Mike Biggers 'Ain't Makin' This Up' with CD

For Mike Biggers, music is a passion. The singer-songwriter and ace guitarist plays locally with The Anvil Blasters and with Dry Canyon Stampede, as well as serving up the occasional solo gig. Amid that busy gigging schedule, he's been recording his second CD, "Ain't Makin' This Up," which he released last week.

The title cut offers a telling glimpse of Biggers' influences and songwriting approach. The song is a compendium of ironies that are just too perfect to make up, delivered with Biggers' trademark wry humor - couched in an arrangement that calls up classic Southern Rock.

Stylistically, the CD covers some ground.

"There's tunes that are rock tunes; there's a bluegrass tune; country," Biggers said. "I guess it'd be folk. It's basically a mixture of the styles that I've listened to forever."

A stable of local musicians brought the sound alive in Matt Engle's Musictech Studios in Redmond. One song, "House Red," a co-write with his friend Ross Rogers, was recorded in Nashville.

There are two co-writes on the record, along with seven other Biggers originals and four covers. One of those covers, much to the delight of Biggers' fans, is a house-concert recording of his take on the Waylon Jennings hit "Amanda" - written by Bob McDill and "deranged by Mike Biggers."

One song, "The Old Road," demonstrates the way a song can sneak up on the writer.

"'The Old Road' started as a song literally just about a road," Biggers recalled.

As he wrote the song bit by bit, setting it aside frequently, it came to take on a broader and deeper meaning. Biggers' father, once a robust and accomplished man, was in declining health, and Biggers began to see a parallel. Like an old road that was once vital, we have our heyday, then slowly lose our vitality and our purpose in an inevitable cycle.

"It was a metaphor that didn't even present itself till the song sat for a while," Biggers said.

Biggers plays on Saturday evening at Cork Cellars, starting at 7 p.m., with duo partner Jim Cornelius, who penned one of the songs on the CD. "Ain't Makin' This Up" will be available for purchase at that performance - and will surely be in the set list.

"Ain't Makin' This Up" is available through www.mikebiggers.com and will also be available soon through CD Baby.