UPCOMING SHOWS

album out now: Dead Horse Creek

ABOUT MEGHAN MAIKE 

(say it with me: meg & mike)

In true country tradition, this Canadian singer-songwriter has found inspiration on the road – from Montreal to Mississippi, and now Melbourne. 

Born into folk and honed in country, Maike’s influences (from the greats; Emmylou, Gram, Neil, Lucinda, to indie heroes, The Sadies) spurred her to process the world through songwriting. Sights, sounds, places, experiences, textures, and seasons, find their way to the page.

From childhood years in a folk community on Canada’s west coast, Maike was drawn to the buzzing music scene of Montreal – a move meant for a year that lasted a decade, and made a home for life…until the next calling, and it was no mistake that Maike then landed in the vibrant musical tapestry that is Melbourne.

Circumstance brought Maike to live in Clarksdale, Mississippi, for seven years. With some time on her hands, and absorbing the magnetic musical energy of the delta, she kept on writing. This album is a faithful representation of time and place, and the relationship with the delta is ongoing.

Settled back into Melbourne, she’s assembled a stellar band of musicians to lend the songs new light:

Meghan is joined by Mark McCartney (Mick Daley’s Corporate Raiders, Jo Meares’ Silver Bullets, John Dowler’s Vanity Project), Matthew Cotter on drums (Even, Bagful of Beez, The Swarm), Nicholas Pollock on keys, and Drew Parsons on bass.

DEAD HORSE CREEK

The album, like Maike herself, traveled some distance to become fully realised. The songs grew in the Mississippi delta where there is a different sense of time that seems to pause, and hold space, for creativity. The vast fields and winding rivers, country roads and endless skies, provide the framework to talk about the difficult parts of life; loss, hurt, and displacement. In the same places one can find salvation, camaraderie, and truth.

The project took on shape through a series of songwriting workshops at her work (and home for some time) at the Shack Up Inn, in Clarksdale, Mississippi. There, many a late night was spent sharing songs, stories, and bourbon, with the workshop’s creator, Ralph Carter. He had an idea…and a studio in Ventura, California.

They say it takes a village to raise a child. What is the collective noun for what it takes to raise an album? 

To record in Ralph’s Garage, they cashed in all the chips and leaned on the talents of friends;  Gary Mallaber on drums (Steve Miller Band, Van Morrison), Mississippian songwriter Cary Hudson on guitar (Blue Mountain), and Ralph Carter, himself, on bass, keys, backing vocals, and so forth (Sugaray Rayford, Eddie Money).

Five days, twelve songs, plus three years of a pandemic, an album is born.

Dead Horse Creek. What’s in a name? 

Well that’s a story too…
See, ten years ago when Maike lived in Melbourne previously, she was driving out to camp at Wilsons Promontory. Names of creeks, nice ones, passed swiftly by her window; Pretty Mountains Creek, or Pleasant View Creek…and then, Dead Horse Creek.

Maike later said to her friend, Stu: “One day I’m going to call a record by that name.”

That day is now.