Out Of The Box

The singular blues odyssey of Mike McMillan has taken him from his native Canada to Clarksdale, Mississippi, with extended residencies in Chicago and Boston nestled between. In 1985, it also gave him a distinctive stage moniker, one he retains to this day... Since then, Guitar Mikey and the Real Thing have steadily gained renown for their distinctive high-energy sound. "I would describe it as hybrid blues, or blues-rock," says Mikey. "I'm definitely a blues guitar player, I definitely write some blues, but not everything I do is strictly blues. Some of it's got a rockier edge, some of it's got a funkier edge." Mikey's ferocious axe (he's fiery on slide as well as single-string leads) and impassioned vocals have never been captured more effectively on record than on this self-produced collection, cut in Clarksdale with an impressive array of musical cohorts.