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MDR McInnis
Michael “doc” McInnis has been a songwriting musician nearly all his life. Raised on the Country Music of his father and the Pop music of his mother, along with his first preference of Rock N Roll,...view moreMichael “doc” McInnis has been a songwriting musician nearly all his life. Raised on the Country Music of his father and the Pop music of his mother, along with his first preference of Rock N Roll, Michael expressed himself at the earliest of ages by playing guitar in various bands from his youth to adulthood. As an early fan of Elvis Presley—whose very first conscious awareness of the King of Rock N Roll goes back to at least four years of age—Michael was fascinated by music and the way that the medium could speak to and influence its listeners. More importantly, he was intrigued by music’s ability to speak to and influence him. Therefore, he began writing songs from the start, even when he could barely play an instrument. Following his desire to create art, he built a recording “studio” when he was still a kid, spending all of his allowance—and, later, earnings through real work—investing in the pursuit.
In his earliest years as a rocker, too—pre-teen, even—Michael created his own Rock Magazine based around his favorite band: KISS (complete with an 8-Track Cassette giveaway), doing all of the artwork and writing all of the articles himself. Then, inspired by Yul Brenner in Westworld, he began writing a first novel at age 12. Eventually, though, the music and the writing would merge into one art. First, with songs; then, much later into enterprise.
While football had consumed his afternoons and Saturday nights as a youth, they were ultimately replaced by guitars and playing with bands in order to earn his teenager-moneys instead of following the “traditional route” of hawking hamburgers and fried chicken at the local fast-food restaurants.
Michael kept his studio operating in overtime between gigs, writing and recording, with an eventual desire to try his luck in Nashville as a songwriter. But, later, preferring art over committee—and being grounded by obligations that would not let him live out of the backseat of his Pontiac Bonneville—he went home to his studio, thus, leaving Music City to find its own way without him. But he continued to write songs and record them in his studio while also continuing to compose White Papers on various topics that covered everything from theology and apologetics, to history and music, sociology and political science. But it was when he began to develop a story—in a prophetic manner, and unfolding even into the present—with the notion to create an accompanying soundtrack that his perspective changed about what could be.
It was only at this point, then, that Michael McInnis realized that he had been writing all of his life in some form or fashion and that his two interests should be married together. Then, that idea took him from those White Papers to Novels. Since that time, he has written several books which combine the literary with the musical with such books as the southern drama Blood Red And Goin’ Down; a thriller called (Stay Away From) Captain Howdy; a couple of suspense dramas, Bridge To Nowhere and Artifacts, a sci-fi-drama named The Tinker Man, along with a dramedy that has such a woeful title as A Hop Across The Pond Is Easier Than Sneaking Out In The Middle Of The Night With Your Socks Tied To The Bedpost. The Unauthorized Biography of Irish Mick and His Ploughboys…Or Something Like It.
Once Upon… Not Yet, this coming-of-age fantasy-drama, then, finds its inspiration and genesis in the music of Michael’s youth. As such, the music of those formative years from childhood to manhood became the backdrop to every scene contained within it; and its influence is on-going. (Music is such an important element to life that—in the absence of it—we will make up our own melodies and tunes at will, wherever we go.)
As a kid learning to play guitar, Michael McInnis found it difficult to “learn” others’ songs. Not difficult to figure out, necessarily, but difficult to “stay with” long enough to learn it before being distracted by invention and, therefore, using that melody or guitar part he was trying to learn as a launch-pad for his own melody or song. This same kind of difficulty he also remembers having as a child when he was learning to read. His mother would ask him what the story was about once he had read something for school. And, if Michael could not tell her, then she made him reread it till he could. But the trouble was not in either the reading or the comprehension but in the distraction that the exercise introduced to his brain. Just as the youth might slide from the melody of a song he intended to learn of someone else’s into his own “thing” some years later, so, too, as an even younger reader, Michael found himself triggered by what he read so that he often detoured into his own ideas or stories. (His eyes may have been on the page; but his mind was captivated not by the story he was reading but by the one he imagined to write.) So, he didn’t become a great “learner” of guitar; but he did become a proficient songwriter. Likewise, though a continuous reader, he found himself writing more novels than he read (which is contrary to many writers’ practice, it would seem) so that he created his own “voice” within the telling of his tales.
Making his home just south of “Nash-vegas” Michael DR (“the doctor”) McInnis continues to write and record music, play in bands, fantasize about soundtracks, storylines, and movie pitches while engrossing himself over the latest book or CD he has acquired or gawking at some picture or reading some write-up concerning a Classic-model guitar (such as a Gibson or a Fender, a Gretsch or a Hamer) or an amplifier (Marshall or Fender or Hiwatt). He and “Nurse” McInnis have a happy co-existence in their rural paradise, dreaming and writing.view less