Mike Sopko is an American guitarist, bandleader, songwriter, and sideman. He has been singled out by guitarist Marc Ribot as "… conceptually, one of a very few people who can really play." Because of Sopko's mercurial, unclassifiable style, the Cleveland native has worked with a wide variety of musicians from Bill Laswell and Los Lobos to Ava Mendoza and Dosh, to name a few. He has led or co-led bands including MCR (2006) with Mike Watt and Grant Calvin Weston, and Glimpse Trio with tUnE-yArDs' bassist Hamir Atwal and drummer Chris Lopes. He also plays in Yellowstone Apocalypse (a sludge metal duo with Joe Tomino), jazz-rock duo And Then Came Humans with New Orleans drummer Ryan Long, and avant-electro-acoustic trio Togishi with saxophonist Dan Wenninger and Tomino. 2014's self-titled hybrid outing by Glimpse Trio won widespread critical notice, while the power trio outing Laswell Sopko Pridgen (with Mars Volta drummer Thomas Pridgen) from the bassist's MOD Reloaded label, is considered one of the more important power trio outings of the 21st century thus far. In 2018 he issued the avant-Americana solo outing Folly, leading a band that included Atwal, Lopes, and accordionist/keyboardist Nina Ott. Sopko was born and raised in Cleveland. At age seven he was inspired to play guitar by listening to Van Halen. At 12, he heard Phish and shifted his still-fledgling focus to more improvisatory music, but only a year later he was proficient enough to sit in with older musicians. Sopko played in jam bands from 12-15, by 16 he was versatile enough to accompany anyone in virtually every popular genre but classical. At 17, the guitarist saw pianist Matthew Shipp and bassist William Parker play live. It blew his young mind, and he embarked on an extensive study of free jazz. Sopko moved to Alaska at 18 and debated whether to pursue music as a vocation. A Cleveland friend who owned a record store mentioned him and his desire to play free jazz to regular customer and American Splendor comic book author Harvey Pekar. Ever the curator, Pekar sent the guitarist a box of CDs and with many recommendations. Some of these recordings influenced the musical path Sopko travels. Among the albums he credits with shifting his focus are David S. Ware's Cryptology, The Last Wave by Arcana (an improvising trio comprised of Laswell, drummer Tony Williams, and guitarist Derek Bailey), Joe Morris's You Be Me, John Zorn's Kristallnacht, and William Parker's Sunrise in the Tone World. Sopko left Alaska for Oakland, California where he founded the band MCR with Watt and avant-jazz-funk drummer Grant Calvin Weston. They toured but never recorded. In 2007 he met guitarist Jym Murry who invited Sopko to play lead in his band Stereo Freakout. He played more than 50 shows with the group, but they didn't record either. In 2009, Murry joined the guitarist and tUnE-yArDs' bassist Hamir Atwal in the first version of the jam band Glimpse Trio in 2009. That same year, Sopko was recruited by vocalist songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Dosh to guest on his seminal 2010 avant-pop outing Tommy, with Todd Sickafoose, Andrew Bird, and others. In 2011 Glimpse Trio added bassist Chris Lopes to replace the otherwise occupied Murry, and independently released their debut outing 1985. They followed in 2013 with Garage and with a self-titled album in 2014. That year, the group recorded as a quartet with Martin Dosh on keyboards and loops, releasing the experimental electro-jazz fusion outing Cascading Liquid Rainbows. In 2015 Sopko returned to Cleveland with his wife and daughters. He cut the self-titled Laswell Sopko Pridgen power trio outing for MOD, and released the duo outing Golden Measure with drummer Simon Lott. The power trio re-teamed in 2017 for Inaugural Soundclash, an incendiary set that included Japanese jazz drummer Hideo Yamaki and American guitarist Raoul Bjorkenheim in its lineup. That same year, Sopko and dub-metal drummer Joe Tomino released Yellowstone Apocalypse to acclaim from both jazz and metal publications. In 2018, Sopko released Folly under his own name. Co-written with Aaron North (the Icarus Line, Nine Inch Nails), it featured Atwal and Lopes along with longtime friend, keyboardist, and accordionist Nina Ott in a program of what can only be called avant-Americana. The largely acoustic 19-track recording reflected the influence of Phish and roots music on Sopko. He also cut the jazz-metal In Heat Wave with Then Came Humans, his jazz-metal duo with drummer Ryan Long. Near the end of 2018, he formed the avant-jazz, electro-acoustic trio Togishi with drummer with Tomino and Cleveland-based saxophonist Dan Wenninger. They released the EP The Rise and Fall of Higbee's in 2019. The following year, Sopko and Laswell re-assembled, this time with drummer/composer Tyshawn Sorey. The trio issued the completely improvised full-length On Common Ground for MOD Reloaded in October 2020. ~ Thom Jurek, Rovi