Fame is a net gain: Rocker Ingrid Michaelson uses social networking to build following

Chris Serico • The Journal News • June 12, 2010 • Photo: Deborah Lopez

Many musicians fear and loathe the impact of the Internet, but indie singer-songwriter Ingrid Michaelson doesn’t just embrace the Web, she thrives on it.

MySpace essentially launched her career when a record exec discovered her songs and successfully pitched them to “Grey’s Anatomy.” Twitter has been an outlet for Michaelson’s witty insights and last-minute ticket giveaways. YouTube hosted a user-submission contest for her recent single, “Everybody.” And her sophomore album of the same name topped the iTunes album chart on Aug. 25.

And those sites don’t even factor in her Facebook, Tumblr and iLike accounts.

“The Internet is great in terms of connecting to your fans directly, making them feel like they have access to you, even if it’s minimal,” Michaelson says. “If celebrities had Twitter accounts when I was growing up — like if Luke Perry had a Twitter account — I would be all over that (stuff). Even if he never wrote back to me, I would write every day.”

Her online presence has translated into increasing stage success, touring with Jason Mraz and Dave Matthews along the way. While her June 20 gig at Tarrytown Music Hall represents her Westchester debut, she’s no stranger to the Lower Hudson Valley; her mother, Elizabeth Egbert, once served as executive director of the Hudson Valley Children’s Museum in Nyack.

“I love it,” says Michaelson, who lives in Brooklyn. “I remember, for one summer, I worked with my mom at the museum, and we would drive from Staten Island out to the museum, and we would drive along this one stretch of road (on Route 9W). There’s this sloping hill on the left with these amazing, beautiful, big, old houses. I would sit in the back of the car and just stare at those houses and dream (that) maybe, one day I’d be able to live in one of them.”

Michaelson performed at the Bonnaroo Music Festival Sunday, and she’ll play four Lilith Fair dates in July. Then she’ll join Keane for their national tour. Admitting New Yorkers can be hard to impress, she knows she’ll have to be in top form in Tarrytown.

“I almost like that better,” she says. “I like having to work to gain the respect of an audience. Once they embrace you, the floodgates open.”

As a child, Michaelson took piano lessons at the Third Street Music School in Manhattan. When she was about 5, she memorized a song for her first piano recital in an attempt to combat sight-reading anxiety, but by the time she got to the piano, she’d forgotten everything. All she could do was look at her shoes.

“I went to (Binghamton University) for musical theater, so I like doing plays and singing, but when it came to playing piano and singing my own music in front of anybody, I was really wounded by that one experience,” she says.

Earning her musical theater degree helped her regain her confidence on stage. But a subsequent national tour of “A Christmas Carol” was when she started songwriting and shifting her career focus from acting to singing.

“There would be a piano in the venue and all of my actor friends are sitting around and I would be coaxed into playing in front of them,” she says. “That’s the first time I’d played any songs that I’d written in front of other people, and they all gave me such a warm reception that I thought, ‘Maybe I can do this, too.’”

She continued to connect with her theatrical side as children’s theater teacher for four years, but quit in 2007, when her music career took off. A music and licensing rep who’d visited Michaelson’s MySpace page helped her land a song on the hit ABC series “Grey’s Anatomy.”

“I remember my mother watched that show for the first season, and she was telling me, ‘You should have your music on that ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ show!’” Michaelson says. “I hadn’t seen it, or even heard of it, and I was like, ‘Oh, yeah. Whatever, Mom. OK.’ Meanwhile, little did I know that … nine or 10 of my songs (would be used) in the past two seasons.”

The exposure led to mainstream radio play and helped her debut album, “Girls and Boys,” sell hundreds of thousands of copies — without the backing of a record label.

Her follow-up EP, “Everybody,” focuses on complex relationships, with Michaelson channeling raw emotion through accessible lyrics that are often masked by upbeat rhythms and harmonies. Her mid-tempo “Maybe” yearns: “Oh, the only way to really know / Is to really let it go / Maybe, you’re gonna come back / You’re gonna come back / You’re gonna come back to me.”

But Michaelson is far from a downer. Fans love her quirky sense of humor, which shines in interviews and online. She recently Tweeted about how she sat on a couch in Glasgow that smelled “like feet dipped in Cheetos.” And YouTube clips of her live performances feature her rapping the lyrics to “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air” and improvising call-and-response lyrics for her subdued love ballad, “The Way I Am.”

Although the Internet effectively jump-started her career, it hasn’t always been pretty. In an attempt to stave off overzealous fans, Michaelson is cautious about the information she posts online.

“You can’t rant about anything too personal on Twitter anymore,” she admits. “It has to be about (flatulence) and cookies. People in the public eye have to use these things carefully.”