MikelParis Talks GuitarDrumming, TuneTrek and O.A.R.

MikelParis is a voracious multitasker.  Whether it’s music, short documentaries, livestreams or musical performances, he maintains a full schedule that finds him transitioning from one project to another and then offers them to the world (wide web).

The multifaceted artist has been the keyboardist, percussionist and backup singer for O.A.R. for two decades. Previously, he performed with P!nk, Train, The Dan Band and Jewel. As a filmmaker, he acts as the producer, cameraman, editor and host of TuneTrek, which he films at lesser-known historic places and includes a song written specifically for each location and episode. MP made “Music Drink Stories,” which followed his “A SONG A DAY” series. Started while at home during the COVID shutdown, he worked on new material during livestreams.

Over the summer, he toured with O.A.R. and during any downtime, MP did solo dates in music venues or as part of his home concert, “HouseTrek,” performances. Earlier this year, he put out GuitarDrumming 01, where he focuses on the guitar drumming technique he started to develop as a touring member of the percussive-heavy production, “STOMP.” On the album MP did all the songwriting, lead vocals, keyboards, bass, percussion, stomps, “mouthbone” (vocalized horn parts) and guitar drumming on acoustic guitar.

Joining him on this release are special guests Vernon Reid (Living Colour) on electric guitar on “Good 2 Go,” G. Love on harmonica on “Hitme,” while “Downtime” brings together Of Good Nature’s Cam Brown on vocals, electric guitar and bass and David Hamilton Jr. on drums plus the onetime O.A.R. horn section of Jerry Depizzo, Evan Oberla and Jon Lampley.

Although he’s promoting GuitarDrumming 01, MikelParis is already setting up the GuitarDrumming 02. “I’ve got three albums planned,” he said. “The second one, I’ve already released the first song with good friends of mine, Simplified from Charlotte [North Carolina], “I’m OK. Then, I’ got another one called “Mother” with my friend Stephen Kellogg.”

Recently, a third single came out – “Floweez” featuring Brady Watt.

Although he has much to do throughout the year, Paris is excited to be out on the road with O.A.R. “It’s been awesome to be back on a tour bus. It’s been almost a year since the band’s been able to travel like that…just for logistic reasons.”

Our conversation takes place in the afternoon prior to an O.A.R. show in Clear Lake, Iowa that evening. Afterwards, he planned to visit the “Not Fade Away” exhibit that’s dedicated to the final concert by Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and the Big Bopper before their plane crashed in a farm field north of the city. 

JPG: Being on tour with O.A.R. is just one part of what you do. You have band shows and solo shows and rarely have time off.

MP: I started releasing music and I realized that I needed to play solo shows to support it, like artists are supposed to do. [Laughs.] Last year was an experiment for me in figuring out a tour within a tour; how to route and book my solo shows within the context of an O.A.R. big summer tour, and it was pretty successful. It was a lot of fun. I’ve incorporated that model for this year as well and got a lot of solo shows coming up that I’m excited about.

JPG: Are those solo shows in venues or HouseTrek events?

MP: A combination of both. I like the HouseTrek formula. It’s been really cool. Then again, I also really like playing in venues where it’s an intimate setting, and I’m gonna reach some people who have never heard me before.

JPG: Are you doing these shows on guitar or keyboards or even looping?

MP: No looping. My solo rig, if I have everything with me, it’s my guitar drumming. I have a stomp platform that I have a kick drum mic in. I have two vocal mics — one clean, one affected, distorted with overdrive and delays that I control on the fly. Then, I’ll have a keyboard off to my right side. So, everything is being created in the moment.

I experimented with looping. I got the gray line 6 JM4 looper pedal and kudos to people that can really do it and who have made it become second nature. For me, it was all about, “What can I do live in the moment? which goes back a little bit to my STOMP days as well. What can we create onstage with the eight of us [in the STOMP cast] with no recordings?  That really instilled that ideal in me of I want everything I’m doing up during my solo shows to be…not that looping can’t be organic. I don’t want to say that. But, I want it to be, “How is he making that sound and he’s doing it all at the same time in the moment?” That was my challenge to myself, and the guitar drumming in and of itself covers a lot of bases, no pun intended. It covers that bass texture often, and the percussive and guitar sound. That’s already filling it out a little bit.

JPG: Regarding the technical aspects of it. I believe Neil Young, when he was doing a solo acoustic show, had something he was stomping on, and there’s a band called Bonepony that stomped on a board. Do you need to use a particular type of wood to get a sound or use whatever you want?

And it’s not any particular wood. It was just my dad and me. “What does he have lying around the workshop?” It’s eight inches high. We cut a little channel in the front so that I can stick the kick drum microphone in there, and that’s it. It’s got padding on the bottom. It’s solid enough so that me standing on it and stomping on it isn’t gonna crack it.

JPG: I want to get to the origins of the guitar drumming, but, also, I want to bring up STOMP. I’m fascinated by it. I interviewed someone from the current touring production recently, and I remember seeing the show years ago. When did you join STOMP? How long were you there and were you a keyboardist first and saw it as an opportunity?

MP: Yes. Piano was my first instrument. Four-years-old. My mom had the Baldwin upright in the living room and I was listening to her play it. She said that at one point I walked over when she wasn’t playing it, sat down and started messing around with the keys, and she saw that I’d taken an interest. So, she asked if I wanted to take piano lessons. We found a great piano teacher, and it was amazing.

I remember, I was in New York City, sometime around the 2000s and I saw an ad in the Village Voice, just one of those random things. I moved to New York City originally as an actor. I minored in theater. It was always back and forth between music and theater for me. And I just remember seeing this ad for this show STOMP. It said, “Wear boots.” I thought that was cool. I didn’t really know much about the show at the time.

