Artist Bio
Influences: Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie, Beth DeSombre
Mike Delaney is a Boston-area singer-songwriter and host of the very popular Roslindale Open Mike (www.roslindaleopenmike.org) and a member of Musicians for the Greater Good (www.musiciansforthegreatergood.org), a network of musicians committed to reviving the long-standing tradition of American protest and social justice music.
Mike has been performing around New England for over ten years, including three times at the Boston Folk Festival. He has opened for Kevin So, David Roth, Les Sampou, Richard Berman, Dave Crossland, Terry Kitchen, Amy Petty, Hungrytown (Rebecca Hall and Ken Anderson) and Michael Troy. With others he has opened for Chris and Meredith Thompson, Marc Douglas Berardo, Ferron and Terence Martin. He has been fortunate to play mandolin, guitar, or sing harmony at concerts, coffeehouses, festivals, camps, and open mikes with a number of people, including Guy Davis, Kate Campbell, Bennett Hammond, John Kirk, Mary Flower, Patti DeRosa, Beth DeSombre, and many others.
Mike's humorous original songs and parodies cover a wide range of topics from himself ("The Hunk" and "Mando Tango") to the entire country ("If We Only Had a Brain"). In between are excursions into the world of natural science ("Tofu, the Vegan Killer Whale"), literature ("Daddy, Who's Mark Twain?"), automated phone systems ("1-800-CONFESS"), women's health ("Mammogram, M'am?"), sports ("Red Sox Dream"), the oxymoronic business of folk music ("I'm changing my name to DOT.COM" and "The Naked Open Mic"), parts of the human anatomy ("Colonoscopy", "Bare Midriff"), and, of course, his raging ego ("It Is, In Fact, All About Me").
He has been deemed an "accomplished amateur" by Marilyn Rae Beyer, the music director of WUMB, Boston Folk Radio, and Tom Paxton commented that at least one of his songs was "not bad". Anne Hills called the song 1-800-CONFESS "brilliant"!
Mike's debut CD "1-800-CONFESS" was released inn 2006. His second CD, with New England Weather, was released in 2007. "Evening News" was released in 2008. "Hey, Java Jo's" was released in 2010. His latest CD, "Boston Harbor: No Longer Dirty Water" was released in 2013.
His song "Peace Through War" has been number 1 on Neil Young's "Living With War Today" song compilation for several weeks and in the top 10 for a number of weeks. He eco-bluegrass (green grass?) song, "Trash This Planet" was included on the "Step It Up 2007" web page (www.stepitup2007.org). "Low Carb" was regarded as one of the "best new climate songs" by Alex Smith of Radio Ecoshock (www.ecoshock.org) and "Colonoscopy" was played on the The Dr. Demento show.
Songs (14)
| #1 | Africatown |
1 Feb 2022 |
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| #2 | Seditious Insurrection - a Schoolhouse Rock song |
4 Feb 2022 |
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| #3 | Train of Tears |
1 Feb 2022 |
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| #4 | "Grandma's Fudge" |
3 Feb 2022 |
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| #5 | Mingling Ashes |
3 Feb 2022 |
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| #6 | Elijah McClain |
1 Feb 2022 |
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| #7 | Give Me That Natural Immunity |
1 Feb 2022 |
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| #8 | Delanium! |
2 Feb 2022 |
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| #9 | No Grit - No Pearl |
1 Feb 2022 |
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| #10 | Two Crossing Paths |
1 Feb 2022 |
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| #11 | Conspiracy Theories |
2 Feb 2022 |
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| #12 | One Factory Town |
2 Feb 2022 |
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| #13 | We Stand |
1 Feb 2022 |
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| #14 | How It Ends |
2 Feb 2022 |
Soundboard
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@mikegtz Feb 2022
Hey Mike, congrats on this year's FAWM win. A lot of us in the Boston area managed to get there this year. See you in the ROM space soon!
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@bethdesombre Feb 2022
Congrats on making it to 14!!
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@bethdesombre Feb 2022
Thanks for all your comments! On Imaginary Constellations I just sang the last line of song wrong (I was reading the lyrics off the computer, but the screen saver took them away!), and I didn't have the time/patience to re-record since I had to move on to the next song . . . Are you going to make it to 14 this month?
