“I do what I do because that’s what I set out to do, what I was born to do.” says Mike Farrell who has to take more than a few seconds to remember all the bands he has played in since first starting his career as a musician.
HIs current band Th Losin’ Streaks is one in a long string of musical fun he has enjoyed over the years. One notable band called Bozo Knows Jones is one of his favorites. “It was a clown band. We dressed up all in clown gear and did nothing but Tom Jones songs.”
Having seen Farrell perform the question had to be asked. How does he jump the way he does and still manage to play and sing at the same time? “It’s kind of an out of body experience” Farrell explains. “I don’t really pay attention to what’s going on. I am kind of not aware but at the same time even more aware. There are cords running around, amps behind me, drums behind me, sometimes beams are going across the ceiling. Things I should be watching out for but I don’t. I just fall into an automatic mindset.”
“Maybe it was all those years before I was playing guitar that I spent in front of the mirror pretending I was Ace Frehley (Kiss) or Angus Young (AC/DC) . Once I learned how to play guitar and got the mechanics down the rest was automatic, second nature, like riding a bike.”
Over the years Farrell’s musical tastes have been all over the place. In his formative years he was into heavy metal, then speed metal. “The first Metallica album had a lot of impact on a lot of us, I was still in high school then. But then I discovered Jimi Hendrix and that kinda changed everything”. Later on he found himself gravitating to the other 60’s genre bands with the Rolling Stones becoming a mainstay. Recently Farrell has been doing research on more obscure bands of that time. “I’m really into the psychedelic sound and the lack of technology and how they were able to record. It’s very creative.”
Fabulous! Great idea!