STRATEGIC ARTIST ADVOCACY SINCE 1997
"Mike Viola has spent a large part of his career making music with others and for others. His newest single, 'Ordinary Girl,' off his forthcoming album, Godmuffin, is one of a handful of new tracks the pop-rock musician wrote by himself and for himself. Well, actually, he wrote it for his daughters, who both sing background vocals on the track." Check it out over at American Songwriter!
Du Jour recently caught up with the multifaceted Mandy Moore, who appears in Mike Viola’s new video for “Drug Rug.” Viola and Moore have been working together since 2009, most recently on her LP Silver Landings.
According to Moore, “He’s a genius and the video (directed by my sis, Caitlin Gerard) is hilarious and so dang good.”
Mike Viola - you probably know his voice from That Thing You Do, Walk Hard, or his band The Candy Butchers; or, perhaps you’ve heard his production on Mandy Moore’s Silver Landings - has a new LP, Godmuffin, due later this year. Evan Toth of WFDU recently interviewed Mike for The Vinyl District’s Radar podcast, finding that “2020 may have been one of the weirdest years that most of us have experienced in our lifetime, but it’s been musically fruitful for Viola.”
This morning, Rolling Stone premiered the epic new video from Mike Viola. Directed by Caitlin Gerard and featuring the talents of Mandy Moore, Christian Lee Hutson, Allie Buckley, Sharon Silva, and Tim Adams. Legend has it that vampires can’t expose themselves to sunlight, but Viola begs to differ
“Drug Rug” comes from Godmuffin, his upcoming LP available Dec. 11 via Grand Phony and Good Morning Monkey.
I kinda wish all of you could just hear this entire Mike Viola album right now, because it's uplifting, real, and frank as hell in a way that we all could use at the moment.
The first single - "Drug Rug" - is streaming over at Buzzbands, which says, "Viola channels his preternatural gift for directness and warmth into a celebration of youth." A thing of beauty. Godmuffin is out Dec. 11, and "Drug Rug" is streaming everywhere this Friday courtesy of Grand Phony.
Music lives in Mike Viola. Shit, it’s his last name, right? Godmuffin (Good Morning Monkey / Grand Phony, Dec. 11th) even opens with strings and man, do they tug. Hard.
“Don’t be afraid, no don’t be afraid / We still have time, we still have time / There’s so much I wanna do”
“I wrote ‘Creeper’ the morning I got the news my close friend died,” Viola says. “He was my age. Now he can’t make music. I still can. I can still spend my time looking for the secret cause, the next new song, even when it feels too late, ‘cause I still have time.”
Viola’s friend is the artistically immortal, Adam Schlesinger, to whom Viola will forever be publicly tied as the voice of his friend’s perfect, Oscar®-nominated pop song “That Thing You Do!”
At any other time, this association would be a fun fact. A bullet point in a career full of them. But right now it’s painful to listen to with Viola’s real-life tragedy in mind. Somehow, he makes it sound beautiful.
