Mickey Avalon at the Coach House July 6
For Orange County’s pretty girls and party people, Mickey Avalon will lead the stage of San Juan Capistrano’s Coach House on Saturday, July 6.
Born into a family of drug- addicted parents, glam rapper Mickey Avalon entered the Los Angeles lifestyle at a young age. Selling drugs with his mother, having a baby girl, getting a divorce, prostituting for money, and losing his father to a drunk driver and sister to a heroin overdose it is needless to say, Avalon has encountered many notable life events.
Fortunately, Avalon has used his difficult life experiences as the foundation for his albums.
Sharing his lifestyle of debauchery, his explicit albums feature Hollywood street lifestyles, stereotypes and, sex and drugs through rhythms and beats of reality and humor.
Signed by Interscope in 2005, Avalon released his self-title debut album. The release of Mickey Avalon (2006) continued his growth within the music industry. Doors were opened for success.
Avalon performed at sold-out shows with Slightly Stoopid, Snoop Dog and the Red Hot Chili Peppers. He continued on to collaborated with renowned artists Bruno Mars, Katy Perry, Ke$ha, and Perry Ferrell.
Now, Avalon is making his way throughout the world promoting both his most recent album Loaded (2012) and Mickey Avalon on tour.
OC Concert guide spoke with Avalon and learned more about his background of life on and off the stage.
OCCG: What demographic do you aim for with your music?
MA: Ummm… I don’t think I really ever aimed for a demographic. I think luckily I got a good demographic like pretty girls and people that like to party. I’m happy that is my demographic. It would be weird if people that went to my shows wouldn’t dance or move. So I’m glad I have a crowd that wants to let loose and have fun. I didn’t do that on purpose but I’m just glad it worked out that way.
OCCG: How would you describe your persona off stage compared to on stage?
MA: I don’t know, I guess I’m more reserved off stage and more shy but I mean I still do whatever I want to do. I would rather do something even if I fail I’d rather do it than not do it and drive myself crazy in my head for not trying.” I think rock n’ roll in general if the way people acted on stage would be silly if they acted like that in real life. It’s not like two different people or anything but I just think you have to be real over the top on stage and I think it would be obnoxious in real life.
OCCG: So would you consider yourself a risk taker?
MA: Yea I guess so; I see it as everything is overly sexual and all the way. In real life I’m not like ‘oh look at me!’ You know, If you do anything outside of the law you don’t really want to bring attention to yourself, I kind of grew up like that most of my life. So trying to bring attention to myself is not really something I try to do. Where on stage it is the exact opposite, all the attention is on you and you are really flamboyant and stuff like that.
OCCG:What can your audience expect from you during a live show?
MA: I just try to give it my all. I’m always drenched by the end of the show. So I guess high energy. There is usually reasoning to all the things. Like the way I perform.
OCCG: Do you have a favorite song to perform?
MA: The people’s favorite is the best. Playing so much of it is the audience. It’s definitely a back and forth push and pull give and take kind of thing but, it’s kind of my responsibility to get them going as much as I can but…The truth is the audience is really who is making the show better or not. The more they give it the better the show is going to be and the more I’m going to give.
Avalon continued to explain the reasoning behind his performances and why they differ.
I paint picture you know, and when you paint a picture you don’t want to pain the same picture over and over. You could I guess but you wouldn’t. So it would be kind of weird to play the same song over and over and over again. But the truth is it’s not really like that because as soon as you hit the first note everyone goes crazy and it’s kind of like a climax and you wouldn’t really get sick of that.”
OCCG: Speaking of art, do you still do any street art or any other forms?
MA: I paint. I paint on canvases and stuff, not graffiti style but just portraits and stuff like people and naked chicks. If I’m drunk and like someone has a spray can or something ill like to write my name on the wall. But I’m not really out trying to get fame or risking to getting into trouble. I’d say at my age right now I’d feel like a jackass if I got arrested for that. It would be hard to explain to my kid and stuff that that was something worth getting arrested for that.
OCCG: Does your daughter or any other family members contribute to your tour?
