Mike's first performance of note was when he sang the Irish Rovers' "Wasn't That a Party" for the United Church minister in his hometown of Florenceville, New Brunswick. The concept of reading the crowd was apparently lost on the three-year-old Mike.
Twenty-odd years later, Mike still has a strong connection with the back roads of Carleton County, New Brunswick. His early influences (Bob Dylan, Kris Kristofferson, John Denver and Blue Rodeo) have combined with his later musical encounters (Jazzberry Ram, Sting, Stevie Wonder and Colin Hay) to create his own blend of pop, folk and funk which is educated but never pretentious, and introspective but never self indulgent. Mike's lyrics often draw inspiration from the literary giants he has studied all his life, but they just as often spring from personal experiences of friendship, love, and loss.
Mike arrived in Sackville, New Brunswick in 1996 and quickly established himself as an integral part of the music scene at Mount Allison University. He became a favorite at campus coffee houses and late-night residence sing-alongs, and was soon asked to host the town's weekly open mic' night at a local pub.
After earning the chance to represent Mount Allison at the Atlantic Universities' "Campus Sound Explosion" (a competition won the following year by an early incantation of The Trews), Mike teamed up with accomplished Halifax artist/producer Jon Epworth (of The Dean Malenkos) to cut his first CD in the spring of 1999. Entitled "Union_44" (after the house it was recorded in), its 10 tracks were recorded in a single evening on an analog 8-track recorder. This debut album went on to sell several hundred copies on the Mount Allison campus, and many tracks from that CD continue to make appearances in Mike's live shows and on campus radio programming across Canada.
Mike left Mount Allison in May of 2000 and moved to Acadia University, where he completed a Masters Degree in English. While writing and performing at Acadia, Mike was afforded the opportunity to work with producer/deejay Robb Lepper (Greg Muttart: Live at Jacks) and musician/engineer extraorinaire Jude Pelley (Exit 13). He also appeared on the university's "Constellation" compilation, and recorded a track for the first-ever "Conduct Becoming: Voices Against Cancer" CD, a project that in many ways was created as a result of Mike's music. Conduct Becoming has gone on to release five successful albums, the latest of which was produced by Mike himself.
Mike has been a professional entertainer for the past six years. He has written award-winning plays, appeared as a finalist on Canadian Idol, and shared the stage with such artists as Matt Andersen, J.F. Coley, Isaac, Blewett and Cooper, Kalen Porter, Ashley MacIsaac, and The Rheostatics. Most of his on-stage work has been been with the various dinner theatre companies across the Maritimes, where he has been a writer and director and also a performer, appearing in thirteen shows and over five hundred performances. His career in dinner theatre has allowed him to work closely with actor/musician M.J. Ross (The Jive Kings, Mike Ross: The Dennis Lee Project) who he credits as a great influence and teacher.
Now having retired as a dinner theatre performer, Mike has returned his focus to his own music. Recently Mike has been traveling more extensively to spread his music. In July of 2004, he headlined the first-ever "Concert on the Lake" at the Ontario Regional Shinerama Conference, and two weeks later he stole the show at the University of Toronto's "Summerfest' event. In March of 2005, Mike returned to Toronto for the first shows of what would become an immensely successful five-province tour for the Shinerama cause (Canada's largest student fundraiser), supporting the Canadian Cystic Fibrosis Foundation.
His latest album, ...things that move us was released in January of 2006.