Local singer enjoys his luck at playing music

By: JIM TRAGESER - Staff Writer | Wednesday, January 30, 2008 1:53 PM PST ∞

Blame Frank and Hank, if you like. Trini, too.

See, Mike McGill is a computer programmer. A good one ---- one of the few still working on mainframes ("although we're also moving into Web applications," whatever that means). He makes a good living at UC San Diego and enjoys the work. He's a husband and a father as well, the two most important roles that define his life and bring him his greatest joy.

But he's also a musician ---- one so enchanted by the muse that he spends dozens of hours atop his regular career and family time practicing and playing out at local restaurants, coffeehouses and cafes, with four shows scheduled this week.

And to hear him tell it, as he did by phone from his home near the San Diego Zoo's Wild Animal Park last week, it goes back to his mom's record collection ---- specifically the records by Frank Sinatra, Hank Williams and Trini Lopez.

His first musical involvement came while growing up in Connecticut.

"When we were younger, my brother and I were in a barbershop quartet," he said of his preteen years. "We won a citywide contest ---- it was a ball."

His formal music training in his youth consisted of his learning from his sister.

"I always liked singing and stuff, but I never picked up an instrument until the mid-'80s. My sister took piano lessons, and I picked up a few things from her."

The singer-songwriter approach to his music is a direct outgrowth of the popular music he listened to as a teen, he said.

"Growing up in the '80s, with the whole big-hair thing going, I always liked Jim Croce, Paul Simon, the storyteller-type songwriter. Although I love all music, that was the kind I really liked."

But he was more into sports than music in high school, and so he never really got serious about music until he was out of school and into his career.

"I taught myself how to play guitar, got to the point I could actually play a little bit, but then I started traveling and I put it away," he said of his early forays into music performance.

His first marriage had ended in divorce, but when he met his current wife a little more than a decade ago, he brought the guitar back out as a weapon in his courtship.

"I started writing corny love songs I could tape and send to her," he said, laughing. It worked, as they were married a few years later and ended up in San Diego County in 1998.

It was only a couple of years ago that he began performing at local coffeehouses. He said he'd been writing a bunch of new songs in his spare time, and it was the existence of those songs that prompted him to go sing in public.

"In August of 2005, I finally told myself I have a bunch of songs I want to get out and play," he remembered. "I started playing at the coffee shops around town. I had been doing that for a month, maybe a month and half, and Lee Coulter and his wife walked in one night near the end of the set."

McGill said he and Coulter struck up a conversation between sets. Not knowing Coulter or that he's a well-established presence on the local acoustic music scene, McGill asked him to sit in for a few songs while he took a needed restroom break.

"He played three songs and blew me away. A month and a half later, he e-mailed me and asked if I wanted to open for him at Hennessey's ---- and we just became friends."

Coulter helped him record his first CD, and McGill said he's at work on the second, hoping to release it this year.

But he's not looking to get big, doesn't dream of becoming the next Jack Johnson. He's a computer programmer, after all, and a good one.

"I really feel for the musicians with the talent, like Lee, who are trying to make it. It's hard.

"Luckily for me, I'm doing it for fun ---- if I get paid, it's just a bonus. I'm one of the lucky ones ---- I'm having such a ball with it."

Mike McGill

When: 9 a.m. Feb. 3

Where: Starbuck's, 1831 S. Centre City Parkway, Escondido

Admission: Free

Info: myspace.com/mikemcgillmusic

When: 7 p.m. Feb. 5

Where: Humphrey's Backstage Lounge, 2241 Shelter Island Drive, San Diego

Admission: $5

Info: (619) 224-3577 or humphreysbythebay.com

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