My Conversation with Mikeal Anthony Greto

Conducted by Ryan Freeze 

Transcribed by Ryan Freeze

Source: https://www.instagram.com/p/DSbYyASkXSH/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==

Mikeal Anthony Greto is an indie, pop, and rock musician who wears his heart on his sleeve. His music is raw and emotional, and in this interview we talk about his collaborations, and we talk about the vulnerability present in his music. Mikeal also provides his insight on the state of music alongside AI. 

I am grateful to have listened to Mikeal’s music. “Blue Roots,” and “Inflorescence II,” are remarkable in the fact that they capture grief and exuberance so well. While these two emotions lie at opposite ends of the emotional spectrum, these two records show that both are necessary in moving on and recovering from personal tragedy, which Mikeal expands on in this interview. Mikeal is just coming off his session at WVUD’s Live Lounge, which serves as the jumping off point to this interview, in which he and I discuss the importance of the mandolin in his arrangements.  

Mikeal: [The mandolin] That’s a recent thing for me in my writing. I would say pretty much all of my solo material, since I started doing this solo project, the mandolin has been involved in every song, which is new for me. My buddy Jeff, who I've been in bands with, since we were fifteen .. he had never played the mandolin before, but he is the gentleman that came with me that day for the Live Lounge session 

Ryan: Really?

Mikeal: He didn’t play mandolin, I was like, “Hey man, you're a super talented guy, I need a mandolin player! Do you want to learn this thing?” And he jumped right in, he’s in the band fully, he’s doing vocals … but most importantly doing the mandolin. It’s a great sound, it just kind of sets things off a bit. You know what I mean? It kind of, like, has this frequency range, that kind of cuts through.

Ryan: Yeah, the expression… I find the expression of the mandolin is it brings kind of a whole different color, or a whole different emotion to your music, and I just find that so interesting, and I also wanted to talk about this new record, this new EP, excuse me, that came out, Inflorescence Volume II. What is so interesting is that there's this core idea that's present. The transition from, “Heavy In Love,” to, you know, will I ever be able to love again? And what I find so interesting is that in the first song, there's kind of this pitter-patter of the drums, kind of like, my heart is beating, I'm in love, and it's more, poppy, it's got more of that poppy sentimentality, and then… the fourth song on that EP, “Fear of Falling in Love”, it's more somber, and there's more use of the cello, and I want you to talk about sort of the ideas that you were thinking of when you were coming up with those songs.

Mikeal: The theme of that Inflorescence EP is love. So every song has “love” in the title, but it's coming from a place of loss. So my first EP was a reflection of a time I went through some pretty intense trauma, and that was me dealing with that trauma. The new EP, I’m a huge fan of that eighties music that uplifts you and makes you feel happy, but it can still talk about important things, it’s not “bubble-gum,” it feels happy, but it’s important. That’s the vibe I was going for, I wanted songs that would lift me up out of my trauma and allow me to sing songs that made me smile. The first EP, it’s a little downtrodden, there’s cello everything’s a little bit more acoustic 

Ryan: And, I love the cello 

Mikeal: I love the cello, it’s such a great instrument, more so than the violin, I don’t know what it is for me, but the cello just sets a mood 

Ryan: That is what I love about the cello. The cello brought .. When I listen to music, I’m a visual person. With “Blue Roots,” it’s got sort of a sea-side feel, I think you can see that right in the songs, “Across the Sea,” “You Became a Wave,” and I was just imagining, walking across the beach at night, the cold sand under my feet, with the cello in the background. 

Mikeal: I like how you internalized that .. the cello is amazing. I had Maura Dwyer, who was the same person that worked on “Blue Roots,” did the cello for “Fear of Falling in Love,” I just love her work. She’s good at creating her own mood on top of what I am feeling, so I gave her free reign. I sent her the songs, the first EP was done over Covid, I sent her the songs and she sent me back just tracks, we traded back and forth. In a few takes, she said what needed to be said on that instrument. Since that worked out so well, I had her back, actually had her come back to my home studio, she played this track for me, just a few passes, a couple different takes, and -  you know I don’t like to tell people what to do when they are playing their instrument, I like to say, “Hey, this is the vibe that I have, this is where the song is coming from.” Just do what you do, and we’ll piece it together from the emotion that you give to me for the song. Maura is very good, she plays in the John Byrne Band. 

