Cole Mitchell

Cole Mitchell was spawned in the American west, born in New Mexico but moved at an early age to Alabama. You hear both the warm heat of the south and the dust of the southwest in his voice. Born in 1958, he was steeped in a gumbo of country and rock, everyone from Johnny Cash to Creedence. Gunfighter songs and lovelorn ballads. Mitchell's lyrics have full mastery of the traditional country, cry-in-your-beer songs, but they never fall into parody ? he brings us along with a twinkle in the eye, ever knowing that emotions can be ridiculous but that they are never absurd.

Cole faced death at the age of twelve. He was diagnosed with diabetes and renegade that he was, chose to ignore it--hence the blindness that came at age 34. He didn't want to be told to do, and that included tending to that common disease. ?Being blind is the best thing that ever happened to me,? Cole has told me. ?Without cooling my jets and slowing me down a little bit, I'd never have slowed down enough to even have found Buddhism. But I see everything. I get images of everything. If I'm writing, I don't write from a blind man's perspective. I see vivid colors. Maybe it's daydreaming, but to me it's seeing.?