WERS 88.9 fm - Mieka Pauley

June 4, 2008

Mieka Pauley may be selling herself a bit short when she says that she couldn't get a job outside of the music industry.  

After all, she did graduate from Harvard.  

But Pauley doesn't need an Ivy degree in Biological Anthropology for the job she really wants: performing her songs.  

On Wednesday, June 4 she brought that passion to WERS to strum her acoustic guitar and stun listeners with her soulful and commanding voice. She started with "We're All Gonna Die", a song that makes light of disconcerting scientific projections: "Scientists proved that we're all gonna die/ They've got charts, equations, how, when and why/ You did not invite them and neither did I/ But they're here, drink up, we're all gonna die."

Pauley's lyrics are dynamic, smart and powerful, but she's hesitant to tell all when asked about her diction. She wants to allow listeners to extract their own meaning.

"I don't want them to understand what I'm actually singing about, but I do want them to see themselves in the songs," she says.  
   
Pauley says that when she listens to songs with specific and definitive lyrics, she is often turned off. As a result, she strives to make her writing open to many interpretations. Regardless of how her songs are interpreted, Pauley doesn't have to wonder if listeners appreciate her music and take it to heart. Following her live set, one studio engineer approached Pauley to tell her how one of her songs, "Stronger", changed his life.  

The second song Pauley played at WERS, "Faster", evokes images of a rapidly changing world, one that is often too fast to keep up with. Each note was soulfully hit with force and precision. Pauley's voice was so empowering to listen to in the studio that it seemed she was channeling the energy of vocalists like Jeff Buckley or Freddie Mercury.  

After singing a song about change (although "Faster" may be about something else to you), Pauley talked about changes and turning points in her career. During the on-air interview, host Ben Walker asked Pauley about switching from her first instrument, the piano, to primarily using an acoustic guitar. She explained that the guitar proved more mobile when she started college and moved into a Cambridge dorm room.

After the in-studio performance, Pauley said that the vibrant culture of Cambridge's Harvard Square bolstered a musical drive and desire that she's always felt. She went to college with a hunger to learn, and found herself in a place so artistically stimulating that she could think of music as a viable career option.
   
"I fell in love with where I decided to go because of going to Harvard Square and seeing the street performers," she says. "Just being surrounded by that allowed me to make that transition."

When Pauley introduced her last song, all eyes lit up in the studio. If you've listened to WERS at all in the past year, there is a good chance you've heard "Run", the title track to her album, Elijah Drop Your Gun. As Pauley moved into the contagious chorus of "Run", engineers in the control room sang along while working the sound board: "Run, run far beneath the sun/ Elijah drop your gun/ The world has got no armor on it."  

In the past few years, Pauley has become the first recipient of the Starbucks Emerging Artist Award and has been nominated multiple times for the Boston Music Award. She plays over 150 shows a year, and will be playing this Friday, June 5 at Johnny D’s in Somerville.   

Expect to hear more from this young singer/songwriter in the future because she has no intentions of doing anything but writing, recording and staying on the road.  

"There's nothing else I could do," Pauley says.  

www.mieka.com

www.myspace.com/mieka

-Ross Dallas