Ryan: I’m not familiar I’ll have to listen to some of their stuff 

Mikeal: He’s from Ireland, it’s a whole, cello, fiddle, acoustic guitar, Irish-kind of vibe. 

Ryan: I love Irish music 

Mikeal: That sets the mood as well 

Ryan: I went to Ireland, the pubs in Ireland where they play that music, it’s just so wonderful 

Mikeal: [Maura] went there for two weeks, right after recording that cello part for me. They went over there and did a tour of Ireland, played all those little pubs. She’s amazing. The cello and mandolin, just finding a voice with those things. 

Ryan: Not to mention the drums too, as you were saying, you love eighties music, it makes you feel good. The drums are reminiscent of those poppy eighties songs, but I also do think that your vocal delivery .. you know, I was saying to myself, “Is that a little Phil Collins in there? Of Genesis?” 

Mikeal: I do get that, I get that a lot. I love Phil Collins, I love Genesis, I’m a huge Peter Gabriel fan 

Ryan: No way .. I was just thinking, there’s a little “Solsbury Hill” in there 

Mikeal: “The Flood,” the flood is actually derived from the song, “Here Comes the Flood,” which is on Peter Gabriel’s debut solo album. It’s actually taken from that. I don’t think it’s intentional that I’m sounding that way, it just comes out that way. I always have gotten that comparison, which I am fine with, it’s a huge compliment. It just seems like my music wants to sit in that eighties vibe, which I love. 

Ryan: I love some of those eighties poppy tunes. If you are in your home recording session, and you are recording with someone from those legends of the eighties .. you’re having Peter Gabriel in that room right, but who else are you including to bring that life to your “perfect” song? 

Mikeal: Like, who would I want to be playing? 

Ryan: Yeah, who do you want as your session musicians, if you had it your way? 

Mikeal: Jeff Porcaro. He’s on drums 

Ryan: Jeff Porcaro? That’s a great pull! 

Mikeal: I mean that’s the pinnacle of drumming. I just recently found out that he plays drums on “Mother” by Pink Floyd. He’s the session guy for that song. I didn’t know Pink Floyd was pulling session guys. 

Ryan: I always just thought it was Nick Mason 

Mikeal: I started on drums, drums are a huge piece of the puzzle for me. Everything I do is rhythmic, even the parts I’m writing on the mandolin, a lot of them are right-handed, almost like you're playing the drums. That’s a tough question, that’s a good question. 

Ryan: Your already off to an amazing start 

Mikeal: Tony Levin on bass. He’s such a rhythmic bass player, going from the Peter Gabriel family there. Him and his little sticks that he puts on his fingers to play the bass. There’s so many good players from back then, I’m fumbling to find them. 

Ryan: So many great session musicians, they all worked together, they were all in the same vicinity, I think it was such a vibrant and colorful time for music. I think some of those influences really bleed into your music stylings and sensibilities. I wanted to talk to you about how you came to create the record. “Inflorescence II,” you said it’s about love, but how do you get to that point where you say to yourself, “Okay, I want to make this record about love, this is what I’m going to do this is what I’m going to write” 

Mikeal: It was pretty easy for me to decide this one. I feel like love is the glue, it is the thing that really connects people when you can sit with love for your friends and your family, and also your enemy, you can see their side, it helps you to see all these things. This is a pretty personal story for me. I don’t know how much you read of my bio, but I lost my son. He was fifteen, we lost him to brain cancer in 2017. So, “Blue Roots,” that was the trauma, that whole thing was me dealing with that situation. Coming out of that, I wanted to make music that just made me smile again. The thing about love is, it never dies, it’s kind of like a thing that never goes away, even when the person you love isn’t there anymore, the love is still there. To me, that’s an amazing thing and that’s what I wanted to celebrate. That theme was very easy to decide. I actually had other songs that I had written that did not match that vibe, that I intentionally just left out. So, “Heavy in Love,” that heartbeat that you hear in the beginning? 

Ryan: Right. 

Mikeal: That’s actually my son’s heartbeat. 

