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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Back to his roots

Musician Mick Coon followed his dream home again

Musician Mick Coon left Sandpoint to pursue his music dreams in Los Angeles. He returned to Sandpoint in October. Photo by Susan Lockhart (Photo by Susan Lockhart / The Spokesman-Review)
Patty Hutchens Correspondent

In 2002, Mick Coon strapped his guitar to his back, walked into the Festival at Sandpoint office and asked the staff what it would take to hire him to play at the popular summer music festival.

“I told them I’d play for them right then,” said Coon, now 25 years old. He still can’t believe he was so bold.

After auditioning in their offices that day, Coon was hired as the opening act for performer Keb Mo. At the festival that summer, Coon strummed his guitar in front of his hometown audience and sang for 90 minutes onstage.

“That’s where I really got the bug (to perform),” said Coon, a 2001 graduate of Sandpoint High School.

At that point he was relatively new to the music scene – he did not start playing guitar until his junior year in high school. Struggling with insomnia, he found he had a lot of time on his hands and stayed up many sleepless nights teaching himself to play his mom’s guitar.

“The first song I learned was ‘Leaving on a Jet Plane,’ ” Coon said.

After graduating from high school, where he was one of the top wrestlers in Idaho, Coon passed up a wrestling scholarship in North Dakota to attend a school in southern Idaho. While there, he won a music competition.

Deciding to pursue his love of music, Coon left college after the first year and moved to Missoula, where he performed weekly. He married and moved to Boise and later Salt Lake City, where he and a group of friends started a band that was together almost three years. But when thousands of dollars of equipment was stolen from their studio, some of the band members dropped out.

“We could never break through that threshold,” Coon said. “It was time for me to make a decision.”

Coon decided to devote the next year of his life to making a go of it in the music profession, but this time it would be on his own, not with a band.

He had a manager who booked his shows three months in advance. On a tight budget and determined not to spend all his earnings, Coon did what he could to limit his costs – including living out of his car.

“I packed up ramen noodles and tuna fish and got in my car,” said Coon, who had shows all over the West. “I put 8,000 miles on my car in one month.”

With an all-club pass to 24 Hour Fitness, Coon worked out one to two times a day and showered at health clubs in the cities where he performed. He admits that sleeping in his car was a bit risky, but Coon said he followed nice vehicles and exited the freeway when they did. He would follow them with the assumption they were headed to a nice area of town. It was there he would rest for the night, confident he would be safe.

“I loved living in my car,” he said. “There was a freedom.”

During a week when Coon did not have shows lined up, he played on the streets of Santa Monica, Calif. The first day he made $30, but the second day, after two hours, he had not made a dime. Then a man approached him, told Coon he liked his voice and asked if he would be willing to sing a song the man wrote. Coon agreed to meet the man, music producer Jim Chevious, the next morning.

“What I write is soulful music,” said Coon, partial to the works of Marvin Gaye, Otis Redding, Stevie Wonder and Ray Charles. “The song he wanted me to sing was very R&B. I did not think I could do it.”

Before he knew it Coon was given a check for $1,500 and was being whisked off to get fitted for a Calvin Klein suit.

Chevious told Coon he would be performing the next day on a new television show, “The Simply True Show.”

“I instantly freaked out,” Coon said.

He had less than a day to learn the 12-chord changes that the song required, and learn the vocals.

“I wasn’t going to get up there and do karaoke,” Coon said. “I had to sing it so it was me. It had to be from the heart.” He knew he had a lot of work to do.

Chevious handed Coon $600 and told him to go stay in a nice hotel and get a good night’s sleep. Coon told Chevious he would rather sleep in his car. But the producer insisted.

Coon stayed up until 2 a.m., slept two hours, then awoke to practice more.

“Any performer knows you never really have a song down until you actually perform it in front of people,” Coon said.

The closer he got to performance time, the more mistakes he made. Then came his moment on stage. He made it through the first line but forgot the rest of the lyrics, so he made up the rest. “I totally messed up,” Coon said.

He was sure he had blown his one chance.

But the show allowed him to re-tape the segment, and he got it right.

Refusing to be what he refers to as a “money pit,” Coon did not want to keep living in hotels paid for by the studio. Not wanting him to live out of his car, the studio finally agreed to allow him to sleep at the TV studio.

It was an adventure, Coon said. For several months, he worked on an album and performed in the same studio where Britney Spears, Jessica Simpson and other stars have recorded.

Eventually the studio moved Coon into a huge home with a swimming pool and a Mercedes Benz at his disposal, he said.

But the studio, he said, was dragging its feet releasing his single, Coon’s marriage was suffering and he realized that what he thought was his ultimate dream was not so.

“I really went through an identity crisis,” Coon said. “Even though everything that I ever wanted was happening, I was lonely.”

Going through a divorce, he reconnected with an old high school girlfriend. He said he had thought about her every day since they parted ways. After corresponding a while, she told him she would be on a business trip in San Francisco and invited him to visit. They instantly reconnected.

“I wanted her to know that she could always depend on me to be there for her if she needed me,” Coon said.

But it became more than that, and they both knew it. “I discovered everything wonderful about her remained. She was still the most beautiful woman I had ever seen.”

He moved back to Sandpoint last October and immediately found a job as a waiter at the Coldwater Creek Wine Bar.

Coon said he loves what he is doing and is happier than ever. He will continue his music and knows that whatever lies ahead will be an adventure. He also knows his real dream come true was not at recording studios in California, but here in Sandpoint.

“I don’t know exactly what lies ahead, and that’s what I love,” he said. “I’ve never felt more like a rock star than I do now. I’m back to my roots, not only as a person but as an artist. Sandpoint is such a creative area. There are so many inspiring people. I am living the dream.”

Still, he’s contemplating hitting the road again in about a year to perform his music.