36-year-old Michael Patrick Welch is the author of the memoir 'Commonplace' (Screw Music Forever Press), and the cult-classic New Orleans novel 'The Donkey Show' (Equator Books; excerpted at McSweeneys.net). Welch's forthcoming guidebook, 'New Orleans: The Underground Guide' (UNO Press), attempts to wrestle the city's cultural image from the past's oppressive grip, by cataloging hundreds of non-traditional, new-millennium New Orleans musicians, artists, venues, and traditions.
Welch began as an editorial assistant and staff writer for the St. Petersburg Times in Florida. Since moving to New Orleans in 2001, he's written cover stories for Gambit Weekly and AntiGravity, and penned a long-running column in New Orleans longest running music magazine, OffBeat. Welch has also published freelance journalism in Newsweek, Spin, and Village Voice publications including The Houston Press where, for two months following Katrina, Welch worked as a staff writer, serializing his evacuation with his pet pygmy goat, Chauncey.
For six years now, Welch has also worked for Young Audiences arts for education program, teaching a "Music Writing" class he pioneered, wherein elementary and middle school kids learn to compose hilarious album reviews, to be published in Gambit, AntiGravity and OffBeat (who pay the kids for their work!). "Mr. Michael's Music Writing Class" also writes and records original songs, which can be heard at myspace.com/mrmichaelsclass, or else on the students' forthcoming official CD, YA! Young Audiences Raps!
With whatever time is left, Welch participates in New Orleans' music scene as one-man-electro-rock-n-R&B act (recently turned full band with horn section), The White Bitch: a Prince-ly musical mashup that annually plays VooDoo Fest among other big local shows, and has twice been nominated at Gambit's Big Easy Awards.
