Still rollin’ with the flow: Twists and turns with ‘smart Monkee’ Michael Nesmith
Michael Nesmith, best known as the lead guitarist and resident genius songwriter of the Monkees and later for his trailblazing recordings with the First National Band in the nascent country rock oeuvre, was concluding his stint at San Antonio College on a tragic November afternoon when America experienced the senseless assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Actually raised in Dallas, Nesmith found college life to be generally non-stimulating, except those opportunities when he could write poetry or busk as a burgeoning folk singer.
Incredulously, Nesmith toured substantially both solo and with his “other band” in the early twenty-tens, especially noteworthy given the fact that fans can count on their fingers the number of times the venerable, decidedly mercurial songwriter has performed in the previous 30-odd years and still have a few remaining digits.
Cosmically dubbed “Movies of the Mind”, a 19-city late fall 2013 tour proved a most ambitious unveiling for Nesmith’s post-Monkees repertoire. Each date was documented professionally for archival purposes. A limited edition live album, the songwriter’s first since 1991’s Live at the Britt Festival, cherry-picked the best gems from each show.
