Michael Kiel Cash weaves tradition, authenticity, and decades of musical experience into a brand new, roots-inspired solo project. Infusing themes of mythology, philosophy, and the esoteric with familiar images of the American landscape and way of life, Michael Kiel Cash has devised an entirely unique and entrancing approach to contemporary folk music.
“The tune began as a vision I received like a bolt of lightning while camping along the Poudre River in Colorado. From the cauldron of the mountain on the far shore came a glowing image of two lovers uniting in a holy marriage,” he tells us. “While the vision cannot be distilled to one meaning, it seemed to point towards the coupling of the ego-self with the soul. Like a trap door in the hustle of modern urban life, the well known feeling of alienation was washed from me and flowed out of sight down the canyon below. In this way the tune honors and reenacts the transcendent power of relationship, the muse and nature itself.”
This interview was edited for length and clarity.
Who are some of your musical influences?
Influences come from the aesthetic universe that one has lived within and imbibed throughout their lifetime. Ideally a new song comes out of this environment not in a constructed sense, but with its own power to become. The small self tends to this process and through it—if lucky—may be afforded a perspective on itself and the world. The following are some of the aesthetic worlds that I live within.
At one point I had much of Townes Van Zandt’s catalogue under my hands and in my voice. The Texas troubadour ethos is always leaking out from a deep place inside of me. The sound, themes and lyrical turns of such artists as Van Zandt, Steve Earle, Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Guy Clark, and Lyle Lovett connect me back to the Texan landscape, aesthetic, and the particular poetic eye that the place engenders. It is both a familial connection—my mother grew up there and much of the family is still there today—as well as a kind of fantasy world within me that has its own pressure that calls for new songs. To me the aesthetic is a kind of stripped down, open place that is tinged with a distinct mix of melancholia and mischievous humor, part dream and yet so real in its distillation of things to their essences.
Making music in this place in time means you have the blues in your blood. It would be difficult to understate the debt we owe to our Africanness. Major touchstones for me are Lightnin’ Hopkins, Blind Willie Johnson, and Reverend Gary Davis. Ray Charles, a genre in and of himself, remains the brightest of musical lights.
I remain in love with Lawrence Ferlingher’s Time of Useful Consciousness (2012). Islamic philosophy, mysticism and alchemy and the Persian poetic tradition color the core of my life.
Explain the title of your album.
“Shores of Mercy” is a phrase that came to me while contemplating and experiencing the death of a friend through suicide. I imagined siting shoulder-to-shoulder with him at the edge of an infinite ocean of compassion, mercy and peace. I felt like I could still touch him and talk to him if I could take myself to the edge of the infinite. I felt the warm light of a setting sun hittng my skin in that place. “Shores of Mercy” is an image that speaks specifically to that song and experience, but also to the album as a whole. Each song sets out to make things One, to bring the artist and the listener to the threshold where our souls touch, and to explore and bear witness to the infinite creativity of the Pleroma. This is why I address the listeners in the liner notes thusly: “Dear one! I have no answer, but I believe in your listening. Forget these little pieces, you are the song! You know where to drop the needle; the record of the heart is turning.”
What have you missed about touring?
I have returned to local gigging life, but haven’t hit the road like pre-pandemic days. I miss many things about the road. The touring life brings with it a natural sense of purpose in that one always has an explicit destination and job. Each day has a freshness as to specifics—one is always meeting new people, new situations, and new landscapes—but the general facts of the day are predictable and this cycle is a welcome container for the whole project. There is also a joy in maintaining and deepening relationships in many different locations. What a gig it is to feel that one has family all over the place.
More than anything, I probably miss the physical landscapes of this wondrous continent. Through touring “that ribbon of highway”, we’re as Woody Guthrie imagined, walking the threshold where the imaginal meets the material. We’re drawn into the reality that our first peoples have born witness to throughout time across this continent: that matter and spirit are one.
What’s the best way a fan can support you?
The very best way a fan can support me is for them to spend time with themselves. What arises in this conversation between you and you? There is absolutely no obligation to report this ongoing conversation with another. All this sounds a bit pretentious, but it is true and sincere.
If a fan feels a need to support the project monetarily, I encourage them to find other organizations or individuals where need is truly dire. There is plenty of dire need in this world.
If you dig the tunes and believe in their message, please share them with friends.
If a fan insists on suppor5ng me directly, the best ways are to purchase a physical or digital copy of the record at Bandcamp or through a direct PayPal payment to michaelkielcash@gmail.com. This project is very much in the red (as of June 27 2022) and contributions would go to alleviating this debt and into financing the writing and recording of the next album.
How are you using your platform to support marginalized people?
I think the best someone like me can do is to step aside and let such peoples speak for themselves. I draw into question the use of the term “marginalized.” It strikes me as a term that comes directly out of a colonialist mindset in that it implies that it’s speaker stands outside of the situation and does not wade into the waters of humanity. We’re all bound to each other, our destinies our one. Through the term, I assume we’re speaking of Indigenous Americans, victims of the U.S. military-industrial complex, African Americans, people of the lower classes, etc.These people have great wealth and their contributions to world culture and human heritage cannot be overstated. Making rooming for such individuals to speak, pointing out our indebtedness to their cultures, speaking truth, and calling out injustice is absolutely vital.
Getting with other people and really mixing is not easy, it takes courage, curiosity and real vulnerability. We must build a certain comfort with discomfort and put ourselves in situations where we are the ones who know the least in the room. Social programs and reparations for African and Indigenous Americans should be used and do make a difference. I believe in these things. They do not, however, address the core of our pain and misunderstanding, and in and of themselves they will not help us to grow in a soulful way.
Growth is on the level of the individual and on the level of human to human interaction. If we stay separate, we will continue to live separate and unequal and fail to see the other as having a soul. We have to get with each other: musically, artistically, socially, romantically, sexually, etc.
We’re here to mix and to feel each other and to hear each other out. We’re here to become intimate with one another and through this to know each other. Not with the goal of becoming a singular and homogenous people, but to grow in understanding: “Oh humankind! We have created you from a single (pair) of a male and a female, and made you into nations and tribes, that you may know each other.” (Qur’an 49:13)