Michael's Biography

Michael Troy was born and raised in the rough-and-tumble mill town of Fall River, Mass. In many ways, his life reflects the lives of the hard-working common folk who populate this part of New England. Having spent parts of his own life as a mill worker, fisherman, laborer and carpenter, and most of his adult years as a husband and father, Michael has traveled many paths, and the experience and wisdom he's gleaned along the way echoes through his music.

A magical storyteller with a gift for melody, a deep richvoice, excellent finger-pickin' skills and the ability to compose outstanding stanzas of substance, Michael's plaintive ballads speak of the hills and mills of Fall River and of childhood dreams not quite forgotten in the adult quest to make an honest living. But Michael is honest when he says he's playing for himself, for the sheer joy of creating music to call his own. "I have no plan," he says. "I'm not trying to write in any style or sound like someone else. I write from gut feeling. I let the emotion drive the music, not the music drive the emotions."

In 1998, as Michael puts it, he moved "from the road of least resistance, to the road one chooses". The CD he released that year, Whispers in the Wind, is like a vivid, painted picture - the artist's conception of a life experience, illustrated solely by the tools of voice and guitar. There's no fancy production here, no drums, keyboards, sidemen, not even liner notes - just the simple, eloquent, touching words and melodies of a humble, quiet man from a town that has seen its share of historic ups and downs.

Michael’s first CD "Whispers In The Wind" set the table for his music revealiing his honest and open observations of the world around him. His second CD, Romancing the Moon, continues to celebrate the beauty and intrinsic value of hard work and perseverance, memory and history, love and friendship, and above all, survival. And in May of 2009 came "Mill Town Boy" was released to a full house at the Narrows Center for The Arts in his home town of Fall River, Mass.  "You believe every word of it, every line of every song. That's because Michael has seen it, done it, and been it. His songs are about real people who have real lives. People who work and love and triumph over the everyday obstacles that we all face, and sometimes fail. He writes of the people that populate the seacoast of his native Massachusetts but are they that different from the people that you know? And as soon as you've heard the songs don't you feel like you've known them all your life?