It was Summer of 2001 on Matador Beach in Malibu, California when Michael Leviton first sat with a ukulele and a pretty girl and performed his ukulele love songs. The girl was charmed but not successfully wooed. Nevertheless, this leisurely summer romance blossomed into a magnificent obsession: not with the girl, but with ukulele love songs.
By the time Michael relocated to New York at the end of the Summer of 2002, he had composed fifteen nautically-themed ukulele love songs specifically for beach concerts before audiences of one. Michaels ukulele seductions reached their climax with his composition For Lydia. Tragically, Lydia was like the others before her: charmed but not wooed.
Michael was not discouraged. In fact, his love song productivity doubled, though his lyrical subject slightly shifted. The songs still glowed with innocence and longing, but now they also contained themes of heartbreak, alienation, despair.
After numerous rejections with varying degrees of harshness, Michael gave up on love and concentrated all romantic energy on ukulele songwriting. It was in this celibate period that he wrote the most bittersweet material on his debut album, songs like Saltwater to Quench Your Thirst, The Beach Gets Cold, and Summers the Worst.
Michael had never......[Read More]
It was Summer of 2001 on Matador Beach in Malibu, California when Michael Leviton first sat with a ukulele and a pretty girl and performed his ukulele love songs. The girl was charmed but not successfully wooed. Nevertheless, this leisurely summer romance blossomed into a magnificent obsession: not with the girl, but with ukulele love songs.
By the time Michael relocated to New York at the end of the Summer of 2002, he had composed fifteen nautically-themed ukulele love songs specifically for beach concerts before audiences of one. Michaels ukulele seductions reached their climax with his composition For Lydia. Tragically, Lydia was like the others before her: charmed but not wooed.
Michael was not discouraged. In fact, his love song productivity doubled, though his lyrical subject slightly shifted. The songs still glowed with innocence and longing, but now they also contained themes of heartbreak, alienation, despair.
After numerous rejections with varying degrees of harshness, Michael gave up on love and concentrated all romantic energy on ukulele songwriting. It was in this celibate period that he wrote the most bittersweet material on his debut album, songs like Saltwater to Quench Your Thirst, The Beach Gets Cold, and Summers the Worst.
Michael had never intended his songs for large audiences, but once in New York City he played his ukulele at open mikes, and soon fell in with the Lower East Side Anti-Folk community, a group of singer-songwriters playing acoustic music but with rebellious, punk sensibilities. At The Sidewalk Caf, the headquarters of the Anti-Folk community, Michael befriended many brilliant songwriters, including Regina Spektor and Nellie McKay. Michael began to play non-beach ukulele shows open to the public, developing a loyal following.
It was after an opening slot with Regina Spektor on Valentines Day, 2004 that girls started winking at him, handing him napkins scribbled with phone numbers. As the girls became more persistent, so did the fast-talking showbiz folk. Michael was asked to write and perform a ukulele jingle in a VH1 promo; he came up with Youre the Vh1 for Me and, for one summer, Vh1 was the most romantic of all the music networks.
Over the course of the following months, couples began to infiltrate the crowds at Michaels shows. Young lovers could be seen awkwardly getting to know each other, flirting, laughing, kissing; it was like a strange epidemic! Michael began to receive thankful e-mails and phone-calls from couples that claimed to have fallen in love at his concerts. Eventually, the situation could no longer be ignored; Michael wrote a song dedicated to all the happy couples in his audiences called Youll Pay for Your Day at Pleasure Island.
Michael signed with Smith Street Records and, in the Spring of 2005, went into Smith Street Studios with producer Kyle Fischer of Rainer Maria fame to record his debut album My Favorite Place to Drown.
Technically, my favorite place to drown is in a pretty girls eyes, Michael says. But on a less personal level, the titles just supposed to mean that in romance, you cant play it safe; youve got to get in over your head. In less cynical days, sailors used to chase after sirens and drown all the time. But it was worth it; love is the most worthwhile of self-destructive pastimes, dont you think?
Michael Leviton grew up in Los Angeles, son of a music writer with a room full of records. Though Michael had no formal musical training, jazz harmony snuck its way into his brain. Maybe its because I have the same birthday as Richard Rogers, Michael says. Or maybe its all the Looney Tunes I watched as a kid. Looney Tunes used a lot of barber shop quartet music. That frog sang Hello, My Baby. Bugs Bunny sang Im Looking Over a Four Leaf Clover. I used to sing that song to myself when I was a kid but only the first line because that was how far Bugs got. Wherever it comes from, the sound and lyrical precision of Tin Pan Alley is ever-present in Michaels songwriting. Equally present is the orchestrated pop sensibility of the 50s and 60s, of groups like The Ronettes, The Crystals, and The Beach Boys. My second favorite place to drown is in reverb, Michael says.
As a singer, Michaels a classic crooner, dubbed by the Village Voice the Chet Baker of indie-rock. There are plenty of indie-rock folkies, punks, hippies, dork-rockers, but pre-60s jazz seems to have had relatively little influence. Michael is one of the few indie-rock hepsters.
Of course, one question remains: why is Michael so ocean obsessed? The songs were written specifically to play on the beach, so it seemed natural to reference the beach and ocean in the lyrics. I just went a bit overboard, he says. Also, my last name Leviton comes from Leviathan. Do you think that might have something to do with it?
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