Mike Hurwitz: Reviews

"Michael Hurwitz grew up with a guitar in one hand and reins in the other. Along the road he's howled with coyotes and picked with the greats, and has become the best of both - wild and untamed."

"Mike Hurwitz doesn't come accross as anything but real, real talent, real entertaining, and real ranch people."

"As refreshing as the morning ,as smokey as the pub, as belonging as the barn,and as worn as the outhouse path"

                                                                                  Waddie Mitchell

"Nothing of the drugstore-cowboy Nashville hat act, singer/guitarist Michael Hurwitz is a man with bonafide range credentials. These days, working the circuit from his home on the Wyoming/Idaho border, he and his band, the Aimless Drifters, preserve the unadulterated Western sound in clubs, bars and dancehalls far from the madding crowds. His music is plain-spoken and straightforward, sung in a charmingly cracked baritone, the voice of a man who's been around and has a supply of good stories -- funny, rueful or grim -- to pass on." (there's more...to read the enitire review click here.)

"Michael Hurwitz is a treasure trove of country blues. One minute he's singing an original about bustin' broncos; the next, he's pulling the best traditional you've never heard from his repertoire and picking it out on guitar. Hurwitz's dusky baritone resonates with the sounds of mountains he's pondered, horses he's wrangled and land he's travelled. He's the real deal."

"The recordings of Michael Hurwitz, an honest-to-goodness cowboy from Wyoming, have become favorites of mine over the past several years and Cowboy Fandango is another one that I can't stop playing a lot. He's got one of those comfortable voices and delivery styles that makes me think I'm listening to an old friend- we've never even met- and the arrangements, built around Michael's acoustic guitar and featuring instruments like fiddle, pedal steel , mandolin and a very tasteful rhythm section, are timeless sounding like they could have been recorded recently or anytime in the past 50 or 60 years. Plus, his songs tell stories that make you want to listen from the first line to the last as he sings about the west, about cowboys, ranch life or about the life of a singer who plays for cowboys. Something else that draws me into Michael's songs is the way he sometimes follows the same folk process template as Woody Guthrie, Bob Dylan, John Prine and many others by putting his new words onto tunes from older songs. Michael's songs stand tall alongside the earlier classics. If, like me, you're a fan of the cowboy songs of Ian Tyson and Tom Russell , you should be listening to Michael Hurwitz too."

"Sophisticated music making, genuine feeling, easy loping pace, wit and humor...Hurwitz tells engaging tales populated by characters that are wacky and weird but completely believable. Best of all, he has a dry dusty voice to match his wit and that lends an air of authenticity to his stories of pickup trucks, parties, prison cells and peculiar people."

"Heck, I have been in this music business for more than three decades, and I have seen ’em all…I live in Nashville, did the whole song writer’s circuit, and watched the talented and not so talented come and go, so I am hard to impress. Well, one night in Colorado, in a song circle, this fella comes in and sits down with a classic old Gibson guitar, and starts into this song that just stops me in my tracks…so well crafted, powerful and effective. And the delivery was absolutely dead-on right for the song; a voice like time-worn leather, a voice that evoked images of smoldering oak in a well used cookshack stove. I was thoroughly impressed with this guy! “Who the heck are you and where the heck have you been?” I asked. His name is Michael Hurwitz, and he has been living the kind of life that has produced the solid songs he writes, and the more I heard, the more I knew this fella had it going on! Not your typical cowboy singer, this one. Michael Hurwitz lives on the bluesy side of the West, and wow, does he do what he does well!"

" a seemingly effortless delivery that goes down like a smooth, perfectly aged shot of fine scotch whiskey " -- Sing Out!

"Hurwitz is a superior writer with a sure eye for the foolish and the tragic in the New-Old west and he recounts it all in a wise weathered baritone" -- Jerome Clark -Rambles.net   Clarks Top Picks for 2007

"Mike Hurwitz writes song like Larry Mahan rode broncs" -- Dave Stamey 

" I figure you can trust a man who sings the way he talks. Michael Hurwitz's voice and stories have been in the grain of the American West for a long time. Listen to his tunes and you'll be there too" --- Greg Keeler- Big Sky Journal

"Hurwitz's Prairie Blues comes across as natural as breathing" --John Conquest- 3rd Coast Music

Mike's music is authentic, full of the look, smell, and feel of the mountains, prairies, and swamps from Wyoming to Mississippi. He knows the people who live there, and these songs are love poems to them. -- Win Blevins - author of the award winning, Give Your Heart to the Hawks, Stone Song, and other novels about the region.

"You only have to hear about 3 words come out of Mike Hurwitz's pie hole before you realize you've got the real deal, His songs hit home and his music takes you way back, Don't miss the chance to hear him." --Gary McMahan- National Cowboy Hall of  fame Wrangler award, WMA national yodeling champion.