Michah boo

Born in Memphis on the day John Hinckley Jr attempted to assassinate Ronald Reagan, as a teenager Micah P Hinson became romantically involved with a Vogue cover model and developed a nasty valium addiction.

In the spring of 2000 he was caught forging prescriptions and ended up doing a stint in jail. Released, clean and making headway in the US underground courtesy of his elegant brand of Americana, further disaster was nonetheless still to follow.
In early 2005, the singer was celebrating Burns night in his hometown of Abilene with some Scottish friends, one of whom playfully hit him in the back. Unaware of the seriousness of his condition, the singer went ahead with a European tour, only to be rushed to hospital for back surgery upon his return home to the United States.
“I’ve been in pain all but one week for the past two years,” explains the nervy Hinson in his southern drawl, before his recent show in Crawdaddy. “Morning, noon and night, man. Even when I sleep, I wake up in the middle of the night and I fucking hurt. When I sleep on my back I have to have three pillows underneath me to elevate my legs, and if I sleep on my side I have to have a pillow between my legs. It’s a fucking nightmare.
“The thing is, it’s lucky that he’s my friend, because if he wasn’t, I’d have sued his ass off! Cos he’s ruined my fuckin’ life, not to be too melodramatic or any of that bullshit. But in the end, I think it's a blessing of sorts, because the career I have enabled me to take a few months off. Better to be a musician with a back condition than a construction worker with a back condition, I guess.”
Having played support slots with the likes of David Gray, Devendra Banhart and KT Tunstall while touring his first album, Micah recorded his second record, Micah Hinson & The Opera Circuit, while convalescing from his back injury.
“Yeah, the idea hit me while I was stuck at home with my corset, my walker and my slippers,” he remembers. “I just realised, ‘Fuck it, we have to make a record, because once I’m healthy we’ll have it in the can and we’ll get it all finished.’ People were saying to me, ‘You need to go with Lambchop’s producer, you need to work with Sigur Ros’ producer’ and I just said, ‘No, I can’t do that, I’m fucked. Just give me money for a computer and some mics and I’ll do it.’
“On the back of the album it says ‘Twelve songs from Abilene, Texas’ and that’s what I wanted. When you hear the noise of the crickets at the start of the album, that’s me playing on the porch with the crickets in the background. It was all very organic. I wanted a record that sounded like home and that’s exactly what it is.”