Mike Craig - Music from the 70's - Welcome!

After some set backs with illnesses I am playing a little bit again. Also, I have the re-release of Stuck in Phoenix ready to send out for pressing so I am hoping to have it out in June and be doing an all-age show on July 12th. I hope to see you all again in July. http://www.mikecraigmusic.com/images/Stuck_in_Phoenix1_cropped.jpeg

It is incredible to me how clear your vision is when you look back to past events in your life and see that one point in your life that would have changed everything.

I just recently saw this moment in my life. Beyond my wildest dream my `Daughter of the Moon’ Album from 1973 found its way to Europe and beyond and started a fan base that was not known to me until the internet entered my life. At the time this album was being recorded I had a misconception that the producers were trying to turn me in to…

I just had the opportunity to re-release my second album from 1973 on vinyl again. I first thought this was great until I found several obstacles. The main obstacle was that the record companies wanted a digital master of the album on CD to make the Stampers to press the album. Last Summer I worked with a great engineer in his studio to copy all of my old analog master tapes to digital format, but all of the tapes were not salvageable.  Some had deteriorated to a level where they could not be copied. When…

This is another old term you don’t hear much anymore. It came from the beginning days of recording.  Edison probably came up with it. When studios started working with magnetic tape it was absolutely critical to have a clean recording to go to the record plant to make the Stampers that in turn made vinyl albums.

When recording in the studios from the 1940’s to the early 1970’s (mono and first 2-track tape machines) recording was hard work. All of the musicians and singers had to record at the same time (…

In the past month I have started playing my American tour. It is not the big fancy tour that you have with record label sponsors at big city stadiums. It is playing at small local bars and coffee houses. It’s about the music, not the money; it’s about playing at Open Mic Nights where all of you don’t have to pay to hear me play.

As I fly from town to town it seems that open mic nights are advertised as songwriter’s venues, but it seems that most of the ones I have played at have performers doing cover…

The 1960’s and the 1970’s saw the birth of the large concerts (stadiums and outdoor venues). Prior to this the largest shows were at theaters and honky tonks, and the sound was basic consisting of just microphones and amplifiers (mono tube amps).

When the Beatles and other popular bands started to play in large venues (ticket sales) it was found that the normal sound systems as we knew them were not good enough.  When the Beatles played at New York the only people that could hear them were in the front rows…

At the end of the Summer of Love there was a beginning for a street in San Francisco that would put it forever in the history books. Over the years I have come to Haight Street to quietly walk along and gather in my memories of a time gone by.

I remember the crowded street full of tour buses of midwestern tourists with their cameras clicking out the windows of the buses. They rarely got out of the buses. They just pointed and chuckled at the 'freaks' walking on the street. Then there were the people handing…

Back in Phoenix I started taking day jobs and quit drinking and playing music.  After a year I picked up my guitar again and started to play. Being a musician is like being a junkie: you can never really stop playing.  You will always play again someday.

My life started to turn around at this point while working as a shipping clerk at a large company. I met the love of my life, the girl I was going to marry. The music bug was in me again when an old friend told me he was moving to Sonoma and wanted me…

It is true in life that timing is everything. After the bad experience with my second LP and the need to let people hear the songs from this LP in the way I wanted them to sound, I set out for LA. I felt it was time for me to be a star. At first LA was a magical place, but after a few months it kicked my butt and left me running back to Phoenix with my tail between my legs. 

When I first went to LA I got a break from the owner of Café Concerts in Encino (Lee Magid). He seemed to like to give breaks to…

In the beginning I was born in a notorious west coast town, but my family moved from there, so I never really lived there. My family settled down in the San Francisco Bay area but still moved around constantly, so I lived all over the peninsula - San Francisco to San Jose.  

All of the moving I think made me creative and gave me a different view of life at an early age. I was always the new kid in school (every year I went to a different school) and this made me a loner and forced me to live in my mind.…