Mikey Silas pulls a notepad and a pen out of his backpack at the start of the interview. “I’m gonna doodle while we talk,” he says, scribbling. “It helps me concentrate a little bit.”
His pen wanders the page, and he starts talking about music, which, for him, began with his parents’ record collection. As kids, he and his sister went through the old-school vinyl stacks and built towers out of the cardboard jackets.
Then it was through the radio and at church. In first grade, Silas performed in his first play, the Shaker Heights Unitarian Universalist congregation’s showing of Jesus Christ Superstar, as an ensemble member; “a little heathen.” He performed four more times in the musical throughout his childhood, in local productions. On the fifth time, he moved up the cast list to Judas. One of the original 12 Apostles.
Remember that.
Like a shadow, music followed him through Roxboro Middle School and Cleveland Heights High; it was even a big part of his hockey warm-ups. Silas smirks and recounts his favorite pump-up jams, including La Bouche’s “Be My Lover” and No Doubt’s “Don’t Speak.”
It stuck to him when his father, a house painter, brought home a piano discarded from a job site. Silas mostly taught himself to play by learning chord progressions from a book of R&B hits.
Music was what brought him from Cleveland to Chicago, for a Columbia College musical theater program. And it defined his next decade working as a non-equity actor in new plays. Through ups and downs. Highs and lows.
Music was a light in Silas’ life in 2014. Staying in an ex-boyfriend’s dining room, a friend’s borrowed guitar in hand, he decided to dive into songwriting. Here, he first started to see himself wholly as an artist.
Music followed him when he moved home in 2016, at a low point. (“No job, no car, no license, no money, no friends — really, nothing but a U-Haul with some stuff.”) It’s what brought him to his first open mic night at B-Side and karaoke at the Grog Shop, and what made him belt out a Dreamgirls song.
He dreamed of a project. The name came first: Apostle Jones. Then a team-up with guitarist Anthony Hitch, Silas’ first friend since moving back home.
In the next six years, the group shifted, musicians joining and departing, as Apostle Jones gained traction and grew to about 10 members strong.
“I kind of want to get to 12 Apostles.” Then he remembers: “Oh, I was gonna make the 12th one the audience.”
The audience. While talking about his life, Silas interjects stories of the band’s listeners; fans of all genres, of all walks of life, finding something to love in his band’s chameleonic mix of soul, blues, rock, funk and R&B. The ones that came to the outdoor shows Apostle Jones hosted in 2020 — the same year Silas’ father passed away.
One of his dad’s sayings sticks with Silas now, talking about music: “You don’t have to do it, you get to do it.”
Silas often brings up gratitude when he talks about music. Gratitude for his bandmates, gratitude for opportunities, gratitude for the audience. At open mic nights, at Apostle Jones’ increasingly large headlining spots or Silas’ rotating solo and small-group shows, he’s focused on the crowd, the folks who follow the band on its journeys. Maybe they are the 12th Apostle after all.
“Those people are making such a big impact in the city, in individual artists’ lives,” Silas says. “You can’t say thank you to them enough.”
Maybe he’s thinking about fans, or his band, or Jesus Christ Superstar, or some combination of those things when he later sets his notepad down.
One word is etched onto the paper: APOSTLE.
Mikey Recommends:
Take a chance, and see a band you’ve never heard of in a different neighborhood, and buy a T-shirt.
Take a seat, at Blank Canvas Theatre show at 78th Street Studios.
Take a sip, of Apostle Jones’ beer “Superstar Disaster” and a Bees Knees pizza at Saucy Brew Works.
Mikey Silas, photographed at the Cleveland Museum of Art.
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