Longtime folk rock survivor Scott Mickelson enters his fifth decade in music with the release of his fiery, pointed new single “Jagged Tooth” today on American Songwriter.
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From playing in famous NYC dives like
CBGB’s, Bitter End, and Kenny’s Castaways by age 17 in the 80s to being signed by Neil Young’s management company in the 90s to penning his own children’s book after going back to art school in the 00s, Mickelson has experienced a lifetime of twists and turns these last four decades.
But it’s within the last five years that the Bay Area based musician has found success recording under the moniker Mickelson. His debut LP Flickering appeared on
the 2015 GRAMMY Ballot in two categories, “Best Folk Album” and “Best Roots Music Performance.” His 2018 album A Wondrous Life was released to critical accolades while as a producer, Mickelson helmed a pair of benefit compilations, Blanket The Homeless and After The Fire, to equal acclaim.
Yet on August 15th, Mickelson unveils his most politically charged work to date with Drowning In An Inflatable Pool. It’s an album rooted in a collective frustration about the mismanagement of our country by this current White House administration. And perhaps most telling of the righteous shade Mickelson is throwing the federal government on this collection is “Jagged Tooth,” a song about the modern day carnival of political propaganda punctuated by a positively macabre animated music video.
“I began writing ‘Jagged Tooth’ shortly after the 2016 campaign when I saw how the information coming out of Washington, DC was purposely being manipulated with misleading statements,” Mickelson tells American Songwriter about what led him to write the song. “Remember the ‘alternate facts’? The idea of confusing people as a way to distract people from the truth is extremely dangerous. It has taken this country into a dark era and it has become a new normal. In ‘Jagged Tooth,’ every word from the character’s mouth is a lie, an excuse, a deflection or a rationale for those lies. It’s a wordplay game of manipulation and the guy loves every minute of it. He even brags about it. ‘I may be amoral, My halls are filled with dreams I’ve killed and the people who live there, their lives are in peril.'”
For more information about Mickelson in anticipation of Drowning In An Inflatable Pool, pay him a visit at mickelsonmusic.com.
