Mikayla Griffin
Cleburne, TX | Established. Jan 01, 2014 | INDIE
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Cleburne’s own Mikayla Griffin has been selected to open this year’s Nashville Lights event, sponsored by the Cleburne Education Foundation on Oct. 22.
Griffin, who started playing professionally at 10, was “officially discovered” at an open mic night at the House of Blues in Dallas when she was 11. In the three years since then, she has performed about 50 times at the House of Blues, as well as at various Opry venues in Texas.
Most recently, she performed at the state-of-the-art broadcast studio inside Children’s Medical Center in Dallas. The studio, which was made possible through the Ryan Seacrest Foundation, airs children’s programming to patients who are unable to leave their rooms and includes an outdoor performance stage so that visiting musicians can host concerts for patients.
Primarily trained by her grandfather/manager Mike Griffin, with whom she has written 10 songs, she showed a natural talent from an early age. Mike Griffin recalls that when the family took road trips, “she would sing along in harmony from her car seat.” She plays a variety of instruments, performs her own back-up vocals on recordings and describes her musical genre as Americana pop, including touches of country, pop and rock.
In addition to her musical talent, she is also gifted in art and enjoys drawing in her spare time. She sums up her approach to life, saying, “I just want to use my music and my art work to help people feel happy.”
After Griffin’s appearance, Nashville Lights will feature three highly acclaimed, as well as three up-and-coming country music singer-songwriters performing their own music, much of which has been recorded by chart-topping artists.
Nashville Lights will be held at the Cleburne Conference Center. The event begins at 6 p.m. and tickets may be purchased for entire tables (seating 10) or individual table seats.
For information, call the CEF Executive Director Jane Westbrook at 817-202-1199 or 817-694-9849, or email jwestbrook@cleburneeducationfoundation.com. All ticket prices include dinner and proceeds go toward funding educational grants provided by the CEF for the Cleburne ISD.
Tickets are available for immediate purchase at the CEF office, 505 N. Ridgeway Drive, suite 195, or from Amber Witte at Pinnacle Bank, 1403 W. Henderson St. Ticket order forms may also be obtained at Pinnacle Bank or the CEF office. The order form, along with payment, may be mailed to CEF, P.O. Box 1731, Cleburne, TX 76033. Seating will be assigned by sponsorship level in the order in which payment is received. - Cleburne Times Review
Picture a young girl’s Technicolor dream alternating between frothy pop and reflective stream of consciousness musical musings and back again. Look no further than Cleburne songstress Mikayla Griffin’s just-released debut “Shooting Arrows at the Moon.”
Sure it’s aimed squarely at the hearts of the tweener subset, she’s only 15 after all, but it also rates a look see from the well past high school crowd.
Juvenile perhaps but also hook filled, catchy as all get out and a cut above 90 percent of the gunk passing for music nowadays clogging the charts.
Granted Griffin’s 10 song debut plays closer in spirit to say the Beach Boys debut “Surfin’ Safari” than their masterpiece “Pet Sounds.” But, while the former lacks the masterful grandeur of the latter, “Surfin’ Safari” is a pretty cool album too. Which is to say that Griffin’s future looks bright and she just maybe ought start wearing shades about now.
The voice is there already mellifluous and at times sounding beyond her years. Better yet, Griffin brings a croon fit for careening from genre to genre effortlessly. An adept guitarist, her strongest suit may well be her inability to be pigeonholed though certainly hints of pop, country, rock and singer/songwriter melodies play into her creation of a sound already quite her own.
The disc’s dichotomy — upbeat pop versus poetic observation — compliments rather than jars. All of which, Griffin and her grandfather, Mike Griffin, said played out partly accidental.
Part of it, both said, is that Griffin penned several of the songs at a younger age — she’s been at it since she was 9 — while the more recent reflect her maturing age. A career advisor no longer in the picture initially steered Griffin toward a more pop friendly direction, Mike Griffin said. She played along, and played along well but later pushed back and detoured into tunes a bit more substantive.
“She doesn’t want to be put in a box,” Mike Griffin said. “She’s an artist and she comes up with stuff and a lot of times I’m just like ‘Holy Toledo!’”
Mikayla Griffin called the box analogy appropriate.
“Americana, pop, country all put together,” Griffin said when asked to describe her sound. “A little bit of rock, indie country I’d say, a little bit of everything. Dance around and have fun. It’s for teens, older people. I really don’t think about a target audience.”
