A long,
strange
ride
Written & Photographed by Chloee Blair
Musician Michael Jordan’s music is difficult to describe. It’s the kind you can feel in the floorboards. Maybe heady is right. Moody. Moving.
He has 40 years of life behind him, part of it spent on the streets, and he shares some of this in songs that feel almost epic - growing slowly, building, while he beats on the body of the guitar in his lap.
“I love physicality. The guitar, the way I play. I enjoy fighting, wrestling.” He stresses he doesn’t want to hurt anyone, it’s not about that. But he sees violence in these things.
“It’s violence on an individual level,” he explains. “Rock climbing can be violent. I’m 300 feet off the ground, I’m grabbing a crimp and it’s slicing my fingers, I’m bleeding, and I’m fighting through this thing. It’s a battle. There is violence in there. Maybe it’s just directed towards myself but it is violent.”
“Same thing with guitar. I’ve had my fingers ripped open,” he says, including during his many years street performing.
By the time Michael was 24, he says he’d been homeless numerous times.
“It was really, really cold. My fingers were split open because I was street performing outside of Whole Foods [in Asheville] and playing on my lap. My fingers were…bleeding and I was supergluing them shut.”
He recounts that a couple of hippie friends and a dude named Sparrow hit him up to go to Key West, suggesting they should street perform all the way down.
He says they climbed on top of his 1984 Astro Van, sat crosslegged and had a powwow to discuss the plan. Their first stop - St. Augustine, where they slept on the beach and played at a nearby farmers market before heading out.
While in St. Augustine, the owner of a frozen yogurt shop offered Michael a free home if he agreed to play outside the business. But when Michael’s Miami trip fell apart and he moved down from Asheville a week later, the owner told him the house didn’t have plumbing or electricity.
“So that’s the reason I came to St. Augustine,” Michael says. “The reason I stayed - there was a girl who worked at that frozen yogurt shop. The very first time I came here, I’d met her. Olivia,” Michael recounts. He says they became friends while he was street performing.
Eventually the musician ended up living in the woods off West King behind Broudy’s liquor store with his dog, whom he’d named Chaos.
“Because chaos was my life at the time,” Michael says. “Chaos is unpredictability. It’s not always this awful thing. Chaos can be good. I named him that to keep that with me.”
One early morning, after a homeless woman took his dog, Michael ran into Olivia, who was on her way to work.
“I was freaked out. I was walking into town. I couldn’t sleep,” he recalls. He says Olivia spotted him walking with Chaos, whom he’d managed to save. “She said - ‘Dude, you’re not sleeping outside anymore. You’re sleeping at my house.’”
“I’d had a crush on her. She’d had a crush on me. But that’s not a way to start a relationship,” he says. “I was a home bum, literally sleeping outside with a dog playing guitar. But I never slept outside again after that.”
Fifteen years later, he and Olivia are now married.
Although he was off the streets, getting legit gigs proved difficult, Michael says, despite wearing khakis and a collared shirt when he’d approach venues.
“My hair is terrible now. I’m old. But back then I had really long hair,” Michael says, saying he’d shaved it into a mohawk and asked Olivia to braid it. “It was like this wild Viking, long, thick, blond braid. It was the coolest shit ever,” he says. But he says the mohawk gave him away when he was trying to book shows.
“The town was cracking down on street performers at that time,” he recounts, saying ordinances were passed that required musicians to play 50’ off of St. George Street. “I was raising a stink. I put up flyers. I got a lot of folks to come to those meetings to talk about those ordinances.”
“St. Augustine is known for its music. So I was trying to get some sort of compromise with the city,” Michael says, emphasizing he could make $500-$600 in a couple of hours playing on St. George Street, but only $20 when relegated to 50’ away on side streets.
He says he had difficulty getting booked anywhere after that.
Things changed after he was thrown out of Stogies Cigar Bar a couple of years later.
Michael recounts that after a drunken guy with a rowdy group of friends made a comment about Olivia’s breasts, he told him “if you’re going to say something to the woman I’m with, I’ll smash your teeth down your fucking throat.” He says the group of guys made a big scene, but the bartender told Michael to get out.
The next day, he says the manager of Stogies at the time invited him to lunch, during which she explained that the bartender threw him out because he was the only one who would listen.
“It was the right thing. [The bartender] did everything right,” he says. “And then [the manager] goes - ‘by the way, would you like to play this Sunday at Stogies?’” Michael jumped at the chance.
“I was in love with Stogies the first time I walked in there,” Michael says. “Stogies was the first one to give me a shot, and I’ve played almost everywhere else in town since then. But Stogies was the first one – even with the mohawk.”
“That was 13 years ago and I have played every Sunday since,” Michael says. “Sunday night, ya got the stragglers, the tourists who are still here and all the locals who have had a long week. Sunday night, 9 o’clock, it might be a little slow. But by 11, they’ve all gotten off of work and they come to Stogies.”
“We have a really good time. And I get to play whatever I want. They let me do that. They trust me,” Michael says.
“The guitar, song-writing, I’ve always said…has been my greatest teacher. It’s allowed me to be honest in front of other people and to feel comfortable,” Michael says, saying he struggled with anxiety and panic attacks when he was a kid.
When he was 8, he says he spent several weeks hiding with his mom and his little brother from a violent man in a women’s domestic violence shelter. Growing up, he threw himself into sports and books, and was obsessed with music ranging from Pink Floyd to Metallica, Tool to Joni Mitchell.
“The guitar allows me to be vulnerable. I write songs about overdosing on drugs. I tell that story. I sing that song to people. It’s like bearing your fucking soul – telling the most awful moment in your life that you do not feel proud of and dissecting it and presenting it,” Michael says. “That vulnerability is a lot. Sometimes I say too much. Sometimes you can’t say everything.”
“I’m going through a transition period in my life…I’m getting fucking old. It’s now or never. Either do the goddamn thing or don’t. And I want to play music,” Michael says. “I’ve got so much music and I just haven’t recorded it. It’s been a long, strange ride. I’ve got to go for it. Now is the time.”
You can see Michael perform at Stogies every Sunday, 9pm-2am.
‘SometiMes I say too much.
Sometimes you can’t say everything.’
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