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| 3/31/2006 |
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| BE THERE |
WHAT: Mieka Pauley
WHEN: 9 p.m. Thursday, April 6
WHERE: The Bone,
1415 Frederick Ave.
COST: $5
| | At The
Bone again
Local bar helps singer Mieka Pauley
feel at home
By
CRYSTAL K. WIEBE
For many
touring musicians, Kansas City would be a more obvious
Midwest stop to sandwich between Chicago and St. Paul,
Minn.
But St. Joseph occupies a sacred spot in
the heart of Boston-based singer songwriter Mieka Pauley,
who returns to The Bone
Thursday, April 6.
“When they do shows, they do
shows,” she says over a cup of coffee at the recent
South by Southwest music festival in Austin,
Texas.
Pauley,
who admires Mariah Carey as much as Ella Fitzgerald,
first toted her guitar to the hip Frederick Avenue
hangout a couple of years ago. She’s played a handful of
gigs there since.
At the time, Daniel O’Connor,
director of Bent Ear Entertainment, was trying to
introduce St. Joseph to artists he pegged as the stars
of tomorrow.
“I tried to bring in people that I
really thought were going to be big two years from now,”
he says.
Pauley
resembles Fiona Apple minus the aura of fragility (maybe
it’s that Harvard degree) and is still on her way up.
The notion that music careers are made overnight
is a myth, she says, and “my night is still going on
right now.”
The sun could rise on Pauley,
who’s been on the road steadily since 2003, any time
now.
Last year, she won a Boston Music Award and
earned the Starbucks Emerging Artist title over some
1,200 other New England performers.
She also
recorded the EP “Out of Car Wrecks and Hurricanes” with
John Alagia, producer for John Mayer, Jason Mraz and
Dave Matthews.
On her independent artist’s
salary, Pauley
couldn’t afford what it would cost to hire Alagia. She
says he agreed to work with her “on faith” that the
six-song record would sell.
“It was the first
time the CD production has been out of my hands,” she
says. “It’s awesome, though. This is not the control I
want.”
Pauley,
25, also is not interested in other details of the music
business. She’d rather concentrate on writing songs —
and performing them in places where she knows she’ll be
appreciated.
“I won’t go out of my way to play
some random bar,” she says.
While a small venue
like The Bone
is somewhat restricted in the monetary appreciation it
can show talent, O’Connor knows there are other ways to
comfort a traveling performer.
Personal
attention and enough publicity to ensure at least a
small crowd helps, too.
“We make them feel really
welcome,” he says.
Pauley
recalls pre-concert dinners at St. Joseph restaurants
and a glass of red wine waiting for her at the end of
the night.
“They take care of me,” she says.
“They take care of the audience. They take care of
everything.”
And that’s enough reasons to keep
her coming back.
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