Whether she’ll travel the path of disposable pop and country in the future, MOR or something more interesting remains to be seen. But her debut holds promise from the pop earworms of “Let’s Have Some Fun” and “Turtle and Rabbit” to “We Live in Colours” seamless slides from country into Francophile interludes. “Entertain Me’s” slice of life observational lyrics feel like an — admittedly distant — relative of the Jam’s “That’s Entertainment.” Odd given that the quasi-psychedelic intro of the following song, “Pins and Needles” recalls the Jam’s “Dream Time,” which follows “That’s Entertainment” on the “Sound Affects” album.
“This is cool, it’s a haunted house,” Mikayla Griffin exclaimed upon visiting an abandoned Cleburne house to shoot pictures for this very article. With that she bounded undaunted into the ruins of the once no doubt grand manor. Mike Griffin followed albeit at a much slower pace than his granddaughter as he gingerly navigated the homes strewn detritus.
Age differences aside, both bring an equal measure of enthusiasm to their passion for music. Mike Griffin, who also plays on “Shooting Arrows at the Moon” and frequently joins Mikayla in live appearances, got involved in music long before his granddaughter came along. When it comes to music for both, it’s a family affair.
“Mikayla will write a melody and I’ll tweak it or I’ll write lyrics and she’ll tweak those, or the other way around; there’s really not a method to it,” Mike Griffin said. “We’ve made music together for so long that it’s just become a natural deal.”
The process of songwriting, Mikayla Griffin said, can stretch from two seconds to a long time or somewhere in between.
“With “We Live in Colours” we had the verse and chorus in about 1 1/2 hours but then it took three weeks to figure out a bridge,” Griffin said.
Inspiration abounds and rears its head unexpectedly, Mikayla Griffin said. Realizing one night that she hadn’t received any calls on her cellphone sparked a thought, which morphed into a fragment of lyrics and melody that Griffin quickly sang into her phone before the thought was lost.
“She ran into the living room and played that for me,” Mike Griffin said. “And I said, ‘Hey, I like that’ and we sat down and figured chords and the rest of the song out right then.”
They already have three songs in the can for the next album.
Mikayla Griffin name checks Miranda Lambert, Kacey Musgraves, Edith Piaf, Frank Sinatra and Panic! at the Disco as a partial list of her influences.
She and her grandfather said they hope for success but vowed that whatever comes to be making music remains the long range plan though Mikayla also wants to go to college for animation, art being her other passion.
Live she delivers as well though she admits that developing her between song patter remains a work in progress.
“I still don’t like talking on the mic,” Griffin said. “I’ve been an awkward kids all my life but after six years on stage I’ve finally figured out just to be myself.”
And she’s played stages in Las Vegas, Dallas and throughout Johnson County including a spot in last year’s Nashville Lights, an annual event bringing top Nashville and Texas professional songwriters to Cleburne.
“I was never so scared before a gig than that night,” Griffin said. “Knowing that all those big names were on the bill and having to go out there all by myself. But it was fun once I got on stage.”
Promoting local
Griffin will play numbers from her new CD during a release party to be held at 7:30 p.m. Thursday at Songbird Live, 210 E. Henderson St. in downtown Cleburne. The event is free.
Songbird owner Tom Burkett said he’s looking forward to Griffin’s first appearance at his venue and equally excited her and Mike Griffin’s idea for a new series to be called Young Songbird.
“I won’t be directly involved in that other than letting them use Songbird to hold the shows,” Burkett said. “But I think it’s an exciting idea and one that might help us discover some new musical talent in the area.”
The Young Songbird series will run at 7:30 p.m. each Thursday, beginning March 17. Tickets will be $5.
Mikayla will likely perform a song or two at some or all. The main goal, however, is bring young area talent, musicians between the ages of 10 to 25, to Songbird’s stage.
“Songbird is a great place to hear music,” Mike Griffin said. “It’s family friendly, open to all ages. What I was thinking is just look at [Plaza Theatre Company] and all the area talent they’ve found around with local actors. Which has me thinking there’s probably a lot of good musicians in the area as well. It’s just a matter of getting word around to try to find them.” - Cleburne Times Review
Discography
Still working on that hot first release.
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Bio
Cool Vibe. Three piece horn section. Good Players, great songs.
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