The Country Turn
When Micah left Hillsboro for NDSU, a group of friends in his dorm changed everything. They stopped him in the hallway during the first weeks of school and asked him to play something. He played I Took a Pill in Ibiza. They took him under their wing, and a lot of them are still close friends today. One will be a groomsman in his wedding.
Those friends came with requests he'd never heard: Cover Me Up, Lady May, I Wish Grandpas Never Died, What Hurts the Most. Their favorite was Heart of Gold. The harmonica with the guitar was cool to them. Country was new territory for a kid raised on grunge records, and for a while it felt a little strange to play so much of it. But the songs were good, the crowds wanted them, and somewhere along the way it stopped feeling borrowed. Tyler Childers became the anchor. Twenty songs deep in the set list and counting, because the diversity and lyricism never run dry.
Why I Play
The honest answer is the connections. There have been more moments than he'd ever have expected. A sweet older woman crying during Wonderful Tonight because it was her and her late husband's song. A first dance played live at a wedding. A song that got someone through the hardest season of their life, and often it got Micah through one too.
One of his favorite connections: a guy who lost his sister not long ago. Micah plays Follow Me from the movie Fraggle Rock, a song almost nobody would recognize. But this guy and his sister used to watch it together before she passed. Bringing those memories back to people through music, through songs he didn't write but wishes he had. That's the reason he does it.