Mike Pope

Mike Pope has long been a near-mythic figure in San Diego’s folk music scene. An elusive fingerpicker and songwriter, stories swirled of Pope’s impromptu performances, yet no recordings surfaced. Now, like Alan Lomax in the 1930s, Blind Owl has lifted the veil and recorded two of his albums: The definitive folk album Songs for People High & Low, and his kaleidoscope electric song poem Ripening (Ain’t It Strange).

Traversing the gorgeous guitars and haunting vocal harmonies of “Mirror” and “Shooting Star” to the rollicking banjo-and-washboard sounds of “St. Augustine ” Mike Pope’s acoustic narrative resonates “a sound that’s earned him comparisons to Bert Jansch, Leonard Cohen, Nick Drake, and others that specialize in absolute folk finesse” (American Songwriter). Ripening (Ain’t It Strange) flips the script - it’s raw, loud, and post-punk in spirit. On acontinuous surge of gritty storytelling and dynamic interplay throughout the album in what Americana Highways calls“a cross between Dwight Twilley & Talking Heads if that’s possible…It’s not The Clash but it’s somewhere between them, the Knack, Boomtown Rats & with a Strummer-Costello radiance.” Together, both records capture the sound of a legend amidst the Southern California crowd.