News/Thoughts

Mike Schikora

Singer-songwriter, horse breeder/trainer and occasional chef Mike Schikora says “I always keep plates spinning; life’s much too short to have one focus.” His latest album, Outlaw from the South (his third solo effort, released July 2024) reflects this diversity of interests, in that, according to Mike, it has no single overall theme.

“This is the first time I went without a plan, a design,” he says. “The first two albums, I had a specific category of song I wanted on the album. A bluesy kind of style, more country, traditional—I wanted to get that out of my system…” About the diversity of styles he included on the third album, Mike goes so far as to say, “I’m not gonna conform to any kind of structure, if anything, that’s completely against my nature.” The one unifying element that Mike will admit to is a distinct ‘70s vibe to the record, which he attributes to his producer, Michael Bonagura.

Mike got his musical start with violin in sixth grade, about which he says, “I immediately broke all the strings, because I wanted to ‘fiddle’.” The next year, his school’s choir teacher recruited him after hearing him sing every note as he was practicing his instrument.

The songwriting came a bit later. Mike says hearing a college roommate’s attempts led him to believe he could also succeed at songwriting, but it wasn’t until he landed in Nashville for an internship at RCA that he began really developing his skills. A major step was learning every song that was included in a Nashville newspaper’s “song of the week” section, complete with lyrics and chords. “I cut them out. I still have that binder—it’s like a foot thick!” Mike says. Next, the music of K.T. Oslin inspired him again to say “I can write that! And I started writing. Six months later I had a publishing deal.”

After seven years in Nashville, Mike headed out for greener pastures in Colorado. “I had this image in my head that I was gonna be a famous singer with horses. I had the singing part down, I didn’t have the famous part down yet, and I didn’t have any horses…” Now the artist is based in northern Texas, dividing his time between his two primary passions, music and horses; he’s “living the dream,” riding and writing in between trips to Nashville and performing on the road.

Listen to the full interview here!