My young friend Michael Cialdella grew up in the other Orange County—that is to say, Orange County, New York—attended Regis, the Jesuit high school in Manhattan, graduated from Johns Hopkins and the University of Virigina law school, then moved to Los Angeles to take a job in entertainment law. After just two months, Michael shucked off his legal career, deciding that while he was still young and single and able to take a wild risk he wanted to devote himself to his music. He spent the next 18 months working part-time as a legal intern and going slowly into massive debt as he wrote and recorded enough songs to produce a CD. In LA, nobody found that at all unusual. To the contrary. Michael quickly found himself part of a network of striving young musicians, got himself a manager, and had a friend at his former law firm tell him that when the time came to negotiate a contract, he’d handle the legal work for zero cash and a percentage of the gross.

That time has come. As of just a couple of weeks ago, my impossibly talented friend is in negotiations with a major recording company (whose name I’ll post once the deal is done). And if you’d like to find out why that major label thinks highly enough of Michael’s work to try to buy it, you can listen for yourself right here.

Truly, I do love Southern California.