Review: Circles Around the Sun w/ Mikaela Davis and Southern Star
Circles Around the Sun w/ Mikaela Davis and Southern Star
March 20, 2024
Columbus, OH
Mikaela Davis’s 2023 full-length release “And Southern Star” grabbed my attention, appeared on my best-of-year-end list, and firmly planted her in my mind’s cosmic orbit. She is a hyper-talented singer, songwriter, and classically trained harp player. All of her abilities were on brilliant display during a recent stop on tour with her band - and the namesake for the aforementioned album - Southern Star. The tour features California cosmonauts Circles Around the Sun, a likely pairing given Mikaela’s multiple collaborations and forthcoming co-release with the band “After Sunrise”. However, that really is where the overlap stops. Mikaela‘s music is a mix of lysergic country most recently championed by folks like Sierra Farrell, Margo Price, and Kasey Musgraves. All of these women have in common great backing bands, amazing vocal cords, and a command of the stage. Mikaela brings to the party her classically trained abilities on harp, tinged with an array of effects pedals that she deftly navigates, and really sends the material soaring into the stratosphere.
I felt Mikaela and the band were given short shrift on the set time and by its conclusion there was no doubt in anyone’s mind that the billing could have been just as easily been flip-flopped.
As Mikaela and co. made way for CATS to take the stage the crowd changed gears for the forthcoming mix of funky 70’s Bay Area baked long-form composition. What was born out of the late Neal Casal’s recorded pre-set interludes for 2015‘s last stand for the remaining members of the Grateful Dead ‘Fare Thee Well’ shows the music now takes on a Niles Rodger’s meets David Gilmour vibe. So what do the themes songs to Love Boat, Bosom Buddies, and the middle jam sequence from Pink Floyd’s ‘Echoes’ musical suite have in common? My analysis is they are the subconscious presumptive source material for the extended jams emanating from the Skully’s stage last night. What’s funny is I’m not sure I would call them improvisational. There’s a musical idea or phrase that each has and then the circles begin. Around and around like the shimmering disco balls held aloft surrounding the band (how much space do those road cases take up in the van!?)
Each player gets their turn - or multiple- going from patch to pedal on the phrase, slight derivations in the motif with a salt sprinkle of auxiliary percussion or bass drop drone. Best summed up in circumstantial short-form review “Tell me you’ve done acid without telling me you’ve done acid.”
By the time Mikaela’s re-appearance on stage with band in tow they lit up the room as they closed out the set with three songs from their collaboration. It was a celebration, part festival drum circle and part improvisational round robin. Everyone from the bands took part (sans lead guitar player Cian McCarthy) and closed out a perfunctory specimen of modern-day exploratory roots rock. The evening closed out as the epitome of a dance-rock party on stage and in the crowd. The jam bands jammed and Mikaela made a few more lifelong fans.