It is my personal belief that Brian Cassagnol is a genius.  Now, I know the term, “genius” gets thrown around a lot, but I feel compelled to stress that my deeming someone a genius should not be taken lightly.  The criteria is as follows: said “genius” must be a) smarter than I am in some field that I maintain to have expert knowledge in, and b) everybody knows that a good outline needs to have at least 2 points per subheading… hence, point (b).  For those of you who are unaware, Brian Cassagnol is Mieka Pauley’s guitarist, music director, and engineer of an overly elaborate and menacingly complicated system of guitar effects pedals.  Brian has had a huge part in helping steer the sonic landscape of Mieka Pauley’s music in a direction that the rest of the band and fans alike have been coming to recognize as fresh, innovative, and a shit-load louder than it was before.  In addition to Mieka Pauley’s music, Brian also fronts his own band, “The Books of Brian”, in which he sings… better than I can… technically making him a genius by my definition of the word.  In addition to Brian’s “vocal performance genius”, Brian also knows a lot more shit than I do about classical music, music theory, opera, and “staying calm when you’re super late for some shit that you weren’t supposed to be super late for”.  I am fiercely envious of this last manifestation of genius… which brings me to the point of this blog post.

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The title of this blog entry is a direct quote: “I don’t know how to do this,” is something that Mieka said to me on stage during a show at Rockwood Music Hall, recently. I can’t remember if I actually heard the words come out of her mouth. I’m pretty sure that I saw her mouth move in the shape of the words, but…well… it’s just not that important to the story, ok? You see, Mieka has a certain magic about her. She has the power to express, whether she wants it or not. She need not speak. She need not gesture. She needn’t do anything at all, and you are bound to feel her fury; her joy; her despair; her mind-bogglingly neurotic panic. Much of the time, it’s her eyes that do the talking. Mieka’s eyes are beautifully expressive. Even when they are wide with incensed rage, you can’t help but admire their depth. They’re just so big. Often, I’ll find myself gawking in astonished wonderment as Mieka rips me a new one about one thing or another. It’s best not to drift too far out. The sea is uneven. Jagged shards of broken ice bob helplessly amongst inconsistently spaced white-capping waves that head in all directions. Unexplained shipwreck debris finds itself battered into kindling as it claws its way amidst the loosely packed ice, beneath a foreboding and thunderous sky. Lo! A voice; an unseen siren song beckons from the dark horizon… “Are you fucking kidding me?! Have you been listening to anything that I’m saying???” Sorry, Mieka.

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here’s another audio recording of a live show – this time, of me & the band at Rockwood last thursday. and wow, the band & I had such a good time – it was an amazing show. check out tracks 1, 2, & 7 in particular because those are the songs going on the new ep we’re working on.

(( FREE DOWNLOAD ))
Mieka Pauley & Band Live at Rockwood Music Hall on April 23, 2009
or stream it:

here’s an audio recording of a live solo show I just did last friday. hallelujah was captured pretty well … a lot of you have been asking for a recording of that … well, here you go. and for free to boot.

(( FREE DOWNLOAD ))
Mieka Pauley Live at Rockwood Music Hall on April 10, 2009
or if you’re lazy, just stream it:

I’ve been obsessed with daytrotter for a while, and I finally got to stop by their studios in the quad cities while on tour last fall. the session got posted today – I am so happy with how the piece turned out – daytrotter puts the art back into the music scene. I recorded, acoustic & live-to-two-track, #1 a new-ish song “We’re All Gonna Die”; #2 a cover of my friend noam weinstein’s “When I Get My”; #3 the first track from my last album (elijah drop your gun) “All The Same Mistakes”; and #4 the a capella “Marked Man”.

here’s an excerpt from their write-up:

Beauty In The Business Of Toughness

Words by Sean Moeller // Illustration by Johnnie Cluney // Sound engineering by Mike Gentry

…She brings words to her tongue that don’t feel to be of difficult conception, as if they are the particles that have just been swishing around her canals and veins for all of her eternity, which is the only eternity that matters much. They are the pieces of her that she’s never going to get rid of and it comes out as music that will make you feel minty and it will make you feel misty and just the right temperature – where the sun’s blazing down on you on an otherwise chilly day. She takes fate on a day-to-day basis and that could be the smartest thing anyone can do. You carve your own way or whittle your own coffin.

I recently did an interview for NBC LXTV (video), as part of the New York Songwriters Circle and that piece is now on Taxi TV in nyc. anyway, I played rockwood last night, and I had a good number of unrelated people come up and tell me they saw me on their cab ride. I had no idea it would be so pervasive, this is wild.

too bad I ride the subway.

the band & I did a new music video – it’s for All The Same Mistakes off Elijah Drop Your Gun. it was shot by the wonderful Eric Hurt with help from Johnny St Ours.

here it is, hope you enjoy:

Mieka Pauley – All The Same Mistakes – Music Video by miekapauley

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excerpt:
“I didn’t really understand what songwriting was; I was just trying to make songs that made my voice sound good.”
A surprising statement, coming from fast-rising singer/songwriter Mieka Pauley, who’s gone on to win the first-ever Starbucks Emerging Artist Award, take the top award at the New York Songwriter’s Competition, and be named Cosmopolitan’s “Fun Fearless Female Rock Star of the Year” in the publication’s StarLaunch competition – not to mention a plethora of plaudits for her self-released 2007 album, Elijah Drop Your Gun.

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excerpt:
Mieka also discussed her third trip to the SXSW music festival held in Austin, Texas every year. This was the first she year she decided to bring her band along, the crew made a three day there, three day back journey to the annual event.
“It was fun once I got over the guilt of cramping them in the car ’cause I couldn’t afford to buy them plane tickets, but we had a good time,” she said. 


omg rainn wilson is following me on twitter !!

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excerpt:
Rainn Wilson has also expressed interest in bluesy singer/songwriter Mieka Pauley. Wilson has chosen to follow Pauley on Twitter (an honor that he has only given 60 other people).