New Artist Spotlight

In this week’s 10 Questions we get to know Smokin’ Cola – an eclectic rock artist from Maryland. Their track ‘Brand New Day’ is currently featured on the NAS Spotify playlists. You can follow Smokin’ Cola on BlueSky, X (formerly Twitter) and YouTube.

1. Tell us a little about where you are from

This time, we get to know Jose Michtka.

The track “Lisboa” is featured in the New Artist Spotlight Family of Playlists.

https://www.newartistspotlight.org/playlists 𝟭. Where are you from and what are your hobbies? I am originally from the USA midwest but I have lived on both coasts, Europe, and Mexico. My hobby is visual art, and sometimes it is copacetic with music. I am especially fond of making partially 3-D fish and animals out of junk such as tin cans and bottlecaps in a modified steampunk style. 𝟮. How did your get into music? I’ve done music one way or another since I can remember. Piano lessons as a kid, picking up guitar and other instruments on my own, some formal vocal training, and jamming with friends. I have been in over a dozen bands, from traditional Celtic, to eclectic pop, to R & B, eventually leading my own four piece Latin Brazilian jazz cover band “Chuva Boa.” (Chuva Boa has an album on Spotify if you’re interested.) All that worked until it didn’t. When you write original songs that are not formulaic and don’t conform to the latest trend, AND it’s in the middle of a pandemic, most of your musical colleagues evaporate. But being first a bandleader, and now a solo artist has forced me to deal with many aspects of the biz I never worried about before. I am happiest when I’m learning new things, and so it suits me. 𝟯. Who are your biggest influences? Being classically trained in piano, of course i was trained in the dead white men repertoire, and of those, Debussy and Chopin (who anticipated and helped shape jazz) are my favorites. Then we have the jazzers, of course: Bill Evans and Thelonious Monk are faves. As for singers, I look to Ella. In the romance languages singers department I am very influenced by Gal Costa, Flora Purim, and Violeta Parra. I also count Joni Mitchell, Grace Slick, Joan Baez, Gretchen Parlato, Dar Williams and Brandi Carlile among my early influences. For harmonies I’m mad about the Beach Boys and CSNY I especially like Joni & Joan, because they wrote on a lot of topics, and not just “love,” which IMO is overdone.