Michael Gutierrez-May
Singer-songwriter Michael Gutierrez-May has been involved in the Boston and New England folk/acoustic scene for the past 40 years. Over the past 15 years, he has also reinvented himself as an empathic and insightful folk songwriter. “My lack of confidence held me back in the past, but I never completely gave up on myself,” the Massachusetts-based artist reveals. “Once I started writing songs more consistently, however, I felt like I could make my contribution to music and songwriting.”
Michael is well on his way to making his hoped for impact. He is a singular and empathic storyteller with a nylon-string guitar and an endearingly playful vocal delivery. Michael pens essentialized tunes often bursting with a surrealistic sprawl. His characters benefit from a holistic perspective informed from Michael’s background as a mental health therapist. Michael’s elevator pitch reads: social worker by vocation, writer and musician by avocation. That said, music is no minor consideration in Mike’s life.
Michael started college as a psychology major, but also applied to the music department at George Mason University in Farifax, VA to study guitar, which he has played since he was 16. Once accepted, he studied classical guitar at GMU with Larry Snitzler, a former student of classical guitar icon Andres Segovia for one year. In time, Michael was lured away from classical music by the satisfaction of lyrics and songwriting, though to this day he plays his folk songs on a classical nylon string guitar.
In the early 1980s, Michael became immersed in the New England folk and acoustic music scene as a promoter, a booker, and an occasional performer. For two and a half years, he managed the Peacock Coffeehouse in Jamaica Plain, Mass from February, 1986 until it shut its doors in June, 1988. Two years after the coffeehouse closed, Michael recorded a demo tape of ten songs he had written at Melville Park Studios with Steve Friedman, performed at some open mic showcases including the Old Vienna Kaffeehaus and then "I promptly crawled back into my shell, not ready to do more than just that with my music,” Mikchael shares.
Several years later in 2008, Mike started to frequent the local open mic at the Catbird Café located at the New England Wildlife Center in South Weymouth, Massachusetts where he met host, Stephen Martin. That creatively fertile environment reignited Mike’s passion as songwriter and a performer, and he would go on to hone his craft through songwriting workshops and vocal performance studies at the Blackstone Valley Music school in Uxbridge, MA. Stephen Martin, a well respected musician whose roots go back to performing with the soft rock band Orpheus, helped Michael by performing on Michael's Fifty MIles Away EP and then produced Drifting to The Right in 2021 and also Light Still Shines The Same at the end of 2024. Both the Drifting album and Light Still Shines the Same were recorded at Ultrasound Studios in Hanover, MA with studio engineer and owner Joe Clapp, nominated for the New England Music Awards for the past two years.
Drifting To The Right, released in December, 2021 is a no-filler nine-song album that starts with two contrasting songs, Brooklyn For Beginners and the title track, Drifting To The Right and concludes with an “Imaginary Tomato,” a catchy pop-rock track textured with sublime slide-guitar melodies. It’s an impactful album delivered with warmth and humanity, and it speaks to the qualities valued and embodied by the artist himself.
The new album Light Still Shines The Same, released in December 2024 has been described as a “luminous journey through history with heart and humor” by Whitney Miller of Vocal Media. The two singles, Destiny and She was My Angel can be found on Spotify, Pandora and other streaming platforms and the title track Light Still Shines The Same is currently featured on the World Music platform Ethnocloud, where it is #19 in the Top 40 for the month of March.
For the past 16 years, Michael has participated in the February Album Writing Month (FAWM.org) challenge, and for eight years he has participated in the Quiet Corner Songwriters Meetup, organized by Kala Farnham in Putnam, CT which meets monthly and also virtually on Saturday afternoons. For the past three years, MIchael has also been a memeber of the ISSA Boston/Northeast Singer-Songwriter chapter and he complies the monthly newsletter for this group.
Michael is also a member of NSAI, American Songwriter and Stage 32, an online platform for film and television writing. He is active as both a songwriter and screenplay writer (see Chasing Gilels and Movable Algebra on this site) and is looking forward to new adventures and opportuniites in the future.