Mikol Frachey is a country singer-songwriter from a small town in the North of Italy called Saint Vincent.
Her town is small but her dreams and her braveness have always been big.
Even if country music is one of the most unpopular genres in Italy, she stood out internationally by becoming the first Italian artist to be awarded for country music in the USA when she had just graduated from high school.
At 23 years old, she was diagnosed with fibromyalgia and this asked her to replan her life but she has never given up on her dreams. In 2021 she self-released her sophomore album, “Untypical,” which has charted multiple times in the most streamed albums of Italy and has recently debuted at the #39 place in the UK Charts of Country Albums. Mikol completed her first international tour that started in May 2024 at Buckle & Boots Festival in Manchester.
Her brand new EP, “Stories To Tell,” published with the collaboration of Delma Jag Records, is the diary of a fighter who doesn’t let anything or anyone stop her from being herself and keep fighting for her dreams.
Mikol’s biggest inspirations in music are Bruce Springsteen, Miley Cyrus and Miranda Lambert.
This most interesting interview that covers everything from grunge music to the music business starts off with us asking about the relationship between the 2021 album and the 2024 EP; given the time gap, are they closely related or a departure?
Mikol: I actually feel the EP is more of a reflection on what happened with my second album because in 2021 with COVID, I never had the chance to promote the album properly. For six months after the release, I only had one music paper release a review for it, so at the time I felt very bad and even wanted to quit music at that point. But then things began to change as people gradually started to listen to the album and I created a positive interaction directly with the fans all over the world. This brought me to live an extraordinary experience. I began to play abroad and was booked for a UK festival (Buckle and Boots) that was life-changing in many ways. So the EP is a reflection on how my life has changed. Since the album, I have grown to see how the stories in the lyrics are what make the difference; people need artists to tell stories and to bring alive stories they relate to.
Touching on storytelling, country music is known for its storytelling. “Miss Roulette” is an interesting example from your song catalogue; can you look at the background a bit for us on that one, please?
Mikol: 99% of my songs are personal. “Miss Roulette” is a great track; it is one of the songs inspired by an invested character of mine. I wanted to write a song like this; I had the melody and the chords, but I was missing the story and what I wanted to say. I had been watching ‘Mission Impossible’ and James Bond and I watched these male characters. But then I imagined my female character having an action name. My character has a character that makes decisions that are mood dependent; the personal reference is there to Tiffany Charms, as a Tiffany Charm is the first thing I bought with my money from music when I was fifteen. So there are personal aspects in there to build the character, but it’s not me in that song!
Of course, as we get older and experience life more, BB’s daughter Shirley King told us that we find the blues as songwriting develops with experience-—that it’s more effective sometimes to write a song about the love you lost rather than the lover who stayed. The Blues will come into music the more we draw on ourselves, perhaps?
Mikol: I totally agree. Yesterday I watched Ashley McBride performing on Stagecoach; she ended her set saying, ‘we are doing country music, and it is a place where singing sad songs can make us happy somehow.’ As a songwriter, I feel that. It is easy but also painful to write about something that hurts. I feel that when I am happy and enjoying life or romance or whatever, then it is rare for me to pick up a guitar and just write a very happy song; as I will be focused on having a good time, going out and living life or the relationship. But when you break up with someone, then it is you and yourself and your feelings in that room. You can use the hurt, and then you go to an instrument and the songwriting. It is productive to work through the pain.
Of course the early bluesmen were not depressing people; BB King would go on the variety shows as an entertainer – it is the entertainment business. You can take the sad lyric and then juxtapose it with a happier melody; you can mix and fuse.
Mikol: Totally. I also love how the word ‘blues’ describes feelings. I have a song, “Valley Girl Blues,” and that is because people can make fun of me for writing sad or angry songs about break-ups and reflections. But I’m not a sad or depressed person; I enjoy life! I also enjoy music and creating music. I sing about my blues because when I go through something bad, I turn it into something positive. When I go through a hard time, like with the fibromyalgia diagnosis, I can turn to emotion; that is why I work on music.
“Valley Girl Blues,” since it’s brought up, is a great mix of blues, country and folk. They are all in the blender!
Mikol: That was my main goal. I love blues guitar so much and I wanted to add a blues part to my discography. I worked a lot on creating the chord projection. It didn’t come naturally; I wanted to give a blues style to the song and it took me two weeks to get it right. I feel it is personally a favorite.
Kurt Cobain and Nirvana famously connected to that legendary bluesman Lead Belly (who we once did a piece on—linked below). They covered his “Where Did You Sleep Last Night” on their 1993 unplugged. People don’t always recognize it, but the grunge movement owed a lot to the blues sound.
