By Gerry Gilmour – New Century Press
Two hours before his show at the VFW in Fargo, he’s patiently untangling impossibly tangled guitar cords on the venue’s carpeted plywood stage.
“How come you didn’t wind them up right after the last show,” a loudmouth yells from his barstool perch.
Critics. Everybody’s a critic.
“This is just the way I do it,” Pink responds, not even looking up as he twists and loops and loops and finally comes out with a clean string of cord.
Pink has his own way of doing things.
And his way has him on his way to musical notoriety.
At the VFW, the tall troubadour from West Fargo is preparing to a cover-free show before an eclectic mix of downtown Fargo Friday night revelers. Better than half the room, they’ve never heard of him. Couldn’t care less whether he’d be playing Prince or polka.
They’ll have heard of him soon enough. Pink is on the proverbial cusp.
One of his songs (“What Hurts”) was selected for the score of an upcoming Lion’s Gate movie (“House of Dust,” featuring some of the Twilight series actors and actresses) and he’s scheduled to head to Nashville to record with one of the top names in country music.
Pink met Kostas Lazarides in September on a trip to Montana. Kostas, as he is known, was playing at the Eagles club in Bozeman, where he lives when he’s not in Nashville.
You may never have heard of him, but Kostas is the third-most recorded writer in country music, right up there behind Johnny Cash and Willie Nelson.
Kostas-penned songs include “Timber (I’m Falling in Love,” by Patty Loveless, “What a Crying Shame” by the Mavericks, “I Can Love You Better” by the Dixie Chicks and “Two Doors Down” by Dwight Yoakam.
Pink was out in Montana with his bassist, Rod Mooridian, a Valley City, N.D., native.
Introduced to Pink during a set break, Kostas invited them up to play a set of their own.
“Let’s get those Dakota boys up to play,” Kostas said.
“Mike started playing his music and (Kostas’) jaw just dropped,” Mooridian says of Kostas. “We did four songs and nailed it.”
Kostas will be coming to Fargo later this year to play while Pink will head to Nashville to record for Kostas.
Pink came late but naturally to music. When he was 16, his grandfather, Bernerd Stangler, gave him a guitar: a 1961 Gretsch Tennessean.
Grandma and Grandpa Stangler, you see, used to play in the aptly-named band, The Vagabonds. The country and western crooners carted their gear in a pickup-pulled wagon from their farm near tiny Alice, N.D., to dusty dance halls near and far.
“They were actually kind of a big deal, back in the day,” Pink says.
Pink’s kind of a big deal himself these days within the Fargo-Moorhead and Twin Cities music scenes.
In the Twin Cities, Pink has been working with producer Kevin Bowe, who also works with the likes of Leo Kottke, the Rembrandts (think Friends theme-song “I’ll Be There for You”) and Fargo-Moorhead products Johnny Lang and Shannon Curfman.
Pink primarily plays his own music at shows, though he covered Neil Young’s “Long May You Run” and the Beatles’ “Cry Baby Cry” during the acoustic set of his VFW show.
“What is remarkable is that he is self-taught,” says bassist Mooridian. “The music he writes is so mature. He has vocal melodies like I’ve never heard.
Pink hears those melodies in his head. He “writes” songs with his cell phone, which explains why his voicemail box is always full. “I leave voice messages for myself,” Pink explains.
Pink doesn’t let himself get carried away with the plaudits he’s earning for his music. Basically, he’s just a grounded guy who loves pingpong, Little House on the Prairie and watching and playing hockey. Pink tries never to miss a West Fargo High School home hockey game and still says one of his life highlights was when he was 13 years old, getting to go two-on-0 with Neal Broten at a hockey camp coached by Broten in Roseau, Minn.
So he’s not being full of himself when he says he likes his own music better than that he hears on country music radio these days.
“I just hear these melodies and chord progressions in my head,” Pink says. “I write songs that I’d like to hear. I like my songs.”