Mighty Mike Schermer returns to town, playing Aug. 22 at Kuumbwa with guitarist Kid Andersen and vocalist Lisa “Little Baby” Andersen. All three are dropping new albums that night, and Schermer’s is a solid departure from the blues.
This time around, find the renowned ax man wandering through noisy, dusty honky-tonks and putting forth a country-western album, titled The Legend of Michael Ray Pickens and His Old Man Country Band.
Back in 1984—not yet Mighty, nor yet a world-known bluesman—Mike Schermer walked into the nascent Kuumbwa Jazz Center and heard the jazz/soul of Jimmy Smith. “The stage faced the other direction, and they didn’t have chairs,” says Schermer from his home in northern Nevada. “Somebody had donated some pews, and watching Jimmy Smith was like being in church.”
Schermer was a disenchanted music major at UCSC who was leaning toward jazz but getting swept up in rock ’n’ roll. So of course he ended up with an American history degree. “It allowed me to focus on the history of the blues,” Schermer remembers. “When I started in Santa Cruz it was still a sleepy little hippie town, where Deadheads hung out between tours.”
It wasn’t so mellow for Schermer. He hated his custodial work at UCSC, cleaning up frat-boys puke. Life looked bleak, until he got a phone call. “I had gone home for lunch. I got a message from Andy Santana that he needed a guitar player at the Seabright Brewery Happy Hour at 4:30. If I went back to work, I would have to stay until 5. I did the gig instead,” Schermer says.
Not long after, The Soul Drivers were working five nights a week. Schermer was making $50 a night back when Santa Cruz rent was just $220 a month. “That was the last day job I ever had. You never know. That one phone call. That one gig. It could change your life,” Schermer says.
From there, Mighty Mike was born. “I was playing all around the Bay Area. I was touring with Elvin Bishop, and Maria Muldaur before that. The great soul singer Howard Tate had assembled a band, and we ended up being in his touring band and going to Europe and Japan, quite a few times,” Schermer says.
Which brings us to The Legend of Michael Ray Pickens and his Old Man Country Band. Schermer doesn’t see it as a departure from his roots. “I’ve listened to old country music for as long as I’ve been listening to all blues music. To me they are branches of the same tree, in the same orchard. I’ve been listening to George Jones and Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard and Loretta Lynn records for as long as I can remember,” Schermer says.
Schermer is a fan of Nashville’s golden era, the late 1950s and early 1960s. “There was a Grand Old Opry movement from the late ’30s on. But it was really in the 1950s when it took off,” Schermer says. “In the 1970s a lot of those same artists started saying, ‘Well, I’m tired of Nashville telling me what to look like, and what to do, and giving me these songs to record.’ And that was the basis of the outlaw movement. Which was Jerry Jeff Walker, Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings and Kris Kristofferson. I can’t avoid listening to guys like Guy Clark and John Prine.”
There’s a long tradition of married couples singing country-western duets, notably Johnny Cash and June Carter Cash, as well as Waylon Jennings and Jessi Colter. And now we have to add Mighty Mike Schermer and Kimmy Pickens to the list.
Unfortunately, we won’t get to see the duo onstage. “Kimmy will be on the tour with me, but she doesn’t play live with me that often. She’s more comfortable in a studio. At home she can sing like Dolly Parton, but she just doesn’t have any desire to have the spotlight on her. We started singing together during the lockdown, just trying to raise people’s spirits. We both connected over that. And that’s all I’m trying to do every night. With the way the world’s going, and the way the world always has been, everyone can use a little joy.”
See Mighty Mike and Friends at the Kuumbwa Jazz Center, 320-2 Cedar St, Santa Cruz on Aug 22 at 7pm. Tickets are $18.50–$36.75.
