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MP3 Cole Mitchell - Bulletproof
11 MP3 Songs
ROCK: Americana, COUNTRY: Country Rock
Details:
I met Cole Mitchell in an Albuquerque bar in ’94, and we’ve been playing music together, off and on, ever since. Aside from the obvious talents as a singer-songwriter and all around charming guy, Cole is something of a slow study, and it’s taken the better part of those years to appreciate how much has gone on behind all that music. When I moved back to the Southwest, some friends thought that I could play with the Saddlesores. Cole fronted the band for fifteen years, stirring up powerhouse performances and memorable songs that would eventually fall under the ‘ Americana ’ category, though everyone was pretty much doing what came naturally to their Southern sensibilities.
Cole’s ability and conviction are obvious to anyone who hears him play, but what’s taken time to see is that his real-ranch upbringing has filtered through to his songs. I remember one time asking Cole if he wanted to get out in the mountains to do some riding. He thought about it for a bit and said, “Well, I never considered riding horses for pleasure”. He was raised in the country and worked along side his dad from an early age, much as any child would be doing who was born into it, and it was there with his dad that Cole got the steady stream of country radio that would influence his own music.
On the way to dealing with every windmill or pump or fence or breech birth, in every kind of weather, that truck radio would deliver the familiar tunes of Williams, Cash and Haggard. Cole started picking out the songs on a guitar his folks bought him; he got hooked and aimed to make a go at it, but he was about as isolated as a person could get. Long before he was driving he’d be taking his horse twenty miles into the Gila Wilderness to check his trap lines, selling the skins to buy guitar strings when ever he could get to town. When he got to hearing rock and roll and buying albums, that pretty much sealed the deal, and Cole ran off to front a band that toured the country when he was sixteen.
That turn of events was an eye opener for Cole, whose overall rebelliousness and wild ways had to learn to reckon with survival, music and making a living. He worked in oil fields, did pretty good, and eventually bought himself a ranch in Catron County , New Mexico , where he trained and traded horses and ran some cattle. He had stints working in a slaughterhouse and helped himself to some otherwise nefarious border business, but he always, always had a guitar with him. He made his way to Albuquerque and fell into fifteen years of great songs, ample volume, bikers, funerals and the usual ups and downs of rock and roll, including losing his sight in 1992.
His first solo recording Bulletproof is an excellent transition from his days as co-writer and front man of the raucous, award-winning Saddlesores. From the high lonesome guitar and sarcastic invitation from our working class hero on My Part of Town, “When you’re slumming’ honey, drop on in, we’re always glad to see you and yours when you’re bored of what you’ve come to be,” to the heavy-handed folk and absolute desperation from the Edge of Life, “I used to look to the heavens and scream, won’t someone stand up and call my name.”
In his lost highway travels, between the Wild West and the Old South, and all points in-between, he has logged more than countless miles. These travels, and the places and people along the way, give life to the stories revealed in his songs. Colorful musings, sometimes dryly humorous, these stories are rooted on the fringe of the blue-collared American experience.
By: AJ Appel
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