‘Like dreams’
Mishka Shubaly lets ‘truth and fiction smear together’ in his songs
Mishka Shubaly is a renaissance man.
His ability to put together words that make an impact seems effortless.
He’s also an ultrarunner and a teacher. And he weaves it all into his music, which takes a lot of balance.
“I’ve been working on a new piece for Amazon about my family reunion that I hope will be out this year,” he says in an email interview. “I accidentally wrote almost an entire new album’s worth of songs, so I’m going to try to record it this winter.”
Shubaly will take the stage at O’Niell’s on Tuesday, Sept. 25. Joining him will be comedian Kyle Pogue.
Pogue was a fan, this massive, excitable St. Bernard puppy of a man, a cartoon of machismo, like a Viking who’s also the town sheriff, Shubaly says.
“I met him a couple of times, and then we did a run of shows together around Denver,” he says. “He’s funny as hell. … He’s happy to drink all the free drinks I don’t, and he’s a good sport about driving when I need to mope for four hours. Being funny might get you on a tour, but suffering gracefully in a hot van is what will get you invited back.”
It seems like Shubaly is constantly writing — whether it’s for his music or his Kindle Singles with Amazon, which are single-serving memoirs.
His process for each is different.
“When writing a memoir, I hold myself to a pretty stringent standard of truth. Some names and physical details have been changed to protect privacy, but all the details in my memoirs are literally true,” he says. “Songs are more like dreams. There are absolutely true moments in them, real people from my life, and some of my songs are true stories all the way through, but I often let truth and fiction smear together, or cram several true stories in on top of one another. Songs have to rhyme or at least be phonetically pleasing; they have to have hooks that will get the drunks in the bar singing along. … Writing and songwriting definitely assist each other, but they’re different skill sets entirely.”
And when it comes to editing, Shubaly wishes he were harder on himself.
“It’s incredibly important to get it right, for each song to perform its job, for it to be memorable,” he says. “I hear a lot of musicians who are fantastic singers or players, but the moment you leave the room, you can’t remember a single song they played. Each song needs to be great, but there’s a limit. Any song you finish is better than every song you don’t.”