Musician still calls Merigold home
By Lisa Monti (The Bolivar Bullet)
Longtime musician, Jim “Fish” Michie, got his love of music and his piano-playing start in Merigold, along with a lifetime of stories and memories. Though he was born in Greenwood and has lived in Franklin, Tenn., for years, he still calls Merigold home.
Recently, he returned to Bolivar County for two events. On Dec. 1, Michie played at GRAMMY Museum® Mississippi’s seventh annual Have Yourself a Delta Little Christmas!” program. On Dec. 4 he was a guest speaker for the New Bolivar County Historical Society, speaking at 5:30 p.m. at the Saia home in Merigold.
“When I found out the program would be at the Saias, I immediately accepted. It’s like coming full circle. Their home is one with a rich and long history in Merigold and, by the way, I mowed that yard when I was a kid, too.”
His talk was entitled A Musical Journey Through the Delta. And what a journey it has been.
Michie said growing up in the “tiny little hamlet” of his hometown was “idyllic” and simple. His youth was filled with paper routes, mowing lawns and playing sports with friends. “It was a small town, but I didn’t realize it because there was so much going on,” he said.
And of course there was music. “I remember wanting to take piano lessons when I was in first grade but the teacher wouldn’t take students until the third grade.” His mother, seeing his strong interest, told her son they would learn how to play together on his father’s piano at home. “She went out and got a very elementary book and we sat down at the piano together,” he said. “And the day I started taking lessons was the last day she touched the piano ever.”
She later guided him to Richard Henry, a musician at a club in nearby Shelby called Booga Bottom’s, who would teach Michie the chords of a song in the morning, leave him to learn the piece, and then come back to see how his student had done.
“He was very instrumental in unlocking the door for me in my musical career because it just kind of was like an awakening for me,” said Michie. “This was all because my mom had the vision to put all these parts into place.”
He started playing in local bands at 13 years old and he founded the popular band, The Tangents, in 1981 with co-founder Duff Dorrough and Charlie Jacobs. “It was a magical time and I was doing exactly what I wanted to do,” he said.
“We just played for ten solid years all around the Delta. It was always a big, big dance party, you know, and that made some indelible memories. for me and for a lot of people.”
The band played everything from Duke Ellington and Muddy Waters to Hank Williams, reflecting the member’s musical tastes. “It was the reason we came upon the name TheTangents because when we were playing, we would go out on a tangent and play different kinds of stuff,” Michie said.
The band played gigs from Memphis to New Orleans and one unlikely location, Wyoming. “We didn’t care how much money we made in Jackson Hole on the summer trips. We were grateful to get out of the awful heat during August in Mississippi. It evolved into a regular pilgrimage to Wyoming twice a year,” he said.
Michie went on to earn two non-music degrees at Delta State and furthered his musical education for a year at USM. “I was a professional student for a long time,” he said. “I loved school.”
He moved to Nashville in 1993. “I toured for a while and then after my wife and I had a son in 1995, I decided I don’t want to be a dad in absentia. So, I got off the road and I went to work for the State of Tennessee at the Department of Human Services.” He worked at a help desk at the Department and stayed for 27 years, but he never gave up playing music around Nashville. “The day I retired, my phone started ringing off the wall with calls about gigs,” he said.
Michie is still busy with dates in and around Nashville. His Facebook page has photos from gigs at venues including Joelton’s, a combination hardware store and music venue serving Sunday brunch. At Sinatra’s, he is pictured with two fellow musicians, noting the club is “a far cry from the joints and dives The Tangents played.”
He also works on independent projects, including writing musical soundtracks for films and documentaries. Thanks to technology, he can now work at home. Filmmakers call and tell him what they want. One was an old friend of Michie. “I didn’t see him ‘live and in person.’ He sent me some film and I made the soundtrack just watching the film and improvising and it worked. It turned out well.”
He wrote the score for David Rae Morris’s documentary about the first Black woman to receive PhD. from Columbia University. My Mind To Me A Kingdom Is: The Legacy of Dr. Jane Ellen McAllister won Best Documentary in the Tennessee International Indie Film Festival in Franklin. Morris also won the Impact for Social Change Award for the film.
Michie said that even though he has lived in Franklin, Tenn., for many years, when anyone asks where he’s from, he still says Merigold. “It’s weird how the Delta pulls you back. You don’t ever think about the five hour trip. Every time I go back, there’s a rush of memories when you hit that flatland.”
