A press release from Coykendall’s studio, Fluff and Gravy, recently announced that the tour for Coykendall’s latest album release, “Half Past, Present Pending,” will make a stop at Bloomington’s Player’s Pub. The show, which will begin at 6 p.m. Sept. 16, will include a mix of original songs and covers.
According to a press release, a review by Jon Rooney on the website American Standard Time called Coykendall’s recent record “a slice of seriously fuzzy, spaced-out folk music.”
“‘Killing Time’ is the most directly pretty song on ‘Half Past, Present Pending,’ gently strummed and warmly sung like a lullaby, colored only slightly by smatterings of fuzz and oscillating noise that poke through toward the end,” Rooney said in the review.
According to a press kit by Fluff and Gravy, Coykendall grew up in Norwich, Kansas, and began playing drums and guitar in high school. He started writing and recording his first on-cassette 4-track before forming his first group, Klyde Konnor.
The biography in the kit said Coykendall began working with other artists, such as M Ward, around 1999 in Portland, Oregon. He gave up his day job in 2007 to focus solely on his craft.
In his third album, released in 2012, Coykendall continued featuring with other musical talents, including Zooey Deschanel, Eric Earley and Ben Gibbard.
John Shepski, president of Fluff and Gravy Records, said in an email press release that the instrumentality of Coykendall’s latest tracks is one of the selling points of these recent tracks.
“With this record, Mike had the idea to strip things down, mostly, to his live ‘rig,’ which finds him playing an oversized Kay guitar, a tin can kick drum and hi-hat, all run through layers of distortion and delay,” Shepski said in the email.
Achieving this distinctive sound required some creative work, but Shepski said it paid off in the final product.
“Of course, he took a few liberties in the studio, but the point remains that sounds on ‘Half Past, Present Pending’ are pretty much what you’re going to get when you see a Mike Coykendall show,” Shepski said in the email.
