Mick Bassett

Mick Bassett is in your head.

Whosoever would be a man must be a nonconformist. -RWE"Mick Bassett was converted by rock n roll at an early age, writing songs before he could drive and performing amongst Detroit’s garage rock boomers before he could vote. But when he set out on his own songwriting trip – he galvanized the smoke curtained corners and sonorous clang of piano bars, he wandered and stomped his way across the cobblestones of New Orleans and dressed his strange new jazz-infused folk style with a sway and a saunter that gave it such a bewitching quality, while his arresting voice, a mid-to-high quaver both wispy and raspy, trembling as it dances over the punched piano plods and arcing bass grooves while the drums march us further onward with the distinctive honk and drag of the trombone roaring from the side. Before he could legally drink, he was ready to twist his first love, rock n roll, into some inverted spaced out jazz trip of piano and brass led spook-waltzes – with guitar and bass, yes, but all made to follow the beat of a new drum, something a bit more heady, theatrical and at times, supernatural. Vacillate.

He allied with trombonist Allison Young and drummer Erik Roosen at Detroit’s Wayne State University – inspired by Young’s talents with the jutting brass and Roosen’s functional percussive abilities – and soon he’d worked through initial hybrids of his jazz/rock vision. The band continued to morph (as well as perform throughout Michigan with a self-booked south/Midwest tour) and recorded their first EP, Here’s The Whirlwind, in late 2007, with bassist Jesse Shepherd-Bates and transitioned guitarists from Allan Fullterton to Gorton Smith (with Mick handling guitars, piano and vocals). With Smith and Shepherd-Bates, the band recorded the Scissors and Suckers EP and released it on Sleek Speek records in 2009, a label co-founded by Bassett and Shepherd-Bates. While the first EP reveled in piano blues, marching jazz and a bit of weird indie-rock/soul, the second record settled into an even punchier, fuller realized oscillation between the blare and shimmy of the trombone, the coarse and cathartic piano pounds and an even fierce and furrowing rhythms.

Towards the end of 2009, Bassett solidified a line up with guitarist Ryan Wiese and bassist Joel Sanders, just in time to start fleshing out the bevy of material Bassett has continued to write in the dying days of this decade. The band looks to release a follow up to Scissors midway through May 2010 with the release of their new EP "Laugh Like You Want It" on Sleek Speek Records." - Jeff Milo (deepcutzmusic.blogspot.com) April 2010.Follow us at: