Crescent Sky is named after a song on the album. The CD jacket is adorned with a painting of a rural scene after dark with a crescent moon high in the night sky. A river reflecting scant moonlight runs between throngs of trees.

“I had this image in my mind of the painting that’s on the cover of the CD,” she says. “And the image I imagined surrounding my song ‘Crescent Sky.’ Towards the end of the night, when the sky just starts to lighten, and there’s a crescent moon. I saw the river and the trees and I described it in words to a painter friend of mine. I knew I wanted that painting on the cover of the CD. My friend’s name is Hui Yeng Chang. She painted just from my description, and it came out exactly the way I imagined it. It’s a strong visual image.”

Michaels’ songwriting inspiration is part intuitive and part structural. She plays it by ear in the initial stages, then experiments with more solid songwriting forms. 

“I just sort of tune in and listen for songs. To a certain extent, the songs write themselves. I know you hear a lot of writers say this. That’s my experience too. I’ll start with my guitar and kind of noodle around. Then a chord progression will come to me, and next will come a melody. Then hopefully I’ll have a little tape recorder around and I’ll sing nonsense words just to get the melody down. Then a phrase will come. That will give me the first clues as to what the theme of the song might be. Then I’ll start thinking about song structure. ‘Is it a verse-chrous song? Or is it an AABA song? Does it have a bridge?’”

From there, Michaels develops a story, beginning, middle, and end. As for themes, she says they’re inspired the usual trio of “attraction, romance, and disaster. That makes up a lot of music and certainly most of the stuff on my CD.”

The song “Who Leaves Who” is about a woman character who is talking to a male friend. With a brief verse, Michaels gives a lot of information about their predicament. The line is “Like friends or lovers do, we’re in between the two.”

“The man character ,” she says, “he’s already married to someone else. And their marriage is on the rocks, and he’s sort of flirting with this other woman, who’s the main character of the song, and she’s kind of like ‘Well, the attraction is there, but do I really want to get involved with this whole other dynamic of the ballet of this other relationship?’” When asked whey her songs have unrequited love or love at the wrong time themes, she answers “Well, that’s country.”

Producer Stephen Webber made invaluable contributions to the album, Michaels says.  “He’s made about sixty records and worked as a producer in Nashville for ten years,” she says.  “He teaches  Production and Engineering now at Berklee.  So he really knows the ropes of working in a studio.  He has really sensitive ears in terms of nuances of musical feeling and how to make them happen technically.  I don’t have that background, and I don’t know the technical terms to describe the sounds I want.  Stephen was great at translating what was I talking about and making it happen.”

Michaels’ family traveled around the country in her early years with her father, an Air Force officer.  They settled in Boston when Michaels was in her teens.  Ironically, she became a country music fan here in the northeast. 

“I’ve always been a radio surfer,” she explains.  “I grew up listening to rock, like everyone else.  Two bands I really loved were the Stones and Fleetwood Mac.  Somewhere along the road I started hearing too many synthesizers in rock.  That’s when I really started my radio surfing career.  I landed at WDLW in Waltham, which used to be an AM commercial country station.  It was a whole new world for me.  Merle Haggard, Tammy Wynette, Emmylou Harris, Earl Thomas Connolly, Don Williams, all those great singers from the eighties.  The whole tumble of country sounds.  I just dug it.” 

From there, Michaels began hanging out at the Blue Star, a now-defunct honky tonk club near Route 1 in Saugus, attending Tuesday  open mike nights.  She met many players, some of whom appear on her CD, like fiddler Matt Leavenworth and drummer Seth Pappas. 

Michaels’ songs blend elements of country, rock, and bluegrass.  She has the speed of bluegrass, a rock and roll beat, the earthy twang of country guitar, and the amiable phrasing of country fiddle. 

“I love all those genres of music, but I didn’t set out to blend them,” she says.  “It’s just a matter of what you immerse yourself in and what you listen to.  I’m still a radio hound and a music hound.  I take out CDs from the library all the time of all different kinds of music.  I guess it all just kind of filters in.”

Michaels says she was a shy, inward child, and music really moved her.  When she met Boston’s legendary vocal instructor Dante Pavone,  he turned her into a singer.  “I learned to do just about everything,” she says.  “When I started with Dante, I couldn’t sing my way out of a paper bag.  I really wasn't very good. Looking back, it’s amazing that he even took me as a student.  But I was persistent, like a mule, and really wanted to do it.  I learned breathing techniques, how to align my body, lift my ribs and collarbone.  Physical stuff was always comfortable for me, like sports and dancing.  So I had kind of a grip.  He also taught me how to put myself in the emotion of the song, in the position of the character who’s singing the song.” 

For a while, Michaels played solo and in duos.  Those formats, she says, helped her find her own musical identity.  “I could finally hear myself sing!” she exclaims.  “My first experiences were  in full bands, with electric guitars and drums.  It’s a constant battle to hear yourself.  I’m not a belter.  I don’t have one of those big, loud voices that can blast through anything.  That’s why I took a break from bands, just to be able to learn microphone technique and to evolve as a singer.  I could be as goofy as I wanted to be talking with the audience.  That was very liberating for me.”

Another educational experience came when the singer moved to Los Angeles on a spur of the moment whim.  Her landlord wanted to reclaim her apartment for his own relatives, shortly afterools, clothes, and jewelry.  It’s like a combination flea market and discount department store.  But there’s a whole little community.  They served food.  There was a stage, a regular full stage with electricity and a roof.  And they had bands every Saturday and Sunday.  You played from nine in the morning until two in the afternoon.  Five sets.  For some reason in California, they always insist on five sets.  It’s a long time, and it’s so hot.  You take set breaks in between, but it’s still a long time playing in that heat.  Still, I loved it.  It was great playing outside.   I love playing outside.  From the stage, we could see people on horses and tumbleweeds, real tumbleweeds, tumbling by, like in an old Western movie.  For someone from the East Coast, it was pretty wild.  And the cast of characters was like the fringe of any big city, with some pretty shady characters – who knows what side of the law they were on – and migrants, a whole variety of drifter types.”

Michaels played other country venues in LA, like the Palomino and Ronnie Mack’s Barn Dance.  “There were some good places, like the Palomino,” she says.  “Ronnie Mack’s Barn Dance had some really cool people playing, like Albert Lee and The Hellecasters.  Dale Watson was in Ronnie Mack’s band.  He has a bunch of records out now on a label.  Billy Block, Ronnie Mack’s drummer, has a TV show in Nashville now.  It’s a televised gig every week.” 

Back in New England, Michaels found quite a few places that would host country music artists.  “There’s a bunch of different scenes,” she says.  “One is right here in Boston itself.  Within the original music scene, there are a couple of clubs that are friendly to roots music, and that can include country.  In my former band, Wild East, we played at places like Toad, the Plough and Stars, and the Kirkland CafÈ near Harvard Square.”

Through the Massachusetts Country Music Awards Association, Michaels found VFWs and places an hour outside Boston in every direction that feature country music and dancing.  She also plays benefits and miscellaneous types of gigs.

Michaels says it should not come as a shock that he northeast has its own country music scene.  “How does anyone discover that they like classical music or jazz or sushi?” she asks.  “If you’re exposed to it, you can decide for yourself if you like it or you don’t.  It’s the twenty-first century.  People are exposed to music through the radio, CDs, and now the internet.  There are shows broadcast over the net from everywhere.  There’s even Country Music Television.  Country is a mindset.  Like any art form, it’s a language.  It’s a set of styles and conventions.  An aesthetic.  A groove.  If it moves you, it moves you.  I think that physical boundaries and definitions are overrated when it comes to art.  If the feeling of conviction and imagination and honesty and the feel of the thing speaks to an individual, I think that counts more than the zip code.”

Bringing a wealth of experience to the scene, Michaels will be found in several different zip codes in the coming months.  With her CD piling up good reviews, it should come as no surprise to see her name on the marquees of those country honky tonks most non-country music fans only pass by on their way to somewhere else.  Nevertheless, the name Laurel Michaels should give anyone with an open mind a reason to stop in.  She’s that good.