Biography
Nova Scotia-based songwriter, Carmel Mikol, spent the last year touring extensively across Canada and the US. Her debut album "In My Bones" is nominated for three 2011 East Coast Music Awards (Female Solo Recording, Pop Recording, Rising Star Recording) and the title track took first place in the Folk Category of the 2010 Great American Song Contest. A fan favourite at festivals in Atlantic Canada and the US (Folk Harbour, Lunenburg, Nova Scotia; Deep Roots, Wolfville, Nova Scotia; 30-A Songwriters Fest, Florida), Carmel has shared stages with Connie Kaldor, James Keelaghan, David Francey, David Myles, Meghan Smith, Jimmy Rankin, and Matt Anderson. She performed in CBC Studio H for Concerts on Demand and developed and produced “Roots to the Future”, a new creation project for Cape Breton’s Celtic Colours International Festival. Already this year, Carmel played Florida's 30A Songwriters Festival and participated in a month-long artist residency alongside four internationally acclaimed artists in the Escape To Create program (www.escape2create.org).
Carmel recently returned home to Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia, to make her follow up EP “Creature”. “I love the road,” Carmel says, “but I’m no nomad. I know where I come from and it seems I’m always trying to get back there.” So it’s no surprise she reunited with the award-winning team at Cape Breton’s Lakewind Sound Studio (Gordie Sampson/Fred Lavery) to record “Creature EP”. The five-song collection was recorded live off the floor with Carmel’s band on a single day last November. An Americana-tinged confluence of acoustic and electric guitar, banjo, mandolin, and unaffected vocals, it’s an ode to Carmel’s earliest folk and roots musical influences. From the overtly political fan favourite “Twenty Something Girl” to the deeply personal “Somewhere Else”, the EP is poignant, revealing, and literary.
“I’m not sure which takes more courage for me – singing honestly about my losses or taking on newspaper headlines,” Carmel admits. Either way, “Creature EP” is a fresh take on traditional folk song fodder: wayward politics, conscious consumerism, and lest we forget… love. The EP will be released early summer 2011.
Find more at www.carmelmikol.com
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