Sometime around 2000, Mike Comfort (a session musician and songwriter) met Chris Holmes (guitarist and recording engineer) at a recording session for another artist. Mike was hired to play the drum tracks and Chris was pushing buttons and turning knobs. Wait. Lets back up a little bit….
Prior to this meeting, in addition to his session work, Mike had been writing songs and pitching them to publishers in Los Angeles for a few years. Mike had garnered attention from, and/or worked directly with artists like Bette Midler, Don KirkPatrick (Rod Stewart, Richard Marx, Animation), Brad Gillis (Night Ranger), Joe Wood (TSOL), but was ultimately not very successful at making a living trying to write songs for other artists.
So, back to the recording session in 2000. Mike asked Chris to engineer and play guitar on a few songs. Mike would play drums and keys and Chris would play guitar and bass, as well as sing the harmonies. They recorded the first few Mike Comfort albums like this. After having the good fortune of recruiting Brandon Mains (Guitar), DJ Farrell (Drums), and Jonathan Stoyanoff (Bass), a live band was born as well as a new group of musicians to contribute to the recordings.
Over about 15 years and 6 full length albums, Mike and his band would have several “best of's” on local and regional levels, be featured on news programs, sell over 10,000 CD’s between shows, and record stores (remember those?), gain thousands of fans, and play years of sold out shows.
To say Mike was a late bloomer to the internet side of promoting his band would be an understatement. He was the last to get a FB page, last to get on iTunes. and still doesn’t know how to set up a blog. With the exception of some smaller market national radio airplay and some in store background music play, Mike and his band have remained pretty local to Northern California. Local, yes. Unimportant, no. Mike's music has touched many lives in a big way. Over the years he has received loads of emails from listeners sharing their own personal stories of how his music has made a difference in their lives. Just those kinds of songs….those kinds of words.
On July 26th, 2016 Mike will be releasing a compilation of songs from his six albums. The album is titled, “Pretty Sweet Stuff”. Fitting title since most of the songs are on the prettier, more mellow side of his catalogue. Get ready to fall back in love, contemplate life, find some inspiration and be comforted (no pun).
