Mishka Shubaly’s first songs were written in a grim series of basement apartments, beginning with an unfinished and unheated basement in his mother’s rented duplex in a muscle car town in Colorado. Just seventeen, he was working as the night manager of Sonic Burger and attending college full time. "My dad had just left us, our house had gotten repossessed, and my mom and I were totally broke. I didn’t have a dresser to keep my clothes in so I just brought a bunch of green pickle buckets home from work and kept my clothes in them. It worked fine, but I always smelled-- strongly --of pickles." The darkness, isolation and chill of that basement in Colorado and the unflappable sense of humor it bred has never left Mishka Shubaly’s music.
Following the demise of his seldom-lamented New York rock band in 2001 after their opening act got famous (anybody heard of The Strokes?) Mishka Shubaly recorded "Thanks For Letting Me Crash" on a four track in his bedroom and began performing the mostly acoustic music he’d been stockpiling. In the years since, critics and peers have compared him to virtually everyone in the country or indie canons: Johnny Cash, Tom Waits, Calvin Johnson, Nick Cave, (early) Beck, John Prine, Eric Bachmann, Nick Drake, even Liz Phair. But it’s still the fans that matter most to Mishka Shubaly. "Every time I play ‘The Washington Ballet,’" a song about heartbreak and liver failure, "somebody comes up to me after the show really wasted, looks deep into my eyes with just incredible sadness, then mumbles something incomprehensible and staggers off. That means more to me than I can say."

His most recent effort, "To Hell With You," is a much darker record than his four-track debut, but not unremittingly so. "I didn’t intend for it just to be ‘to hell with you’ like ‘up yours, you heartless cod, I want my records back.’ It’s also supposed to be ‘I’ve been to hell with you,’ like we’ve been through so much together that I’ll always care deeply for you. Despite the restraining order. And it’s also a toast, like two survivors sitting on the beach with a bottle between them, looking like two drowned rats, watching the burning hulk of the ship slowly break up and sink beneath the waves. Raising the bottle to the sinking ship, ‘To hell! With you!’ And then down the hatch."

Mishka Shubaly has shared the stage with Dan Melchior’s Broke Revue, Grand Mal, and Jason Bonham among others. He has appeared on WBAI and Radio 1190 as well as performing at notable New York nightclubs like Don Hill’s, Luxx, the Continental, Pete’s Candy Store, and Arlene’s Grocery, not to mention dive bars in Colorado, the Virgin Islands, Arkansas, etc.

Contact Mishka Shubaly at mishka_shubaly@hotmail.com.