Hey Friend!

I‘m going to keep this short, because there’s one big piece of news: Through This Fire was released today!

Check it out:
Spotify
Apple Music
iTunes
Amazon
iHeartRadio

So now, I have a humble request. Give the record a listen. If you like what you hear, pass it along to your friends… either by posting a link on social media, sending a text message, bumping it in your car, or hacking into their wi-fi networks and making their Alexa play the record on repeat. Your call.

Now for some real talk. There’s a lot going on in our country – and the world – right now. 2020 has been a hell of a year, and it’s easy to lose hope or feel like we’re running out of gas. But there’s still important work to be done, and I still believe we have time to change this world for the better. With that in mind, I put together this video to go with Invincible, the closing track on Through This Fire.

One of my housemates commented, after watching this video, “I want to go fight fascists now,” so maybe it can help you push through the home stretch of this season.

Whatever you’re able to do, do it. Drive your friends to your local Board of Elections to cast their vote early. Volunteer at a call center. However you can, make your voice heard and help others to do the same.

Finally, if you happen to live in the Cleveland area, I’ll be playing an in-person show tomorrow night – with limited capacity, masks mandatory, and social distancing measures – along with Guy Snowdon and Meg Stepka, two phenomenal Singer-Songwriters. Tickets are available here, and they’re just $5!

As always, it’s possible that additional shows will be added to the schedule, but even if not, there will definitely be more news & videos in the coming days and weeks, so make sure to follow me on social media (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Youtube) so you don’t miss anything!

Thank you so much for joining me on this journey, through all its twists and turns.

Cheers,
Michael

Want to change how you receive these emails?
You can update your preferences or unsubscribe from this list

Hey Friend!

I haven’t written one of these in a while, I hope you’re doing well! While I haven’t been inactive – in fact, I’ve been putting a lot of time into Spontaneously Combustible Apparel, a new clothing company focused on making positive social change – most of my performances have been private shows or porch concerts that didn’t make sense to share, but now I’ve got some news!

I’ve also got some sweet new press shots, thanks to No.Numbers 

First, the immediate: for the first time, Hello Headrush will be doing a livestream performance! In a normal year, the past month would have been spent furiously preparing for IngenuityFest, Cleveland’s 3-day celebration of arts, technology and music. This year, the Ingenuity has gone virtual, teaming up with the 48 Hour Virtual Music Festival, for an event called Virtually INGenious. Your three favorite androids will be kicking off the festival at 7pm tonight, streaming live from the Hello Headrush Facebook page!

Next, there’s new music on the way! The second single from my upcoming EP will be coming out October 9. It’s called “The New Contagion”, and you can pre-save it on Spotify now! Pre-saving may seem like a small thing, but as more folks hit that pre-save button, the song generates more attention from music curators, which can help spread new music to more ears. It would mean a ton to me if you pre-saved the track! 

Of course, if there’s a release date for a second single, it should be no surprise that the full EP will follow soon after. The release date for the new record, entitled “Through This Fire”, has been set for October 23. I feel like I always say this in the lead-up to releasing a new record, but it’s always true: I’m SO EXCITED about these new songs, and I can’t wait for you to hear them! 

While it’s to be expected that my performance calendar’s going to look different than it did in The Before Times, in addition to the live-streams I DO have some upcoming public performances – limited capacity, socially-distanced, and mask-mandatory – but I’d still love to see some friendly faces, even if I can only see the top half! The October 24th show will be your first opportunity to snag a physical copy of Through This Fire.

As always, it’s possible that additional shows will be added to the schedule, but even if not, there will definitely be more news leading up to the release of Through This Fire, so make sure to follow me on social media (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Youtube) so you don’t miss anything!

Thanks as always for joining me on this journey, through all its twists and turns.

Cheers,
Michael

Want to change how you receive these emails?
You can update your preferences or unsubscribe from this list

Hey Friend, happy quarantine to you!

What a difference a month makes. At the beginning of March I wrote to you about plans to travel out of state, shows I was excited to play with The Mess Makers, and ambitions to do more touring over the coming months. Of course, I don’t have to tell you that none of those things happened. We find ourselves at an unprecedented moment in our lifetimes, staying at home and keeping our distance to help keep one another safe. While I’m sad that the performances and travel plans have all been cancelled or put on hold, I’m heartened by seeing my fellow Ohioans taking steps to help prevent the spread of COVID-19.  I’m also greatly encouraged by the heroic efforts of those on the front lines: the medical professionals showing themselves to be the superheroes we know they are, as well as the workers keeping essential businesses up and running.

Fortunately, we finished production on the long-promised music video for my new song “More Than You Believe You Are” right before lockdown started, and the video was released April 3, right on schedule! You can watch the video on YouTube or Facebook, or listen to the song on Spotify.

