Mike Settle

Press, Volume CXIII, Issue 33383, 15 November 1973, Page 4

Mike Settle

with Kenny

Rogers and the First Edition is one of the people who helped to get the whole thing going all those years ago. Today, Mike Settle is no longer a member of the group. Instead, he is travelling as a, supporting artist—carrying the first half of the show.

Mike is from Muskogee, Oklahoma (you know—the place where everyone ft proud of being straight and having short hair: according to Merle Haggard). He

spent some time at university but, in 1960. he was playing in coffee houses to help pay his way when along comes the “Cumberland Three” who say: “Join us man and we will show you the insides of Carnegie Hall.” This was too much for Mike and he was offquitting university and. it seems, never really having a chance to regret it. By 1966 Mike was with the New Christy Minstrels touring and cutting records but this wasn’t really his bag. He had been looking for a more creative outlet for his talents and so he “stole three members of the Minstrels, Kenny Rogers, Thelma Comachoand Terry Williams, and we put together the First Edition.” Things didn’t go too well at first. Sometimes there would be so few people in the audience that the group would sit with them and watch something they had pre-recorded for television from the stalls. By 1969, however, the First Edition had had a couple of hits and Mike got out. He did this, he says, mostly because all the travelling was getting through to him and he wasn’t seeing enough of his wife and children. But the real reason—and this is an impression gained from sitting up all night rapping and drinking beer with Mike in his Wellington hotel last week-end—is that he is just not the sort of person who can be happy with the musical hamburgers that the First Edition put out so regularly.

Mike is a serious musician. He has a very clear mind and he feels a very great affinity with American country music. His songs have that old home town simplicity associated with people like Merle Haggard but they also have a freshness — an up-with-the-timesness —that make them great listening. He doesn’t molly coddle his songs — instead he treats them with the sort of rough gentleness you find in a corral. He knows his songs and he knows his America. The two are inseparable. Mike Settle will do two concerts in Christchurch (November 23 and 30) with the First Edition, and from what we have heard already he is a good reason for going.