goes by the stage name of michael the blind, was born in Brooklyn, NY, and began writing songs at the age of four. His parents moved him to Westminster, South Carolina around the same time. When Michael the Blind was 10 years old, he was playing a game of Queens with his sister and her friends when he stepped in a wasps nest. The wasps quickly covered his body, and even jumping into the kiddie pool in the back yard didn't help. By the time he was dragged to the sodium bicarbonate filled bathtub, the wasps had actually pierced his ears.
When he was 12, he was listening to the song "She's Not There" by The Zombies with his dad, who asked him what he wanted to be when he grew up. He said "I want to be a musician." His dad bought him a Global guitar, on which he learned how to play Simon and Garfunkel, Bob Dylan, and the Cure songs. He began writing his own songs on the guitar at the age of 13.
After proving to his dad that he could play the guitar so well that he deserved one with better action and sound, his dad bought him a new guitar for his 15th birthday, the guitar which he still plays to this day.
He moved to Athens, Georgia on his 18th birthday, his parents dropping him off on a corner with his suitcase. He lived for a while in a tiny apartment on Little Street, with 6 or 7 roommates, all of whom he would kick out over time. He met some of his closest friends here, and began playing shows in Athens. He was writing music that to him felt it came out of the ground. He also met a filmmaker who offered to send him out west to shoot a film. He went to Portland, Oregon, and decided to stay a while. His friend David (whom he had met at the apartment on Little St) brought him back to the Georgia during the flooding of Portland in 1995.
A couple of months after being back in Georgia, he lived with a Greek man named Tony, showering in a bathtub over a hole in the basement floor. There he met Earl, who changed his outlook on a lot of things. Then, Michael the Blind moved back to Portland. He coninued playing shows in Portland, and lived there again for nine months. He eventually decided to move back to his birthplace, and had an unbelievably dissapointing experience in New York. But, he did get to play at the Sidewalk Cafe, and shopped his demo around a bit. In the shadow of large debts accrued while trying to make his way through life in New York, he returned to Portland, where he began recording his first full-length record, Secrets and Lines, an album consisting of songs written during his stay in New York and his new life in Portland. This album was released in early 2006, and all copies offered for sale at a single record store completely sold out within six months. Continuing to play infrequent shows when the bug bites, he decided to record another record rather than re-release the previous. This second album is called "names & numbers" and does not include the song "names & numbers" (if you really want to hear the song, you will).
Meanwhile, michael the blind is living, loving, singing, and plucking his guitar in Portland, OR.
brief end note-
michael the blind is not wholly "blind", as it were, but very, very, very (I mean) very nearsighted to be exact.
example:
person x: "how many fingers am i holding up, michael the blind?"
m.t.b: "who cares?"
see?
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