Mike McClure: Looking Up
Red Dirt music legend, Mike McClure is set to release his new album, Looking Up, on Friday, September 25, 2020. The album was recorded and produced at his own Boohatch Studio in Ada, Oklahoma with partner Chrislyn Lawrence. The album is an incredible creation that represents self-renewal, almost a spiritual reawakening that has him sober and appreciative of living life in the moment. McClure and Lawrence have magnificently created a “page turner” of songs that are a representation of the past five years in the life of Mike McClure.
Looking Up features ten tracks, nine new tunes and one familiar song with an added line that defines the current state of mind of McClure. “You are not your past” is a new phrase in the song “Distractions,” originally released in 2011. Those words provide significant insight to the journey towards sobriety and a new beginning for Mike McClure. This addition to the tune is maybe the most important and significant because it provides the listener the understanding that Mike has overcome his addiction and has found a new journey, but yet an acknowledgment that the past was a different life. During the pandemic, McClure has found a healthier way to live, both mentally and physically, and has made up some of the time that he lost on the road away from his family.
“Orion,” written by Mike McClure and Wink Burcham, is the centerpiece of Looking Up. The tune finds the constellation working as a guiding force, providing an opportunity for introspection, as the night sky often does. Both “Your Kind of Blue” and “Little Bit of Love” are tried-and-true love songs, while “Here I Am” continues the theme of the transformative effect love can have on a life. As he says:
“It’s a little bit strange now / How in just one moment all your everything / It just has to change and you can’t go back to who you were / ‘Cause you are not the same.”
“Holiday Blown” takes a deep look at addiction, told through a character sketch of a soldier back from a war and the repercussions of combat on everything around them, aiming to bring a bit of empathy to the table.
“My grandpa was a front-line tank mechanic in WWII,” he says. “He was on the march to Berlin that toppled the Nazis. When he came home, he stayed drunk. I imagined all of the holidays that were blown by his drinking, as well as the ones I ruined myself.”
Every song on Looking Up is a testament to the current change that is happening in the life of Mike McClure. A year of sobriety has led Mike to find happiness in forms unrelated to a once clouded past. The current conditions of the Covid-19 Pandemic has made it difficult for musicians to have official album release parties. However, McClure did a live taping without an audience at the Mercury Lounge Tulsa earlier in the month of September. The show is scheduled to run on September 26 at 8PM CST. More information and tickets can be found here: https://www.prekindle.com/promo/id/530927495299557185
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