Primrose Reaper was furtively recorded, when time and money allowed, at the off-the-beaten-path Chicken Shack Studio in Tarzana, California. Singer/Songwriter Mike Neal spent many a moonlit night at the converted chicken coop set on an acre of land coaxing these 10 original songs to life. Though a songwriter first and foremost, Neal's hand-crafted sound owes much to his playing the majority of the instruments on the album; guitar, bass, mandolin, keyboard and piano, as well as to his warm, unadorned lead and backing vocals. With content equally personal and universal, Primrose Reaper offers a unique and subtle combination of styles born of the artist's wanderings and many influences. Born in the South but reared in suburban Detroit and therefore subject to Motor City's one-time diverse radio stylings, Mike's musical influences range wide: from Neil Young, Kris Kristofferson, Van Morrison and J.J. Cale, to Robin Trower and Husker Du, to The Isley Brothers and Keb' Mo', just to name a few. Meandering from Detroit through lengthy residencies in Chicago, Nashville and Los Angeles, Mike slowly and thoroughly soaked up local styles and flavors, fine-tuned his arsenal of instrumental abilities and scribed notebooks full of experience all along the way. Essentially a rock/pop songwriter album, Reaper carries healthy doses of country, folk, rhythm & blues and even a mild taste of jazz, all well blended and barrel fermented. At times lyrically poetic and other times more straightforward, Neal muses on those old standards of the human condition; love and loss, as well as gain. But here and there are also vignettes of personal growth, shimmering glimpses of the arc of an honest existence, a leaving behind of the worn or out-moded and an enveloping of the new and, ultimately, hopefully, transcendent. His writing and composition, whether up-tempo or down, carries a thread of subtle beauty throughout and the songs on Primrose Reaper are comforting, familiar and yet quite unique. Currently living and gigging in Southern CA, Mike Neal wholeheartedly believes that life's destination IS the journey...