Album Notes

Grammy winner PJ Curtis: Michael is a terrific talent... a fine poet with a great "lived-in" voice. I love it. Great story songs. "Dancing in the Boneyard", "Country Girl" (great atmosphere here), "Nightbird's Waltz" and "Rockabilly Saturday Night" are the standouts. And [Let's Pretend We're Strangers] must be the first tuba solo I've ever heard that made me stand in amazement! ...a truly superb work.

Radio Ranger, KOPN 89.5 FM, Columbia, MO: I was on board with "Love Boat to Reno" from the moment I heard the first track. "Dancin' in the Bone Yard" is a mesmerizing song with cinematic lyric images and great clarinet hooks baited with a vaporous ghostly violin... From the first tuba note and swing clarinet sounds on the title track, it's obvious you're not on an ordinary journey with Michael's mystic ship on a sea of imagination. By the time the boat docks, you're glad you have been along for the ride.

Don Charles, Dsquared: McGarrah’s songs function like an emotional spyglass, peering about the room and soaking in the significant details. He is an iconoclast in the Tom Waits tradition - often the point of departure is so skewed that you feel he’s taken you to the wrong place (Love Boat to Reno?). Then the poet does his magic and you realize he had you right where he wanted all along. And he can write a love song that will make you ache for it.

Heidi Fosner, Victory Review: McGarrah is a storyteller. His tenor/baritone voice is compelling and convincing as he weaves his americana tales.

Finalist in the 2007 Grassy Hill Kerrville New Folk Competition for Emerging Songwriters at the Kerrville Folk Festival. Kerrville, Texas

Finalist in the 2007 Dave Carter Memorial Songwriting Contest at the 2007 Sisters Folk Festival. Sisters, Oregon

First Place, American Songwriter Magazine July/August 2005 lyric competition with his song "Iowa".