Micah Dalton

Submit an offer		Website: micahdalton.com
		MySpace: myspace.com/micahdalton
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		Genre: Rock/Pop
		Hometown: Atlanta, GA

		Availability: Generally available

		Music: Media Player
		Free Downloads: "Honestly Lion" \| "Umbrella"

		Tools: Print Posters \| Stage Plot \| Hi-Res Photo

Bio:

To find Micah Dalton’s music on the family tree of rhythm and blues, you must first pinpoint the place where the venerable branches of soul music join with the trunk. Then let your eyes come to rest on a newly-sprouted branch just a few inches below.

“It’s alt. soul—the little brother to soul music,” he muses. “It’s not necessarily aspiring to be soul, but it’s learned from its older brother, and it’s working on its own identity.”

A string of events led the 21-year old Atlanta-native to graft himself onto the tree at precisely this spot. There was the lyrical storytelling of James Taylor and Paul Simon on his mother’s cassette tapes, and the nimble grooves of the Michael Jackson and Marvin Gaye records that he and his father danced to around the house. Then the young singer received a crash course in gospel songs while he worked with a community-building project in a dilapidated neighborhood of Chattanooga, Tenn.

In 2004 Dalton began erecting signposts to chart the course of his musical progression, beginning with his solid 10-song debut, These Are the Roots. The album bears the easy-going, pop-inflected feel of tracks such as “Put Up A Fight,” “Blame It On January” and “Breakaway,” and the artful musicianship of Matt Slocum (Sixpence None the Richer), Jason Eskridge (Lyle Lovett), Sandra McCracken, James Gregory (Michael W. Smith) and others.

Logging tour dates at NYC’s Rockwood Music Hall, Eddie’s Attic in Atlanta and a host of colleges and other venues east of the Mississippi, Dalton has embarked on a journey of continual, inspired reinvention. The result is a new mile-marker—the warm, organic seven-song EP, Advancement. Co-produced by Dalton and Gregory, the latest song cycle displays moments of kinship with Donny Hathaway or Marvin Gaye, but it is anything but an exercise in imitation.

“I’ve tried to learn from those who have gone before me and to form my own way of saying things,” Dalton offers. “I think that to make something progressive, you have to be a student of those who have made very important contributions to music and to our culture as a whole. Everything is derivative to a degree, but if an artist is completely and utterly true to their own sensibilities, capturing those musically and lyrically, I don’t think that can be replicated.”