Ryan: Oh, wow 

Mikeal: When he was in the hospital, there was a music therapist there, and she had a stethoscope with a microphone on and she asked if she wanted to record my son’s voice and I said absolutely. That song starts with his heartbeat and that heartbeat goes through the entire song 

Ryan: That’s incredible 

Mikeal: The song is about my wife and I, and our love, and coming through that together. The song is about the celebration of our love that created our son, then “Could You Ever Love Again?” was kind of like a reminder to myself. Asking the question, because I was so devastated, how do you love again after being so devastated? The verses of the song answer the question. You have to love, it’s the only way to move forward, you cannot push love away, you have to embrace it, it’s good, it’s bad, it’s going to take you on a wild ride but it’s worth the ride. 

Ryan: Absolutely. That is incredibly powerful stuff, these songs are very raw and they come from such a sentimental place. Is this something that you are maybe going to continue to explore throughout your songwriting, or are we maybe going to see some more off-the-cuff stuff, or maybe are we going to see something in the vein of music that is maybe not so personal, something that is more imaginative in nature? 

Mikeal: I’m just not the kind of person that makes up stories. I find it hard to write about things I don’t know about, I will certainly explore other aspects of life. I don’t think that there’s a way to move forward without this situation permeating everything I do. I’m working on a song right now that deals with my parent’s relationship. It’s personal but it’s a different kind of personal. That’s how I write, it’s almost like a vent for me. Like journaling almost. I do respect people that can kind of step out of themselves, that can write about things that they haven’t been through. I tend to just write about things that I know and have been through. Maybe it will be a good challenge to try something. 

Ryan: Did it always start out with journaling? How did you first become a songwriter? Did it begin with journaling or did your experience with instruments motivate you to start your career? 

Mikeal: I would say that it was always a type of journaling. I wrote my first song when I was about fourteen years old. I started drums when I was about ten, started guitar at fourteen, as soon as I could put chords together, I was writing songs. The first song I wrote was - back to my parent’s situation - they divorced. I was a teenager, it was a tough time, so I used that, and I wrote a song about that situation. I wrote it in a way that it was not me that I was talking about, but I look back at those lyrics and it certainly was me that I was talking about. I guess it’s always been a journaling type thing. I do write, just put words on paper, I do write, I guess you would call poetry that way. It’s a little different when I write songs. When I write songs, I do this thing where you get some idea of chords and a melody, and you mumble through it - 

Ryan: And see what works 

Mikeal: You vocalize and you just make up nonsense words, get the ideas out musically. Then I go back, and I find the words. There have been times where my poetry has fit into a song that way, a lot of the times it’s separate for me. I write in my journal, but I write my songs to where I’m pulling from the ideas of the journal, but it’s not exactly the poetry, it’s derived from the journal. 

Ryan: Did you think maybe people won’t care? Was there ever any doubt? 

Mikeal: I did not really care, because it was so personal. When I was writing music, I never really thought about what other people would think about it, because it was just a way for me to release things. I hope people connect with it, when I’m writing it, I don’t necessarily intend to connect, I want to connect with myself. When you do that, that’s when it connects with people, when your just trying to find yourself rather than finding what other people like 

Ryan: In songs that do try to connect other people, songs that serve as a distillation of your emotions and trauma, there’s so much vulnerability involved and it’s very human. What would be your response to somebody who is taking the easy way out, they’re using tools like AI to create songs, to create music, to put it on Spotify, pushing it out like a machine? 

Mikeal: I really don’t like that. I understand that AI has a place. I heard one producer state that they write the song completely, and then they put it into the AI machine, they have it processed in a way that puts it in a different style. They write a song in a rock format then make it as a pop song or a country song - okay, you wrote the song, you just want to see what it sounds like in a different format. Okay, I can see that’s a tool, but I don’t know, it’s such a human thing, music is such a human experience, I cannot get into the whole AI thing as a whole. It makes me upset because so much of a person’s personality and a person’s experience goes into making music. For a computer to be pumping it out just seems unethical to me. 

Ryan: There’s so many people, that are trying in the same way that you and thousands of other musicians are, to have their stuff be heard, have their stuff be seen, it largely seems like - I don’t want to dwell on being pessimistic - but it largely seems like, with such increases in AI on streaming services, that stuff is being increasingly shoved down. 

Mikeal: If Spotify owns the song, then they’re going to push it. In that respect, it’s horrible to me, because it’s so hard in the music industry to make a living, especially as a creative person, there’s a lot of hustle involved. To flood the market with non-human things, seems wrong, it just seems wrong. It pushes people out that should be doing it. You know what I mean? You get so disenfranchised with the whole situation, you feel overwhelmed, and it probably pushes people out, like I can’t keep up. Musicians, creative people, are fragile people, that’s why they are good at being creative. They have feelings. You have to have thick skin and try to push past it. I fear having all these things flood the market, it’s going to be bad for everybody. 

