Mike Green
Photo: Lorel Vidlund
“To my mind, a writer’s mind, Mike Green is a wry philosopher with a guitar, a perceptive student of the human condition and an upcoming writer worthy of deep listening. His newest recording is a thoughtful, delightful and heart opening collection.”
— Carrie Newcomer (Singer-Songwriter, Author, Poet, Podcast Host)
“Mike Green is a man of many, sometimes hidden, talents. Sure, he's a well-known and respected talent agent, but he's also a wicked gardener. A gourmet cook. A lover of great music. And now, an out-of-the-closet singer/songwriter. What do all these things have in common? They make our lives a little richer, a little more nutritious, more worth living. These are all crafts that require time, patience, and a love for small details. In Mike's first recording, he sets a table as varied as it is satisfying. Pull up a chair and join in the feast.”
— John McCutcheon (Artist)
“When I think about Mike Green, I think about him as a great booking agent. Now that I’m hearing his own music, I realize why he’s a great agent. He can DO this. He understands what stagecraft and songwriting is - and can do it! That’s what makes him such a discerning agent - he sees it through the artist’s lens because he is an artist at his core. I’m so grateful to see Mike Green’s artistry shine through!”
— Matt Smith (Managing Director, Passim)
https://mikegreensongwriter.com
Musician bios are typically written in the third person, often written by a publicist. But I’d like to tell my own story.
As a songwriter, I wonder whether my philosophy about life may be a bit confounding to my listeners. In my songs, there’s a palpable tension between tenderness and irony, profundity and slapstick, aching beauty and fierce rock & roll. I like to tell specific stories with few words, and to create poetic alchemy by pairing words and melody in a way that is more powerful than each would be separately.
In my early twenties, I toured as a solo musician around the northeastern U.S. I then put my own music on a back burner for decades while working in service to other musicians. Since 1986, I’ve worked as a national booking agent, representing dozens of top songwriters and other folk and roots musicians. This both kept me in the center of the acoustic music world and gave me a front row seat to the craft of melding poetry and music, and to the art of bringing those songs and stories to life in front of audiences.
In the great pause of 2020, when the music business went into limbo, I finally had the time to dig back into my own music. And I began to write songs like a madman, using all of the skills I’d picked up from the great musicians I’d been working with and drawing on all of my life experience. A dozen of these songs landed on my first recording, Listening For The Bell, released in the summer of 2023. And I made my way back onto the stage to find that it felt more natural than ever.
My songs cover all kinds of ground, painting human portraits of some of my extended family members (From Here, Sparks, The Queen), hilarious takes on being stuck at home during the pandemic (Locked Down Together), a stream-of-consciousness journey that begins with housework and flies into memory and fantasy (Clean The Windows), a filthy and frustrated blues (Houseboy), and a glimpse into the life of an abused woman (Enough). Sometimes I even get political (Carnival Shitshow) and write mature love songs (Forgiveness). In concert, I like to take audiences on a wild emotional ride, showing them beauty and humor and everything in between.
I’ve also been playing guitar for more than 50 years, so by now I’m a good guitarist with a strong foundation in folk, bluegrass, rock, blues, and pop music. My solo guitar arrangements are meticulous and complete, and built around the emotional center of each song.
Some of the great songwriters Mike Green has represented since 1986: Tom Paxton, Patty Larkin, Utah Phillips, Ani DiFranco, Tom Rush, John Gorka, Christine Lavin, Greg Brown, Kelly Joe Phelps, Cheryl Wheeler, The Story, John McCutcheon, Carrie Newcomer, Jesse Winchester, Holly Near, Stephen Fearing, Ferron, Garnet Rogers, Connie Kaldor, Eddie From Ohio, Catie Curtis, David Wilcox, Laurie Lewis, Willy Porter, Dave Carter, and many more.