Michael Rank

Michael Rank, born as Michael Rankow, is an American musician and singer-songwriter from Chatham County, North Carolina. He was a founding member of Snatches of Pink and Clarissa, but is now a solo artist. He was raised in Katonah, New York, but moved to Chapel Hill, North Carolina when he was twelve-years-old in 1977.

The first concert he attended was the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band when he was nine or ten.

Rank started playing guitar in 1985. His preferred guitar in 1990 was a Gibson Firebird. Rank played guitar, wrote the songs, and eventually took on lead vocals.

Snatches of Pink went through a series of labels that included Dog Gone, Hollywood Records, Caroline Records, and Mammoth Records, recording for the latter using the name Clarissa.

Marat During downtime from Snatches of Pink in 2003, Rank formed the band Marat with John Ensslin (Teasing the Korean, What Peggy Wants). Ensslin was on vocals and wrote the lyrics, while Rank played guitar and composed the music. Of the album, one critic wrote it is "dreamy and gorgeous and bursting at the seams with plangent guitars and no shortage of 12-string flourishes."

Michael Rank and Stag's first album, Kin, was released in 2012. This recording was "intimate and mostly acoustic, smoldering instead of scorching."

Kin was the first of six albums the group released in the next four years. Almost all of the tracks in this cycle are introspective, dark, and raw songs about the breakup on the relationship with the mother of his son. For In the Weeds in 2013, Howie, Inglehart, Teer, and Smith returned. Other musicians on the album included Emily Frantz (Mandolin Orange) on vocals, Nathan Golub (John Howie Jr. and the Rosewood Bluff) on pedal steel guitar and banjo, Billie Feather and Jesse Huebner (Pattie Hurst Shifter) on bass.

For Horsehair in 2015, Rank collaborated with singer Heather McEntire (Mount Moriah) who provided harmony vocals. Of Horsehair, a reviewer wrote, "It’s both simple and beautiful, because Rank and his band address complicated emotions directly. No flair. Acoustic guitar, mandolin, violin, and two voices. No affectations. The songs sound and feel lived in and broken in, from a band worn a little down but not out."

To record 2016's Red Hand, Rank reunited with McEntire on vocals, as well as Bartholomew, Golub, Pelli, Teer, and Wallace.

To achieve this new sound, Rank collaborated with Brian Dennis, formerly of DAG. Rank played clavinet, keyboards, Korg synthesizer, organ, electric piano, as well as vocals.

In 2018, Rank released another album that continued his collaboration with Dennis, I Fell in Love with You Tonight. The show went off the air in August 2018. The video also featured Bartholomew on mandolin and Gabriele Pelli on fiddle. For his 2015 CXCW entry, he performed a cover of The Felice Brothers' song "Her Eyes Dart Around" with Bartholomew. Of the hundreds of entries, Rank's was placed in the top ten by Twangville. In addition, Couch by Couchwest selected it as the "Best Lo-Fi Video." He purchased the property in 1990 with money he made from a publishing deal with Warner Bros. Red Hand (Loud Hymns, 2016) Mermaids (Loud Hymns, 2013) Blood & Commons (Mammoth, 1997)

Movie soundtracks as Clarissa

"Apology" – Brink! (1998)

Movie soundtracks as Morat

"Rise and Fall" – Right at Your Door (2006)

Television soundtracks as Snatches as Pink

"Dance" – "The Party," Wildfire (ABC Family, August 15, 2005) "Judus" – Wildfire (ABC Family, 2006) "Dance" – Waiting... (2005)