ABOUT MICKI Born in Shreveport, Micki Fuhrman joins a long list of Louisiana musical alumni which includes Jerry Lee Lewis, Floyd Cramer, Johnny Horton, the Neville Brothers of New Orleans, Doug Kershaw and Hank Williams, Jr. Her musical education began early...the stack of classic country albums her parents kept on the turntable...the country church singings...the back porch family picking parties. By the age of seven, she stood beside (not behind!) the pulpit and sang solos in her grandmother’s Red River Parish church on Sunday mornings. At ten, she began a curious career as a funeral singer. At fourteen, Micki joined her first band, “The Jesus Christ Power and Light Company” which performed in every back road church house that would open its doors to a bunch of Christian teenagers with drums and electric guitars. While Micki was a sophomore in high school “The Louisiana Hayride,” the historic Shreveport radio show that launched the careers of Elvis Presley, Hank Williams, Johnny Cash and countless others, signed her as the headliner for the newly-revived show. Her years as a performer there led to guest appearances on the Grand Old Opry (at the ripe age of seventeen), national TV appearances and recording contracts with both MCA and Word Records. Along with country music and gospel influences, Micki was drawn to R & B and soul singers like Gladys Knight, Aretha Franklin, Natalie Cole and Chaka Khan. Her brand of soul-tinged country led to touring dates with B.J. Thomas and Andrae Crouch, as well as with mainstream country acts. Her twenties brought her another kind of education. During administrative shuffling, her record producer was fired and she subsequently lost her deal with MCA. She disappeared from the public eye, married, had children and made several moves following her husband’s work assignments. She went to college and majored in engineering. Unfortunately, the marriage failed and she found herself a single mother of two and, ironically, living in Nashville where she began calling up old friends in the music industry. Songwriter and fellow Louisiana native Michael Garvin encouraged her to write songs and they became frequent co-writers. Eventually, she wrote “Pink Flamingos” which landed on Tracy Byrd’s double platinum album “No Ordinary Man.” Other minor cuts followed (“More lacerations, than cuts,” she laughs). To make ends meet, she went to work as a draftsman (“drawing” on her engineering education) and eventually became a project manager in the commercial construction business...a considerable accomplishment but far from her real calling as a writer and artist. The knocks were not all hard. Micki met Nashville entertainment attorney Mike Milom and they were eventually married in a storybook garden wedding in September of 2000. Their blended family includes son Chad and daughter-in-law Elizabeth, daughters Hannah and Molly John and now toddler grandchildren Noah and Carter and baby Ashlyn. It was Mike who suggested that Micki start making music once more. “There were other signs,” Micki says. “God sent about a half dozen other ‘messengers’ who told me I needed to be writing and singing again!” Twenty years of heartbreaks, hard times and love rediscovered have culminated in a collection of songs Micki titled “Back Porch Torch.” Producer Ron Oates deftly arranged the material...at times starkly, and lavishly when the song called for it. Some are narratives...a young girl looking for escape from a small town, lovers who meet at a nursing home dance, a Southern belle who crosses paths with an injured Yankee soldier, teenage parents doing laundry together, a hell-bent young man who is destined for prison. Some are snapshots of pure raw emotion...a desperate midnight phone call to a former love, a hopeful wish for a better love next time, a sultry pledge of emotional allegiance. Micki Fuhrman has found a new life. In addition to her roles as mom and wife, she now lives as a storyteller as well. Through her writing, she says she wishes to communicate “the sad in the beautiful...and the beautiful in the sad.”