As musicians, most of us thrive on live performances, and that’s also where a lot of us make the majority of our income.  With events and performances canceled for the foreseeable future, figuring out how to turn being a musician into a work-from-home job has been a challenge, to say the least. Livestream concerts have become the norm, and the “virtual tip jar” has suddenly become a common sight. I had the pleasure to take part in a 48-hour Livestream Festival at the end of March (you can watch my performance here), and you’ll be able to catch me tomorrow for a Sunday Brunch Livestream show – I’ll be taking requests for both my original songs and cuts from my covers list, so pour yourself a mimosa, fry yourself up some eggs & french toast, and join me tomorrow!

I’ve also been spending a lot of time in the studio working on new material (what else was I going to do, right?), and breaking from tradition, I’ve been sharing the demos of those songs on Facebook. Here are links to a few of those demos:
“End of the World”
“Learning to Stand Again”
“Hope is the New Contagion”

I’ve got several more I’ll be posting in the coming days, so make sure to follow me on Facebook to catch those when they go up, and for info about other upcoming livestream events.

Thanks as always for joining me on this (for now, virtual) journey. I can’t wait to see all your smiling faces again out in the real world once this pandemic is behind us!

Cheers,
Michael

Want to change how you receive these emails?
You can update your preferences or unsubscribe from this list

Hey Friend,

Happy March! Even though I know we can count on at LEAST one big snowstorm before winter’s gone for good, the forecast is starting to look pretty spring-ish here in Cleveland, with highs well above freezing for as far out as my phone’s forecast will show me.

The comparatively-balmy weather came in handy this past weekend, as March 1 was the day “MYTBYA Video Shoot” was on my calendar. I’ll give you 3 guesses as to what MYTBYA stands for…

…

…

If you guessed “Master Yodeling Thunder’s Blazing Yak Academy,” then you’ve landed on a fantastic name for a Kung Fu school, but unfortunately are slightly off-target regarding this past Sunday’s activities. Instead, a group of 20 or so stalwart folks gathered on Edgewater Beach on Cleveland’s Lake Erie shore to film a music video for my new single that’s slated to be released later this month, “More Than You Believe You Are”.

I’m super excited about this song and this video; all the folks involved absolutely knocked it out of the park; particular shout-outs to our lead actor Jaered Andrews, our videographer Arron Bound, and our production coordinator (and my partner) Amanda Nyx. We have 1 more day of shooting scheduled, but that will be indoors, non-weather-dependent, and won’t require a small army of volunteers to pull off!

This coming weekend will find me & and Amanda performing & exhibiting at another of Wizard World’s Comic Cons, but this time right in our own backyard!

Wizard World Cleveland will be happening right at the Convention Center in downtown CLE – follow this link to grab your tickets, and use the promo code FREEPHOTOCLE to snag a signed celebrity photo from the vast Wizard World collection!

The end of this month will see my yearly pilgrimage to Cape May, New Jersey, for the Singer-Songwriter Cape May conference. I’ll be traveling this year with my good friends Kevin Conaway & Sean Benjamin, and doing two showcase performances while I’m there! I look forward to this event every March; I can’t wait to see all the Garden State friends I’ve made over the years, and all the other singer-songwriters that travel from across the country to share their stories, songs, and insights.

Over the past 6 months I’ve been thrilled to be supplementing my solo shows with full-band performances as Michael McFarland & the Mess Makers – playing with a full band is just so. much. fun., and the gentlemen I get to share the stage with are both a blast to be around and a pleasure to collaborate with. We’ll be playing our next show on April Fool’s Day (no joke) at The Grog Shop, one of my favorite venues. We’ll be sharing the bill with our friends Meg & the Magnetosphere, Davey Squires, and Don Beck. Of course, you can expect there to be absolutely no shenanigans, tomfoolery, hooliganism, or other such malarkey. We are SERIOUS musicians, after all…

Here’s everywhere you can find me playing over the next month. Hope to see you at one of the shows!

As always, there’s a chance I might end up picking up a few more shows over the coming weeks, so be sure to like my various social media accounts (Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram) and keep an eye on the Tour Dates page to make sure you don’t miss anything.

Once again, thank you for taking this journey with me. I can’t wait to see what happens during this new decade!

Cheers,
Michael

Want to change how you receive these emails?
You can update your preferences or unsubscribe from this list

Hey Friend!

I’m going to try to keep this month’s update short; which is usually what I say write before writing a novella to deliver to your inbox. But for real this time!

Along with playing a full slate of shows, including dates in New Orleans and Nashville, January’s been a month of planning, and of planting seeds. My performance schedule’s starting to fill in for the coming year, with some dates confirmed as far out as August and September; I only have the next two months up on my website’s concert calendar so far, but I’ll be adding a ton of additional dates over the next few weeks.

