Mike Rufo - living is (2025)

Mike Rufo is a bluegrass, folk, and roots rock songwriter living in the San Francisco Bay area with a new release: living is. Mike Rufo wrote and recorded these songs as a cathartic therapy for a deep period of personal loss. Mike is also deeply attuned to nature and the natural world and the songs on this album intrinsically reflect those connections as well as the healing journey in which they played a part. This album is a rethinking of what “living is.” Teaming up with a serious list of musical talent including Mickey Hart cohort Gawain Mathews on a cornucopia of instruments resulted in a musical rich affair with its bluegrass, folk and rootsy foundations.

The title track was initially penned as a Celtic instrumental but evolved gloriously into a natural with lyrics and a moving “all you touch, all you see, all that is, all you’ll be, have no fear, for love will make it clear.” When was the last time you were fully immersed in nature with no sign of humans anywhere around for miles? This song gently taps into that liberated, euphoric core feeling, leading to Celtic style heights as it speaks to a parent letting their child go, only to finally come to understand that that child is always within.

“New Day” is a bluegrass number with a kick-up-your-heels rhythm foundation and a “I was lost alone in my pain and fear, I was thinking I might just disappear, then I got some hope and tried to find the light, friends and family by my side, I was thinking I just might be all right, there’s a new day comin’.” In this one you can hear the success of the healing journey arising from the ashes.

Some Will Fly” has a reggae basis and “some will fly and some will cry tonight, uh oh, some will fly.” This song is optimistic and light spirited as it picks out the cycles and circles of life with an incredibly hooky chorus.

Mike says of “The Reckoning” that it is a song “imploring self reflection in which humanity begins to understand how it roiled a now ill planet whose grace had been previously taken for granted.” Some heavy stuff with Sarah Larkin on backing vocals and the gentle “if I listen will you tell me how to make you well,” and the palpable grief is on his sleeve.

In “Lilacs and Lies” Megan Slankard’s harmonies are rich and nymphlike as Mike is searching and wondering whether the love will last or not, shrouded in fear in a timeless song set in medieval times with Celtic sounding violin. There’s silence and dread, and then, mercifully, lights through the dark and the fright.