Michael Caskey
MICHAEL (original music) has been a composer and sound designer for Lucky Plush since 2011 and has collaborated on Cinderbox 2.0, The Queue, SuperStrip, and Rooming House. A graduate of Western Michigan University, Michael has been an active performer and recording artist in the Detroit and Chicago music scenes since 1999. He has performed and/or recorded with artists as diverse as Chuck Mangione, Koko Taylor, Toni Tenille, Danilo Perez, Marvin Hamlisch, Howard Levy, the Grammy-nominated Heritage Blues Orchestra, The Voice finalist Laith Al-Saadi, John Sinclair, Grazyna Auguscik, Patricia Barber, Oh My God, Goran Ivanovic, Leslie Hunt and Ron Perillo. Currently, Michael tours nationally and internationally playing drums with Davy Knowles (davyknowles.com) and The Claudettes (theclaudettes.com). As a member of Eastern Blok, a pan-cultural Chicago-based ensemble, Michael presented concerts and masterclasses at Princeton, Cornell, Carnegie Mellon, and University of Michigan, among others. A DownBeat jazz magazine award winner and five-time Detroit Music Award recipient, Michael has has composed and recorded original music and sound design for Hedwig Dances, Zephyr Dance, Same Planet Performance Project, Peter Carpenter, Onye Ozuzu, members of Mad Shak, and Emily Stein. Michael served as sound designer for Mike Mother by Chicago's Neo-Futurists and co-composed the score for the independent feature length film The Other One. A dance accompanist at Columbia College Chicago for 15 years and an adjunct faculty member since 2007, Michael is currently the Music Director of the Dance Program. Michael records his own original music under the moniker Bunny Patootie and has self-produced four albums (available on iTunes and CD Baby): More Art for the World, Tell Me What to Do, Soundtrack for a Buried World, and New Growth Chart (bunnypatootie.com).