Mike Hanlon

Michael "Mike" Hanlon is a member of the Loser's Club and subsequently Shark Puppy. Much of his songwriting is influenced by the small-town racial bias he experiences in Derry, as well as his loneliness and feelings of isolation, tempered by his deep-seated and formative relationship with the other Losers. He is canonically a scholar and librarian, and his songs often include literary allusions as well as references to his mystic spirituality.

Musical Origins
"Mike had always grown up around music; Pops played the fiddle and Dad played blues guitar and Mama had the most beautiful singing voice he's ever heard. To him, music was about love and community and about coming home at the end of a long day to a warm welcome of food in your belly and music in your soul. In early 1990, he asked Pops to teach him how to play the violin, and he did, and he learned quickly. He's not perfect, but he doesn't have to be- it brings him joy and comfort and a sense of identity he rarely knew outside the boundary of the farm. (He knew it with the Losers, and he wrote tunes for them. He never told them, and he never played for them, but he knew and that was enough). In 1992, Mike received an upright bass for Christmas from his family. "You play the violin beautifully," they said, "but it might be time to try something bigger," and he agreed with them. Though he still played the violin in diets with his Pops or alone after school composing his short folk tunes, he turned his mind and his heart to the double bass, finding comfort in the stability of its role in the family band; it's a reliable instrument, and it grounds the music and the harmony and his mind. It's perfect, and it's reliable."