Michigan singer-songwriter launches national music career
A couple years ago, Myron Elkins figured he had life licked.
The Michigan native (Otsego) was happy at his job welding park benches, bicycle racks and other products for Landscape Forms Inc. near Kalamazoo and playing music on the side. “I went to work and that was it,” Elkins, 22, says. “That’s what everybody I knew did, especially my grandpa and grandma and my mom and dad. You get to come home at night. Friday and Saturday (off) seems like enough to get by.
“That’s what you do. That’s the Midwest thing. There’s nothing wrong with that at all. If I had to do that again tomorrow, I would be perfectly fine.”
Elkins has other plans for tomorrow, however — and for the foreseeable future.
The singer, songwriter and guitarist moved to Nashville about a year ago, where music is his full-time endeavor. He’s signed to a major label deal (Low Country Sound/Elektra), and his debut album — “Factories, Farms & Amphetamines,” produced by Grammy Award-winner Dave Cobb and recorded at historic RCA Studio A — came out Jan. 13 to strong critical acclaim. It also has him out on the road, where he’s adapting to his new stature.
“I’m not really a performer,” Elkins acknowledges with a chuckle. “I don’t really enjoy it as much as other people who perform live — it just scares the s*** out of me, to be honest with you. I like writing and recording the best.”
Elkins caught his music bug early on, through a grandfather who “played cowboy chords (on the guitar) and would sing story songs — ‘Bringing Mary Home,’ which is a bluegrass standard, a lot of George Jones, the outlaw country music. That was my first kind of obsession. I started listening to rock ‘n’ roll stuff a little bit, but that country thing always stuck with me.”
Eventually, however, Elkins found
music that straddled both of those forms.
“When I was 14 years old this Americana movement started happening,” he recalls. “It was rock and it had a little of that country sound to it, and that was cool again. It was kind of like what The Band or Creedence Clearwater Revival started. I was like, ‘Alright, this is OK. I can do this,’ and that’s when I started picking up a pen and (writing) myself.”
That discovery led him to “dive into more obscure bands” and further study the music. Among his favorites are blues guitarist
Luther Allison, Delaney and Bonnie, Jim Ford and Tony Joe White. He also found “Mongrel,” a 1970 studio album by the Bob Seger System that made a significant impact. “We knew him from the chorus of ‘Night Moves’ and those 70s ballads, but (‘Mongrel’) painted a new picture of him for us,” Elkins notes.
Despite his ambivalence towards performing, his band — Myron Elkins & the Dying Breed — was entered in competition in Grand Rapids. “It was like an adrenalin rush,” he remembers. “A bunch of things fired off in my head — ‘I don’t want to do it again. I WANT to do it again.’ I almost threw up — but that was awesome!’”
Elkins, still working
his day job, was signed by the powerful William Morris Agency for booking, which put him on the road with Marcus King, who had been produced by Cobb. “Dave was looking for a new thing to sink his teeth into and he saw my name and checked out what we had out at the time and was interested and reached out,” Elkins says of Cobb, who’s worked with Chris Stapleton, Brandi Carlile, Jason Isbell, Sammy Hagar and many others. “Little did we know we were all big fans from stuff he worked on. When we got to chat it was very surreal.”
The pandemic shutdowns delayed Elkins’ ability to get in the studio with Cobb, but when they
finally did the pair were instantly productive. “Factories, Farms & Amphetamines” is the result, it’s 10 tracks blending rock hooks and blues grit with country twang. Some of the songs dig deep — the soulful “Hands to Myself,” for instance, was inspired by an abused young woman his mother had taken in — but Elkins considers most of the lyrics to be “pretty content. I didn’t really pick any songs that were tearjerkers or anything.” Ideas, he adds, come from everyday life — street signs, TV talk shows, conversations — and are squirreled away to be used when he’s in writing mode.
“I always keep my ears open for one-liners or phrases or something
that’s easy to rhyme with,” Elkins explains. “You’re somewhere between Dr. Seuss and Mark Twain, I think.”
The amphetamine reference in the title track, meanwhile, came straight out his experiences growing up in Allegan County and issues with the stimulant in the community there. “It’s always been very prominent where I’m from,” Elkins says. “It’s taken a lot of my family members for a lot of bad trips — and even deaths. You can’t really talk about home or sing about home without talking about the good and the bad.”
Things are primarily good for Elkins these days, at least. He’s feeling the momentum behind
“Factories, Farms & Amphetamines” and is ready for a run this month opening for the White Buffalo. And while more touring is ahead, Elkins is especially looking forward to another crack at the studio.
“I probably shouldn’t say things, but I’m really ready for round two of recording,” he says. “That’s not to say I don’t’ still love the first record. I think it came out really, really good. But the writer in me always wants to keep looking at what’s next, ‘cause that’s what I like to do best.”