Mikol: Absolutely. I think that Kurt Cobain is one of my favorite musicians of all time, and that surprises people because he is not connected to country. But an artist is shaped in many ways and has a variety of influences. For example, when I was twelve years old I was reading his diaries and his journals, and for a twelve-year-old girl living in a small town and having a sense of not belonging to anything, I read a smart and clever journal from a man who was reading a range of books. He was listening to a massive amount of music. Of course, he played his own music but he was very aware of everything around him and his musical heritage. I think that this is what made him so interesting and the band Nirvana so interesting and immortal. You don’t need to know all their music; just listen to their songs years later and you will connect. You hear Kurt Cobain and you know this is not someone who was working hard to make a hit; it was natural for him. There was so much going on, but he would filter what he liked or didn’t like; his personality was projected into the sound.
The Seattle bands were making music for the love of it. We feel here that destroyed grunge in a way was the same thing as hit punk; when it became so commercialized and popular that they lost control of it.
Mikol: I certainly feel that for many of these artists, they never wanted to be seen as a diva. Even a big artist like Ed Sheeran still enjoys going busking (he was recently stopped by police busking in India). A lot of people as well start to impose their views on popular artists, what they should be wearing and how they should behave, and then comes the envy over their success. People want their heroes to be flying on the executive jets and leading a celebrity life that they see on social media. Music is almost not the main thing any more; it is wrapped with celebrity and has harmed the music scene.
Gene Simmons has always raised the business side of music. But also the gap between the illusion and the reality – the way that the few top headliners sell huge stadiums at hundreds of dollars a ticket, but underneath them on ground level great artists are struggling as smaller venues close and independent artists are trying to sell tickets at $10 a go. Then the poor artist also struggles in an environment where their music is being sold from under them virtually for free.
Mikol: I am working with a label, just collaborating. I go to the label when they ask who I want to collaborate with and I say, ‘I don’t want to connect with these social media people.’ I’m not just wanting to connect for the numbers. These TikTok accounts have thousands of followers, even millions, but then when they actually come to do a show, they don’t have an audience who will spend even $10 for a ticket, as they have been consuming it for free. We have a music scene where 15-second snapshots are the norm there. Also, if you sing a cover from an artist, then they will give you a like, but if they like the song, it doesn’t mean they like you as an artist.
We have constant emails and messages at the magazines from people who want to charge us under the promise that they can triple our readers in a day. We have around 1,000 a day now; they say they can get us 10,000 a day for a price. But it’s a lie; they want to sell AI bots who hover around hitting your figures, and we know the same happens on accounts such as Spotify sometimes. We don’t recommend paying these people; it gives false readings.
Mikol: I get these too and also refuse them. They come and offer to boost your Spotify or your YouTube; they will give you 10,000 followers in two weeks! But I do have someone now who is training me to effectively use social media and she is helping me build what I want people to see of me. I don’t suddenly want to follow a trend. But social media is a business necessity nowadays; you can’t erase it. But you can’t expect these thousands of new followers in a day; it’s false. People give these thumbs up to things; often they want others to look them up for various reasons.
As a country artist, does Mikol consider the image side of music life?
Mikol: I don’t think about the image side of things much, to be honest. I was wearing country boots when I was going to school! I was wearing cowboy hats during the summer when I wasn’t performing. I like the look and am comfortable. There are some artists I find inspiring and I look to their style, but I don’t look too much at how I am ‘supposed’ to dress.
As a last point, we share a love for Miley Cyrus. She is such a talent and someone who is such a chameleon. We love her rock album here with songs like “What the Fuck do I know” – such a talent! Does Mikol see herself as a musical chameleon too, evolving in style?
Mikol: If you go to my Spotify, there are literally so many styles there! The funny thing is that when I first took singing lessons, vocal coaches tried to push me in a direction toward country, rock, or pop. I came one day ready with Barbra Streisand’s “Don’t rain on my Parade” from the 1968 musical “Funny Girl,” and they would tell me that this had nothing to do with what I usually did. But who cares? I liked it! In my future I can see myself going a bit jazzy, a bit musical. I see myself adding more blues to my songs. I actually experimented with a pop punk band recently. That is why I love Miley because she centers herself on her personality, but she can literally do everything. Yet whatever she does, we always know it is her.
And that finishes this great chat with the talented Mikol Frachey. And I hope you liked the feature, dear reader! If you did, please check out the other pages of the magazine; we have many great features, merchandise, and editorials, and even poetry! We work hard for you, and if you want to show some appreciation and support what we do, then do use the Support Us link below and buy us a coffee.
Mikol Frachey is on tour soon, including a show at London manifest. Link for tickets and information on the tour here.
Artist website here
Stream music from Mikol Frachey here
By Mark C Chambers
and
Anna-Louise Burgess
