Mike Montgomery’s lifelong fascination with music began as a solitary endeavor. After secretly mining his dad’s record collection of golden 60s and 70s icons and tumbling headlong into 80s skateboard culture and its thrilling soundtrack, Mike learned guitar and started amassing songs on his Tascam Porta-Studio, chronicling hushed bedroom melodies with each new chord he discovered. Soon, he founded thistle, a wonderfully self-sufficient power trio that served as a rich opportunity to tinker with every stage of the music-making process. Through four LPs and two EPs between 1992-2013 and countless thistle shows criss-crossing North America, Mike discovered how to book a tour, repair equipment, run live sound, manage a label, build a studio, and foster a community of collaborators. 

In the early 2000s, Montgomery became more industrious, shepherding his second trio, the largely instrumental Ampline, to garner national attention. Starting in 2001, this mighty combo extended his touring into Europe and produced four albums over the next two decades, perfecting complex and textured post-rock song-suites, most recently captured on 2018’s Passion Relapse, a masterful collection of tricky time signatures, crisp riffs, and emotional catharsis. Working with singer-songwriter Jeremy Pinnell, Mike also formed and played bass in the hazy Americana band The Light Wires, releasing two acclaimed records, including 2008’s The Invisible Hand, featuring Mike’s distinct and clever musical direction and production flourishes. 

As Montgomery branched out into other musical endeavors, he also emerged as a regional and then national recording engineer-of-choice, first at Backstage Studio in Northern Kentucky, and finally at his own space: Candyland Recording Studio, now located in Dayton, Kentucky. As Montgomery built his headquarters preamp by patchcord, he extended his reach beyond his own projects, eventually producing and engineering full-lengths and singles by LUNG, The Breeders, Protomartyr, Buffalo Killers, Ed Crawford, Messthetics, Courtney Barnett, and many more projects across a spectrum of styles. And while he became known for his technical know-how, Mike grew into a uniquely empathetic collaborator, contributing whatever was needed: simply setting up mics and documenting an artist in full flight - or workshopping songs, encouraging experimentation, and supplying musical ideas to bring a project to fruition. In addition to production duties, Mike served as The Breeders’ guitar tech and stage-manager and toured the world with Mike Vallely and the New Arms. Montgomery considers, “Once you reach a certain age, you end up crossing paths and working with people you really respect. The most mind-boggling aspect is that most of these people seem to respect me enough to invite me to play in their sandbox.”  

 Working more than full time at Candyland and writing for his clutch of bands, in 2013 Montgomery and Kelley Deal dreamt up R.Ring, a delightfully lean two-hander that upended traditional indie songwriting and arrangement expectations, giving both songwriters space to investigate esoteric musical directions. The duo produced Ignite the Rest in 2017, rolled through SXSW and Europe, and after a fine batch of singles in the interim, released their ambitious second album on Don Giovanni in 2023. War Poems We Rested found Montgomery and Deal in solo and collaborative modes, calling in favors from a host of friends like cellist Lori Goldston and Superchunk/Bat Fangs’ Laura King - both of whom Mike has played with and produced in the last couple years.

Inspired by R.Ring’s looseness and a growing confidence in spartan songwriting, Montgomery’s latest project - under the Nervous Verbs moniker - further peels back the layers of production and fussiness that might accompany access to a fully appointed studio. Instead of ensconcing himself in Candyland with limitless options, Montgomery treated his latest batch of songs as field recordings, often using phone memos to document melodies and entire performances at their inception, where and whenever they might materialize. He realized “there was something about the idea of noticing I had captured something of myself that I couldn’t recreate on subsequent attempts.” As he collected these home sketches, he shared them with friends (including Kelley Deal, Lori Goldston, Devin Ocampo, Joe Suer, Kate Wakefield, Rick McCarty, Adam Nurre, Matt Hart, Dan Dorff Jr., and Alexis Marsh) who responded with supportive contributions, fostering the initial sparks. “All of the extra tracks people sent me that I dressed the songs up with showed me that these were sturdy enough to hold those layers.”

The result of this new approach, Pony Coughing (OUT FEBRUARY 2025 on Don Giovanni) - ostensibly Montgomery’s first solo album of a winding 30 year career - celebrates spontaneity and the rough-hewn authenticity of first (and sometimes only!) takes. And mirroring his initial stabs at home recording 30 years ago, Mike, now a family man, found himself “singing very hushed because my baby was asleep; when I was little I’d have to be quiet because my dad was there.” 

“Repeating Lines” establishes the album’s relaxed palette: the chirruping sound of a Ohio backyard ushers in a lone guitar and a ghostly twinned vocal line paying homage to a skateboard (“I’m oiling old bearings / I’m dreaming of Speed Wheels”) before a sparkling overdubbed guitar figure widens the scene. “I Broke Them All Myself” finds Montgomery in a reverent, confessional mood as he outlines disharmony, supported by a lovely string arrangement and dense, heartbreaking vocal harmonies. Aside from its striking, nightmarish lyrics, Pony Coughing’s fifth track may well be a nod to his adolescent fascination with his dad’s record collection; “Cyclops Shore,” probably the most elegantly constructed song in Mike’s varied catalog, features the songwriting chops of a skilled craftsman who has come a long way since discovering punk rock in those Speed Freaks skating videos. Further into the record, “Chasing the Strings” most closely resembles an R.Ring song and in fact features Kelley Deal and Laura King - the core unit from that band’s War Poems We Rested. Here Mike stomps out a rollicking classic rock guitar figure as Deal’s unearthly massed whisperings flick around the edges, seemingly taunting the singer as he tries out one metaphor after another to make sense out of a situation.

Reflecting on the album’s process, Mike “was able to cast lines across the country - Lori in Seattle, Devin in D.C., etc. - I was physically alone but more connected creatively than ever before.” The cumulative impact of Pony Coughing’s eight concise tracks must be exactly what Montgomery intended - a quicksilver, unashamed collection of melodies and emotions as they surfaced, followed by the support, counterfactuals, elaborations, and, above all, love that can only come from a decades-long career in collaboration.

- Andy Hittle  2024