It was an open call. Multiple callbacks. That whole story of an artist who moves to New York, works in a restaurant or a bar, hustling, auditioning, auditioning, auditioning, trying to find…and everything aligned somehow at that moment. My attitude was right. I didn’t go in there, saying, “Oh my God! I want this! I want this so badly. I need this!” I went in, “This could be fun.” That was my attitude going in, and it turned out that they liked my attitude.

When I got into STOMP, I really thought back to this time just out of college. My first apartment, my friend Todd and I, late night, he had an acoustic guitar and I picked up those devil sticks and I started drumming on the strings as he was doing chords. I thought I created and developed a whole new sound that no one ever heard before, and then I didn’t really think about it.

Then, three or four years later, I get into STOMP and “You know what? I’m going to go back to that.” I had an old, cheap Yamaha acoustic guitar, one of the starter ones. “Let me start experimenting. How can I do this without a partner?” I didn’t even know what it was called yet, but if I was going to do this approach to the acoustic guitar where I lay it flat and I look at it more like a piano, a chromatic…I’m usually DADFAD as far as the string tuning. Then, my thumb is doing a lot of the chord work. Then, this [finger’s] doing a lot of the minor major color tones. This finger reaches around. I just started messing around with this idea again.

I remember I was on tour with STOMP. It was the first tour, and I brought my guitar with me. I was in a hotel room with the cast. We were hanging out. “Yay! We’re touring this amazing show around the country and people are going crazy.” Don’t forget the Orpheum Theater in New York City was like 380 capacity. Then, STOMP goes on tour for the first year to houses that are 2,000, 3000. All of a sudden, as performers, we were hearing this incredible response and energy from these larger crowds, which was absolutely incredible.

So, the guitar drumming evolved during this time. I was in that hotel room, and I was just messing around with the first song that’s on GuitarDrumming 01, “MoveIT.” I wasn’t singing. I was messing around with the groove and the pocket and the feel of it and the mechanics of, “How am I hitting the strings? How am I getting that sound?” And, within, like 30 seconds, the whole hotel room got quiet. I didn’t realize it at first. I looked around and, they used to call me, “Paris,” because there were multiple Michaels. They’re like, “Paris, what are you doing? That’s incredible.”  And I was like, “Okay. That’s another little sign that, maybe, I should pursue this. I should see this through to its fruition. I should not make this a gimmick but have it be a way that I write songs; another way that I think about music and composition with this instrument and how I’m playing it with this guitar drumming style. And how does this guitar drumming sound converse with other traditional instruments.”

So, that’s what GuitarDrumming 01 was really a lot about, an experiment in how does my guitar drumming sound work with a drum set? How does it work if there is a bass? How does it work with a harmonica? How does it work with a horn section, tonally and timbre and all of that stuff? It continues to be this experiment for GuitarDrumming 02 as well, looking at instruments to put in place with this style that I’ve developed and created to see how they converse and see what kind of dialogue they have. It’s really been fun and exciting for me.

JPG: You mentioned earlier about being into jazz piano. Was Thelonious Monk an influence because when I hear him, I hear the rhythm of his playing.

MP: All those rhythmic piano players, the jazz players—McCoy Tyner, even Herbie Hancock and Chick Corea—as much as I wasn’t as fast and quick and virtuosic a player as far as modals and patterns, I developed my own way to do fast stuff as a piano player. But for me, it was always about rhythm and people don’t always think about the piano as a rhythm instrument.

It’s funny that you bring up Thelonious because those were the people that I gravitated to when I was in the jazz world; those almost experimentally tonal chromatic players. Philip Glass even, some of his stuff really inspired me. They looked at that instrument very different. Thelonious, we all know, he was his own thing, and his piano was not a piano. It was something else. It was some other instrument. So many of those great piano players, the stories of how they developed and the struggles were definitely very inspirational for me during that period and continue to be.

JPG: How long were you with STOMP?



MP: More or less about 10 years. There were a couple breaks. I played with Pink for about a year-and-a-half, 2001, so I had a break there, which was good. The show is incredibly physical and demanding. It really took its toll on me, and I did not have the greatest core strength during that show. It caused some issues because your posture, often in that show you’re hunched over with brooms and things, and I had some issues. My last couple years with STOMP was…I remember Luke and Steve saying to us, “If you’re ever doing this just for a paycheck, find something else to do.”

I was really starting to struggle physically just to get through a show from those last year-and-a-half to two years, my back, my knee, my heels. Your heels get compressed from doing that show. There was a point where, I think, I had three insoles in my shoes because I was trying to find some way to soften the blow.

I knew that it was time. But, like anything else, especially as performers, we get involved with something that’s a steady paycheck and touring and traveling, you’re going to do what you love to do. The thing I loved about STOMP was that it was musical and it was acting. There was no dialogue but there was non-verbal communication and you had to look at each other onstage and try and create moments between your characters. Everyone has a different character in that show.

So, I’ve been very excited and thankful about all these experiences that I’ve had, that have led me to here and led me to this moment where I feel, finally, that I’m ready to get this guitar drumming project out. I’m ready to get this solo stuff out there, and for people to see me as an artist in my own right.

JPG: Your previous solo albums released before Guitar Drumming 01 — Snidbits, HIHOWAREYA VOL. 1 and Flow — had some guitar drumming on them. Correct?

MP: Yes, it’s always been there since I’ve started releasing solo stuff. It’s always been in the texture, but it’s never been the focus.

JPG: What I liked about the TuneTrek episodes is that it’s live performance and history.

Then, people would say to me, “I walked by that house a thousand times. I didn’t know that was the history of that, that there was that story about that or that it was built in 1711. I had no idea it was that old.”

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