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    Music Preview: Author and Songwriter Mishka Shubaly Brings Funny and Wrenching Tales About Life to Rumba Cafe May 9

    “Ohio, you feel like you’re getting sicker, but you’re just starting to get well,” Mishka Shubaly sings on last year’s tour de force record Coward’s Path. From the funny, too-honest, Tom Waits at a honky-tonk “Pickup Lines,” the mournful waltz/literary reference “Depravity’s Rainbow,” to the end of a relationship ballad “Taxes and Jail,” this new record eschews the common drunken sentimentality in favor of razor-sharp observations. Coward’s Path feels like an excavation, a careful archeological dig through the past in a way that honors the messiness and the pain but always finds a way to laugh. That laughter is about being alive, at least it’s the surest way to tell if you’re in doubt of your own living.

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    In a lot of ways the funny-sad balancing act of the record is summed up on “Your Stupid Dreams.” Over a loping acoustic guitar and smoky organ and what sounds like cut-up steel guitar, he starts by addressing a baby with “That woman taught you how to crawl, that’ll come in handy someday. Hey kid, hang on onto your dreams. Your stupid, hopeless dreams.” This moves through a look at his own past, “Wild Horses on the jukebox,” and moving into a summation for both of them, “Compare the man you want to be to the man you became. And realize, man, those two guys? Only their shoe size is the same.” All dreams are stupid if you dissect them but that doesn’t make them any less important.

    For the previous four or five years, after getting sober, Shubaly reinvented himself as a writer of prose with best-selling Amazon Kindle Singles like Are You Lonesome Tonight? and Shipwrecked. He’s now expanded his single The Long Run into I Swear I’ll Make It Up to You: A Life on the Low Road which I devoured in the last week. It uses the spine of a sobriety narrative we’ve all read many times to implies a flesh and blood life and a shows a scene (2000’s NYC, along with his childhood that includes being present at the horrific Simon’s Rock shooting in 1992) in a witty, nuanced voice. It’s a bracing book I can’t recommend highly enough if you’ve got any interest in any of the subjects it touches on.

    I first saw Mishka Shubaly at the great and now-lamented Larry’s Bar a number of years ago and everyone at my table was stunned into silence at the quality of his songwriting and his gnarled baritone voice. Roughly 10 years and it’s no exaggeration to say 1,000 nights spent in bars watching music later, I still remember that set very well. As much as I enjoy the writing, I was overjoyed to see Coward’s Path come out and I’m even more excited for next week’s show as I missed a previous trip through town last year. He comes to Rumba with Seattle singer-songwriter Star Anna who plows similar harrowing ground, and three of our finest songwriters – Lou Poster of Drift Mouth; Todd May whose Rickenbacker Girls might be my favorite Columbus record ever and whose new songs I saw last week knocked me sideways; and Brad Swiniarski, secret weapon in town whose songs made bands like Bob City and The Means shining lights of the Columbus scene.

    Mishka Shubaly plays Rumba (2507 Summit Street) with Star Anna, Todd May, Lou Poster, and Brad Swiniarski on Monday, May 9. The show starts at 9:00pm, tickets are available here. I Swear I’ll Make it Up to You is available at Amazon as well as local bookstores.

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    Richard Sanford
    Richard Sanfordhttp://sanfordspeaks.blogspot.com/
    Richard Sanford is a freelance contributor to Columbus Underground covering the city's vibrant theatre scene. You can find him seeking inspiration at a variety of bars, concert halls, performance spaces, museums and galleries.
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