This story originally appeared in our Oct. 28 – Nov. 10, 2026 print edition. Check out the edition online here and find where you can get a print edition near you here.
It’s a Friday night at Nostalgia, and the energy in the room is electric before a single note is played. At the center of it all is Mic. Carr.
Originally from Tennessee, Carr taught at Texas Tech before a brief stint back home to help care for his grandmother. Wanting to get back into higher education, he took a job at Northern Kentucky University, where he already had friends in the area. However, he didn’t know his move to Cincinnati in March 2020 would come at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, and he would be locked down in a brand-new city.
“I consider myself like an ambivert, so I definitely love being around people, but I still need my alone time,” said Carr. “That part of having to be in solitude wasn’t so bad. But whenever I did know I needed more human interaction, that was when it was tough. The things that I’m most interested in outside of education, they require me to be around people. I feel like I wasn’t really able to experience Cincinnati, honestly, until 2022. I would intentionally go by myself to places. I would go to open mics, and those would help me to get other bookings.”
These open mic nights would eventually lead to Carr getting his first weekly residency in town at the now-closed Comfort Station in East Walnut Hills.
“I would put on an event where I would perform with one other instrument in my tracks at that time. It still wasn’t even like a full band (but) I had the vision of having a band the whole time,” he said. “Once I was starting to really take music more seriously, whenever I did live shows, I would always try to set myself apart. A lot of times, I would be on a bill with maybe a few different acts, and most of them may have been rapping or some R&B; they only had tracks. They were literally just playing the whole track and hardly singing or rapping. Perform, you know, let people hear you even if you mess up a little bit. I always feel like that’s part of getting over the hump of getting good at performing live.”
These weekly performances led to Carr getting more gigs, including one at Revel OTR Urban Winery, where he met the late co-owner John “JC” Coleman.
Carr had just finished his set when he noticed Coleman’s wife nudging him to go introduce himself to Carr.
“At first, he just introduced himself as JC; he didn’t even introduce himself as the owner of the bar. He was speaking a whole lot of life into me and saying that he enjoyed (the set). He feels it was different than anything he’s seen there before,” Carr said. “And then he got around to, ‘by the way, I’m one of the owners; we’d like to have you here more often.’”
Coleman then suggested Carr perform in the upcoming New Year’s Eve show with some other musicians they had rounded up. This serendipitous gathering would mark the beginning of the band Shades, where Carr is the frontman.
“Once it was time for the actual show, it went great, and I just remember thinking, we all had a pretty natural relationship,” Carr said. “I’m like, man, some of these folks, if they stay close with me, this could be like the foundation of my band for real.”
Staying close is exactly what they did. While Shades has gone through some transformations since its inception, with members subbing in and out, the band’s core consists of Carr as vocalist and songwriter, Elijah Woodward on saxophone, Sam Reuscher on bass, Isaiah Cook on drums, Trent Becknell on guitar and Tristan Graves on keys.
Shades has been booked every month since their New Year’s Eve performance, all around the city at every venue you can think of. Nostalgia, Radio Artifact, Woodward Theater and even a feature set at Ghost Baby.
“We wear shades. We have different shades of people, different shades of life. I can play on that, like all kinds of different ways,” Carr says of the band name, which came about during a show at Ghost Baby. “We have a core band, but I would also consider Shades like a collective now because we have, per instrument, anywhere between two and five people I can reach out to.”
And after years of performing together, Shades put out their self-titled debut EP in June with the tagline “Bad days never last. Grab your shades. The sun’s coming.”
Whether it’s an EP or a live performance for Mic. Carr & Shades, the focus is on crafting a curated experience.
“We know people want to hear music they know, but we also want to introduce our original material,” he said. “For every two covers we do, we’re going to do an original.”
Carr knows the importance of having an engaged crowd during live performances. “Until people know your music, you can’t assume that everybody’s going to. And you can’t take it personal if they don’t,” he said. “You want to give them a reason to know it. But also you have to give them a reason to stay tapped into what you’re doing.”
Curating experiences doesn’t end with music for Carr. He also owns the lifestyle and community brand HOPE — Hosts Of Positive Energy/Helping Our Peers Exceed.
“With the fashion side of HOPE, it’s always been about kind of supplementing the music, and over time I wanted it to also be able to kind of stand on its own whenever it came to the clothes. The community side, like helping our peers exceed … I approach that more so with coaching and mentoring and that type of thing,” he said. “If I put on an event, it’s a host of positive energy who put the event on, and we’re helping our peers exceed. It’s kind of like, in a way, it’s also like the mission statement.”
Outside of music, Carr has also used his skills in the local community as the former merchandising chair for Cincinnati Young Black Professionals, designing everything from apparel to branded merchandise.
Fashion also helps Carr’s creative process as it relates to music.
“Sometimes the music will inspire the fashion, sometimes the fashion inspires the music. The processes are sometimes similar, sometimes different. But a lot of times, whenever I approach a song, I may have a vision that I already know I want the song to feel like, or I may even know what the opening few lines will be,” Carr said.
Through all of this, Carr has become a pillar of the community, especially the music scene. His performances are as much about connection as they are about sound.
Cincinnati is now his home, but nothing has made him feel more grounded than when his family was finally able to come see him perform at Ghost Baby.
“That was a special night; it was an emotional night. I’ve never had a time where I performed and was tearing up as I was performing,” Carr said. “I remember looking in the booth; they were near the stage, near enough that I could really see their faces. My brother Joey, he’s like wiping his tears, and Dale, my brother, is struggling to keep it together; I’m like, aw man. Them being able to see me in the new city that I live in, being able to see the community that I’ve been able to foster for myself, being able to see that I got a lot of love up here. I know that they were able to leave with more self-assurance that I’m loved, I’m taken care of, where I’m at.”
This article appears in Oct. 28 – Nov. 10, 2026.
