Micah Sheveloff has released “Someone There For Me,” the first single from his upcoming album ‘Don’t You Wonder,’ due January 15, 2027.
The song traces back to a friendship that began around 1984, when Sheveloff and Extreme frontman Gary Cherone played together in Boston. The two stayed connected over the following decades, and in the fall of 2024, Cherone called Sheveloff with an idea: an American Songbook style track that swings, one he had carried around as a demo for years and wanted to finally record. The plan was to cut it together with jazz musicians Sheveloff had worked with in the past, but touring behind Extreme’s album ‘SIX’ pushed the session back. In the meantime, Sheveloff fell in love with the song and built his own arrangement around it, one Cherone loved as much as the original.
“Someone There For Me” was co-written by Cherone and Benny Golbin, a respected jazz composer and teacher from Los Angeles who was killed in a road racing incident. Golbin’s family has since started the Benny Golbin Foundation, which raises money to provide musical instruments and instruction to children.
Sheveloff reshaped the song considerably to make it his own, altering the tempo, adjusting the vocal melody to suit his own singing style and adding a bridge built on lush harmonies. The result blends classic jazz chord progressions with the pop sensibility he has honed over decades, with jazz guitarist Nate Najar contributing further colour to the recording.
Sheveloff is careful about how the collaboration gets framed. “I want to be mindful that we talk about my relationship with Gary for what it really is, a friendship developed across creative commonalities that led to an eventual collaboration later in life,” he says. Asked previously about that friendship, he put it this way: “I was young and had much more exposure to classical piano and choir than rock and roll at the time. But Gary has a genuine appreciation for a broad range of styles and genres, and that in itself helped bring down walls for me and turned me loose to write unabated by a false sense of lanes or boundaries.”
“Someone There For Me” sits among 12 tracks on ‘Don’t You Wonder,’ a record that draws from an unusually wide range of influences. Alongside songs like “City Bus” and “Tranquility,” the album moves through touchstones as varied as Lyle Lovett, Herbie Hancock, David Baerwald, Cheap Trick and Brian Wilson.
Raised in Lexington, Massachusetts and now based in Saint Petersburg, Florida, Sheveloff is a classically trained pianist whose background spans intense classical study and studio sessions supporting country, pop, rock and metal acts. Early in his career he shared stages around Boston with The Detours, Gary Cherone, Something Outside and The Voodoo Jets. He describes his own writing in vivid terms: “My songs are a breakfast hash made from memories of Bartok and The Beatles, ’70s pop songs and a touch of Stravinsky. I write songs to be accessible but with subtle complexities and compelling dark tones.”
Sheveloff’s playing and songwriting have drawn steady praise. Guitarist Marc Shulman of New York City called him “a natural musician, with deep roots and a huge vocabulary,” while Pop Shifter’s Chelsea Speer wrote that his voice “elevates his material to something more transporting and otherworldly.” Big Takeover’s Mark Suppanz praised his “vivid lyrics” for painting “picturesque, instantly relatable narratives,” and Fair Hedon singled out his playing as “really something special.”
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