Mishka Shubaly defies easy description. He is a veteran singer/songwriter who tours all over the USA and has shared the stage with The Strokes, The Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and The Decemberists. He is often compared to Tom Waits, Johnny Cash, and Leonard Cohen.
Mishka Shubaly is also a best-selling writer. His Kindle Singles for Amazon—surprisingly funny autobiographical stories about drink, drugs, disasters, and deception—have all been #1 bestsellers. His six Kindle Singles (recently collected in a volume with an introduction by Jeff Bezos) have sold more than 200,000 copies worldwide and have been translated into Spanish, German and Polish.
Mishka Shubaly is also an ultra-runner, competing in races of up to 100 kilometres, races so long that he runs marathons as training runs. And Mishka Shubaly is a respected voice in the global recovery community. “The Long Run,” his firsthand account of his transition from alcoholic to sober distance runner without rehab or AA, has sold nearly 90,000 copies worldwide. A full-length hardcover version of “The Long Run” will be published in 2016 by a major American publisher.
Shubaly’s sobriety doesn’t prevent him from mining the darkness in his past on his newest release, Coward’s Path. “I’m at peace with my alcoholic past,” he says with a grin, “what should I have been doing instead—selling insurance? I can’t recommend twenty years of drinking to others… but I gained a lot of insight into human darkness, soaked up a good story or two.” Indeed, Coward’s Path demonstrates Shubaly’s fluency with the lexicon of despair. No one else has plumbed the depths with such unflinching honesty and an indefatigable humor. Never has such a dark album been so funny.
Having now played gigs in thirty-seven US states and other several countries, in 2015 Mishka’s album “Coward’s Path” is being released by Invisible Hands Music in the UK.. It is a tragic, funny and always honest account of his former life dealing with addiction and what happened along the path to sobriety. Johnny Depp calls it, “Always a favourite – sublime!” and comedian Doug Stanhope says, “If you have ever considered committing suicide at happy hour, Mishka Shubaly is the singer-songwriter for you.”
“Hey UK, listen up! You want me to come back there? You really want me to come back there? Go see Mishka Shubaly play. If you’re a depressed, psychotic alcoholic—and everyone in the UK is—Mishka Shubaly will destroy. You will drink yourself into a bottomless pit of despair, tap-dancing all the way.”
“Shubaly’s voice ain't exactly pretty, but it’s just right for his music: thickly melodic sing-along songs that yank at your heartstrings, and dark furious rockers.” Time Out NY
“Shubaly writes some of the best lyrical lines you've never heard, and delivers them in a gruff, only semi-musical voice while punishing a guitar for some imagined sin.” Tampa Weekly Planet
