Sonoma musician Mikey Cannon: teaching and touring

Mikey Cannon, maestro of the only music school in town|

Sometimes when you’re on tour with your band, you roll into a town, then you meet a girl, then next thing you know you’re no longer with the band and opening a music school in the town with the girl. Well, that doesn’t happen to just anyone, but it happened to Mikey Cannon.

Born in 1976 in San Diego, Mikey Lee Cannon had music around him most of his life. His father played guitar, although not professionally or in an actual band, but jamming with his buddies and local musicians with young Cannon always nearby. When his father traded an old Toyota Corolla he had fixed up for a drum set for young Cannon, well, that was it.

Essentially self taught, Cannon would go to rock concerts with his father – Santana, Rush – but it was the musicians that his father jammed with in the garage that influenced Cannon the most, and being able to play with musicians much older than himself brought him to a world of drumming that focused on Latin, Brazilian and world-rhythm beats, that would eventually shape his own personal style of playing.

Cannon joined his first “real” band when he was 17, and as he focused on music, continued on to San Diego State University where he got a bachelors degree in music and hooked up with a touring act called the “B Side Players” and toured much of the country. When he was 32, he eventually ended up in New York City which lasted a couple of years.

“New York is a rough city” says Cannon. “Trying to be a musician and have a job and just get around, man, I won’t do that again.” But it was while he was working at the Drummers Collective in New York that he hooked up with an act called Izzy and the Catastrophics and they were touring places that Cannon had never been: the south, New Orleans, and more. It sounded like a good idea, so off he went. The band leader had a girlfriend here in Sonoma, so while not actually one of the stops on the tour, it became one. Cannon met a girl here as well – a singer – and, as they say, the rest is history. Or at least Izzy and the Catastrophics was.

Cannon left the band and settled in Sonoma, where the two started a music school. But, alas, it wasn’t meant to be. She had dreams yet to fulfill and Cannon, knowing those feelings, let go, and off to Nashville she went, with Cannon staying in Sonoma, his new home town, to run the school on his own.

The school started in 2013, and Cannon says business has always been steady. His students have all been referred via word of mouth and there never seems to be a shortage of new music students. He still operates out of his original location in Agua Caliente and is looking to launch lessons in a new music-school facility at 254 First St. E. Cannon has pursued the new project diligently and last week got approval from the Planning Commission to proceed with his dreams.

“We had to agree to a lot of things and we plan to comply with every one of them” said Cannon. “This is a great facility and we plan on having some open mics, not like in bars, but for the younger musicians in town that may or may not be our students.” Cannon is hoping to open March 1.

Cannon hasn’t been resting on his music-school laurels. He keeps his chops up while playing with the Sean Carscadden Trio, 3 on a Match and T Luke and the Tight Suits. The regional band Frobeck recently called but Cannon had to decline.

“With the school coming up full time, I need to be local a lot more,” said Cannon. You can find out more about Cannon and the school by pointing your browser to cannonmusicschool.com.

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