Mickey Lamantia’s highly anticipated 7th album is set to release March 25. His history is one for the books- opening for artists such as Willie Nelson and working with renowned producer Buddy Cannon.
In a recent interview with Country Evolution, Lamantia said he believes he is just “starting to peak” in the sphere of country music. Even more amazing, he is doing it all as an independent artist.
A correctional officer by day and honky-tonk extraordinaire by night, Lamantia balances his family and work in Rhode Island with pursuing his musical dreams- and he’s been doing it for the past 20 or so years.
After asking how he balances it all, Lamantia said as he chuckled, “Very carefully. You tread lightly. It is definitely a juggle. Sometimes I work 16 hours and (then) spend a lot of time on social media- Facebook Live and stuff like that. It’s a balancing act.”
He has been doing this balancing act for about two decades. He got his start playing bars before he was even a teenager.
“I started playing bars when I was about 12. My uncle was a country singer so I kind of clung onto him and learned the craft. By about 21, I was lucky enough to do a small tour with Willie (Nelson) up here in New England and then became a correctional officer and kind of forgot about the dream,” he said.
Focusing more on his career and family than music, he hit the pause button shortly afterwards. Soon after, he had a musical revival upon hearing Jamey Johnson’s “In Color”
“When I heard Jamey Johnson singing back in 2010, I said, I think I could write songs like that so I started writing in 2016 and we cut my first album which brought us to where we are now.”
Reflecting back, he commented, “When we made the first album, it was not really good. (So) we made another one and now (we’ve made) seven albums in four years.”
Lamantia says he noticed he became the best songwriter in the later half of his career.
“Most of the good stuff has come later in life. I think that the biggest thing is learning to write music to your style (and) your voice. Probably about 10 years ago it started clicking,” he said.
Although he doesn’t consider himself an outlaw, per se, Lamantia believes his style mixes honky-tonk, outlaw and classic country flavors. With a voice many would expect resides in Nashville, the singer said he did have the opportunity to move to Nashville but passed it up.
“When you are a musician, you think, well, I could have moved to Nashville 20 years ago. I had the opportunity to do it at one point and I didn’t. I am glad I didn’t and (instead) let life work out the way it did. (It gave) me a life experience where I can write songs (with) 98% truth and then add my 2% of fiction. Sometimes we need people a little bit older to tell the stories because they’ve lived them,” he said.
Putting his family first as well as following his intuition has led Lamantia to reach over 5 million streams on Spotify, 3 million on Apple Music and over 1 million on Pandora.
His newly released “Honky Tonk Confessions” chapters shows his raw talent and has allowed him to snatch the top seats on the iTunes Country Chart; “Honky Tonk Confessions: Chapter 1” hitting #7, “Honky Tonk Confessions: Chapter 2” reaching #3 and “Honky Tonk Confessions: Chapter 3” grabbing #2.
“We have one spot that we are missing, the #1 spot. March 25th, we will see what happens,” he said.
A product of his work with Buddy and Melonie Cannon, his single, “Honky Tonk Confessions” is Lamantia’s latest release and can be listened to here.