On top of that, I’ve been back in the studio demoing new songs; one of the new tracks, More Than You Believe You Are, is going to be getting the full treatment over the coming months. We start tracking drums for it this week, a music video is in the works, and I’m targeting March to get all of that out into the world and into your ears and eyes as a new single. I’ve been adding this new song into the set list at recent shows, so if you get a chance to catch me live you’ll get a taste of what’s coming before everyone else!

As for the other new songs, if you head over to my Instagram, you can catch a little in-studio video of how one of those (called Light On) is shaping up. I have 4 or 5 other songs that are just about ready to be extracted from after-hours concert hall that is my brain and rendered in a less ethereal format, and I’ll post more preview clips as that happens.

In addition to forward movement with my own music, it’s been exciting to see how a project my partner Amanda & I hatched while we were in Scotland (in the lobby of a movie theatre, right before watching Spiderman: Far from Home, to be exact) has grown. ListenCLE has now expanded to 8 mood-based playlists clocking in around 6 hours each (think of them as radio stations; put them on shuffle and enjoy) plus several seasonal “mixtapes”. For the first time this month we heard one of these playlists – “Groove” to be specific – playing over the sound system at a local cafe. The plan is for a lot more of that over the coming months!

I’ve got a full slate of shows this month all over the region, including full-band shows (one on Valentine’s Day, no less), a Hello Headrush appearance (on Leap Day, when a fracture in the space-time continuum will create ideal conditions for cross-temporal transmission), and a ton of solo performances. I hope to see you at one!

As always, there’s a chance I might end up picking up a few more shows over the coming weeks, so be sure to like my various social media accounts (Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram) and keep an eye on the Tour Dates page to make sure you don’t miss anything.

Once again, thank you for taking this journey with me. I can’t wait to see what happens during this new decade!

Cheers,
Michael

Want to change how you receive these emails?
You can update your preferences or unsubscribe from this list

Happy New Decade, Friend!

Greetings from the road!  I’m currently en route to New Orleans by way of Nashville, on my way to play a series of shows this weekend while exhibiting my artwork at another awesome Wizard World comic convention.  I’ll be hitting Commodore Grill on the west side of Nashville tonight to share some tunes before continuing on to NOLA tomorrow morning, kicking off a new year by doing what I love all across the country!

On the subject of travel and touring, 2020 is likely to see me returning to the road more frequently.  My relationship with the Wizard Con continues to grow, affording me ample opportunity to get out of Cleveland for a while, and I’m working on developing a solid mobile living situation to extend those trips more regularly into multi-week tour opportunities.  Though I’m not much of one for “New Year’s Resolutions”, I AM a big fan of career goal-setting, and increased touring is my #1 goal right now.

A close second is creating more musical content to share with you, both in audio and visual formats.  You may have seen my House of Ghosts live concert video in late 2019, and I’ve just released a video for The Last Sunset, a production that holds a special place in my heart.  

“The Last Sunset” music video – Michael McFarland & the Mess Makers

We actually shot the video in January of last year, in the middle of a massive snowstorm that kept us from using our intended shoot location (an unheated industrial warehouse space) and forced us to relocate filming to my own home.  The entire band, our videographer, and my partner Amanda (as production coordinator) kept their spirits high and proved exceptionally flexible as we moved furniture, cleared floors and walls, and even tacked sheeting outside the windows to turn a cold snowy day into a bright “end of summer” feel featuring all of my faithful Mess Makers.  

I’m anticipating additional video content (including at least one Hello Headrush music video) in the new year, and am currently prepping multiple new tracks for my solo project.  Be sure to check out my upcoming shows to hear the new material before it’s released!

I’m also looking to build more performance opportunities at festivals and with other musicians.  Lately I’ve been working to turn my musical influences (many represented here in my personal “2019 soundtrack” playlist on Spotify) into my musical colleagues, seeking collaborative connections with other artists I admire.  I’m also working to build new relationships, both creative and corporate, with sponsors and small businesses whose missions and values align with my own, working to make the music and creative scene – and the world – a better place.  For example, I’m excited to now have personalized picks from my new sponsor Trident Media featuring my new logo, and I’m working on a partnership with a local clothing company for some new concert attire.

There’s so much in store for me in 2020, and I’d love to share it all with you!  Be sure to check out my upcoming show schedule below, and of course keep an eye on my website for a fully up-to-date list of my performances and appearances.

As always, there’s a chance I might end up picking up a few more shows over the coming weeks, so be sure to like my various social media accounts (Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram) and keep an eye on the Tour Dates page to make sure you don’t miss anything.

Once again, thank you for taking this journey with me. I can’t wait to see what happens during this new decade!

Cheers,
Michael

Want to change how you receive these emails?
You can update your preferences or unsubscribe from this list