MA: Inspiration just to have a career and have money. That would be her; up until then I was okay getting by with the bare minimum and now that isn’t really an option.
OCCG: Going back to your demographic. You kind of talked about how there are a lot of pretty girls. It seems like your music represents LA or California imagery. What is your opinion on the stereotype?
MA: Definitely California, Hollywood and Los Angeles because it’s all I know. I was born and raised here. As far as stereotypes I definitely joke but I mean I’m in there too. I’m a stereotype for someone else. None of the joking is meant to hurt anyone’s feelings. So I don’t think the joking is that bad it’s all just kind of one giant thing and like it’s all kind of funny. Like I said I think I joke on myself just as much as anybody else. And the people or the so called stereotypes or joking about a lot of those are my fans and they are obviously are not joking about it. Because you know the song ‘so rich so pretty” I didn’t think anyone’s feelings would get hurt about it but girls will claim like ‘oh that’s about me’ but it’s like (laughs) well not all of it is so positive. It’s like a joke on themselves too.
What advice would you give to starting artists?
Advice, I don’t know it’s weird. Again with any kind of arts… you choose…. if you have a dream to make money off of art. You know that could go either way, that’s a hard thing. Like I never really planned on that, so I’d say I’m lucky in the fact that it worked out.
I would say if you like art make it. Do it and do it the best you can. But you might need to get another job in order to… you don’t want to be a starving artist I mean that’s pretty cliché, but you might need to be for a while like you might have to wash dishes. I don’t know if you can make money through art that’s awesome. I could never tell somebody that that would work out for them.
Making money and you know having a job is always going to be a pain in the ass. You have to come to terms that supporting yourself and family is always going to be work and it might not be fun. If you could do that and make money, good for you. If not get a job that takes up as little time as possible and it then allows you to do what you like to do.
OCCG: So when you were a starting artist what did you do on the side?
MA: I mean I drug dealt for most of my life but I… I worked at a bagel shop, frame shop; I did construction for a minute. I mean stupid shit. I mean basically the jobs that would take you with no experience and that paid minimum wage. I worked at a community college for a minute and I got to be a writing tutor. That was the one I liked, I made nine an hour which was insane because at the time minimum wage was like five bucks so I thought that was awesome. But I made 9 an hour and I taught kids how to write and I didn’t even know any of the rules or anything I just read enough books where I knew if it was a good sentence is or not. So that was cool, my teacher and school let me do it even though I couldn’t pass the test. So I liked that job. But you know just stupid shit that you could eventually walk out of.
OCCG: So when the tour comes to an end, what’s next for you? Can we expect another album?
MA: Definitely I have an EP coming out real soon and we are about to do a video for one of the songs. We are going to put out you know two or three song EPs out in a row and then the album will be basically putting them all together.
So I have that then I have all the shows coming up and now for summer. I mean Orange County, San Juan Capistrano July 6 that’s all ages. That the local one. Then I go to Toronto on Friday, pretty much covering America and a little bit of Canada and we go to Australia in October. That’s for music and I still paint and I want to bring that out more. And I want to do some shows and make some live prints. So I’d like to do that.
And I’ve been working on old cars like hot rods and stuff and getting into that a lot…So I have a few cars I’m working on right now, like I have a 61 actually, 2 Chevy Impalas, a white one and a black one and a 68 Cadillac. So that’s just what I’m working on right now.
OCCG: What’s your favorite drink of choice?
MA: I switch that up like ill have vodka phase or whiskey phase. Right now I like Jameson and Ginger Ale that’s good for me.
OCCG: Have you played in OC before? If so what did you like about it? If not, what are you looking forward to?
MA: I think I’ve been kind of accepted out there. I even helped open up a room in a bar out there, at the tap house on Warner and Magnolia (In Huntington Beach). It’s called the Avalon room. (Opened in May)…
But it (performing) is the same everywhere we go, the only time it’s different every once in a while…
I try to have dancers and stuff at all the shows. If I don’t bring my own dancers we are using Go Go Dancers from the clubs. That’s going to be different from different towns but it’s pretty much the same.
The fact that this one is all ages is cool.