Ryan: We disagree with AI having this effect on musicians, on creativity. Looking more optimistically, what have your been favorite experiences playing as a musician, what has really said to you, “I am grateful I am musician, I am grateful I get to do this” 

Mikeal: I think it’s the community. Personally, I get great reward for writing a song, making something that wasn’t there, that is now in the world. The community of going and seeing people that inspire other people, going to live shows, playing, performing, and having a receptive crowd. I’m grateful anytime that happens, sometimes playing live, is your playing to a couple people, it’s tough to pull energy from that. There’s other times where it’s amazing, the energy’s great. I’m grateful for those two things in unison, getting to create and then also bringing it out into the community and supporting the community of musicians, friends of mine going to see their shows, and that sense of community feels good to me. I love being in a concert and getting goosebumps. Being a fan as well as being on stage. 

Ryan: I saw Sting recently, I think he was the last artist to give me the goosebumps you were talking about. He’s another musician from the eighties, where there’s a lot of this happy, jumpy, music, I just really relate to that. The concert experience, seeing musicians at their best, their putting on a performance. The energy is aligned in the room, it’s a weird feeling that I can’t really describe. 

Mikeal: It’s amazing. I recently went to see Sam Fender. I’m not always hip to new music, because I’m so stuck on what I really like. I recently became obsessed with Sam Fender, and I saw him at the Fillmore. We connect in a way that is very special to me, his fans connect with him, but that room was electric. He writes about his own experiences, which I can appreciate, but those goosebumps happened multiple times at the Sam Fender concert. I recommend checking him out, when you can. 

Ryan: Now, you and I obviously come from different generations, but is there anyone that you see in this current generation that you are drawn to, that you are connected to. For me personally I would contend that those people are Geese right now, for example. Is there anyone that you see that you think can be the next big thing? 

Mikeal: I do feel that way about Sam Fender. He’s huge in England, in Europe. He’s sold out the O2 Arena 

Ryan: The O2 Arena? Oh yes. That’s impressive - wow - really? No kidding! 

Mikeal: He’s huge over there, I don’t understand why he’s not as big over here. He’s from that area, he sold out Newcastle Soccer Stadium. I’m not quite a jam-bandy kind of person, I like structured songs, so Sam really does that for me. I do like, I’m going to push a couple of local people right now, there’s a couple of people in particular - I get obsessed - and my wife always asks why I’m getting so obsessed. It’s just me, I have to dig really deep … there’s a guy called James Clark, he’s from my neighborhood. He put out an album called “The Weight of Small Things,” and it’s a pretty simplistic acoustic album. I’m not a huge country guy, but I appreciate bluegrass and that kind of stuff. He’s in that vein, his songwriting is amazing. He’s a local guy, but I’ll try to see him as much as possible. There’s another group called Max Davey, which is Max and Steve, who are friends of mine. Their music is amazing, everytime I see them, I get those feelings when I hear their songs. Max plays acoustic guitar and Steve plays banjo, it’s like that - I don’t want to say bluegrass - it’s good songs, that’s what it comes down to. Those two people I go to see as often as I can. I’m a bit older, I got kids and all that stuff, getting out to see shows is a lot harder for me. I have to be specific with what I see, those are two of my favorite local acts. 

Ryan: We love supporting our local bands, we would very much emphasize seeing your local acts. I want to ask you, as we conclude our interview here, what would your final message be? What would you have to promote? 

Mikeal: I would like to reiterate what you said, go out. And support your local musicians, all musicians, at every level need support. Go to shows, have a good time, dance without caring, put the phone away for a little bit, be in the moment. Go see those shows, don’t ever stop going to see live music, because AI can’t do that. I do have a song that I’m about to release, it’s called “Fade Into the Night,” it’s one of the the ones that I recorded in the “Inflorescence,” session, but didn’t make that EP, so I’m going to release that as a standalone song hopefully within the next couple of weeks. 

Ryan: I was Ryan, from the SetList, I just spoke to the great Mikeal Anthony Greto, I would like to thank everybody for reading, and I would like to thank everybody for listening. Thank you. 

Mikeal: Thank you, Ryan. It’s been a good time.