Background
Jeff was exposed to many styles of music growing up with a family that formed a wedding and dance group simply called ‘The Michel Family Band’, consisting of his father, Dave, his uncles Mark and Charles, and his aunt Judy. As a child, Jeff heard the waltzes and polkas, foxtrots and doo-wop that comprised the hits of the 50’s to 70’s and grew up amid the warm, encouraging family atmosphere of Sunday afternoon rehearsals.
Jeff began playing drums around age 6, having a red small drum kit in his bedroom and playing along with K-Tel records to songs like Celebration (Kool and the Gang) and Plug Me Into Somethin (Henry Gross). His father, Dave, wrote out a simple chord chart on a piece of paper and taught him to play guitar, and after years of practice and various stints in high school bands such as Medieval and Skule of Hard Knox, he joined the Family Band on guitar around the age of 14. In 1998, the Michel Family Band was renamed to Generation ‘M’, and they recorded two albums of covers and original songs prior to disbanding in 2004-2005. Around 2000, Jeff also joined local hard rock/classic rock cover group Shattered and has played clubs and numerous festivals alongside bands such April Wine, 54-40 and Jerry Doucette. The band remained active until 2020, playing shows as schedules allow.
Following his experience recording the Generation ‘M’ albums, Jeff built a small Pro Tools-equipped studio space in his home and began recording demos which would evolve into his first full length solo release, The Seasons, a 12-track acoustic album he released in 2006. Jeff also provided an outlet for local singers and musicians wishing to record demos for their own music portfolios, and was later commissioned to write an instrumental theme/credit track for a local Access Communications TV weekly talk show. In 2014, Jeff released a pop/rock single, Love You A Little While, in conjunction with a limited print run of CD singles.
The next three years would see the design and construction of a larger, more functional studio and a bit of down time in which to take up the mandolin. Jeff was recruited by CBS Recording artist and Oxbow, SK artist Jim Galloway (Hypno-Gogo/White Heat) to provide lead/rhythm guitar duties in support of Jim’s 2015 release, Good Times, and played a number of shows and festivals through 2016. A spinoff group, 3 Sharps and A Flat, offered Jeff an outlet to explore his Folk/Roots side, utilizing the mandolin to provide textures to traditional and contemporary songs alike. Once the build of his studio was complete in the spring of 2017, Jeff had the opportunity to produce and record a short-run 14-track album for long-time Estevan resident and local music icon, Ross LeBlanc. The album, simply named, Ross LeBlanc Trio, was an album of golden-era cover songs played with his longtime musical partners that perfectly captured the spirit of the musical troubadour.
In the fall of 2017, Jeff formed the Folk/Roots trio Hook & Nail alongside friends Mike Davis and Lindsay Arnold. Their 9-track debut album, Ghosts of Taylorton, was recorded and engineered at Jeff’s new home studio, and released on September 28, 2018. The album earned them a tie for the #4 Saskatchewan Album of the Year in 2018 and a 2020 Canadian Folk Music Award nomination for New/Emerging Artist of the Year. Three singles from the album (Adeline, Two Tons, Ride) have been featured on CBC as well as coast-to-coast on college/campus radio. Hook & Nail performed for a national televised audience as part of the 2020 Kinsmen TeleMiracle and provided an unreleased track for a 2019 SaskTel TV/digital ad campaign. In Spring of 2020, shortly after the CoViD-19 pandemic began, Hook & Nail unofficially went on hiatus to pursue individual projects, with Jeff returning to work on his second solo album and Mike and Lindsay forming a folk duo, Last Birds, releasing their self-titled debut EP in 2021.
On Last Birds' second album, Endless Turn of Day Into Night, Jeff was asked to contribute vocals, mandolin and percussion to select tracks on the record as well as supplied recording, editing and engineering services for the record prior to mixing.
After the release of The Seasons back in 2006, Jeff worked on and off, compiling dozens of ideas for the music that would be distilled down into his next full length release. This effort culminated in Back to the Moon, which was released on September 24, 2021. Jeff's second album is an eclectic mix of country-tinged folk/rock songs exploring themes of aliens, family, loss, winter whimsy, dragons, storms and the wisdom gained as one grows older. His songwriting style has matured to reflect the influence that folk music has had and embraces its storytelling nature, yet retaining the edge and drive of his blues/rock roots. The first single, Just Another Winter offers a lighthearted perspective into Canadian Winters and features longtime friend and bandmate Mike Davis of Hook & Nail/Last Birds on dobro. Additional tracks include Cabin in the Woods, which reminisces about Jeff’s parents’ summer cottage and the memories shared there, while Two Kids Dressed as Dragons tells the fantastic story of The Dragons and the 7-Horned Monster, based loosely on events that took place at the Winnipeg Folk Festival. Back to the Moon, again featuring Davis on slide guitar, ponders if we’re truly alone in the universe - and perhaps by choice. The Only Thing, inspired by a comment from a coworker, laments the loss of a wife and mother in childbirth and Professor of Intuition cleverly ventures into the world of the sixth sense.
Following the release of Back to the Moon, Jeff used the time from then until the present to rediscover the spontaneity of music and the freedom (and, frankly, fun) of not having to be locked into a single genre. Jeff has taken time to explore cinematic orchestration, and related themes, writing specific cues and instrumental themes for short personal biking and nature videos. It was while exploring these new themes of instrumental music that helped shape the songs that would become the basis for The View From Up Here.
When Jeff isn’t doing music-related things, he relaxes with his indoor cats, and the outdoor strays that reside in his upcycled-bathroom-cupboard-turned-heated-cat-shelter, aptly named Hotel Catifornia, and enjoys growing hot peppers and tending to the various trees in his backyard that yield the fruit he then combines with those very hot peppers to make delectable hot jams with a slow, sweet burn.