Tim Stop Takes On “The Way You Make Me Feel”

A Michael Jackson song had been on his mind for a while.

Tim Stop set up a microphone at his parents’ house in Bettendorf, Iowa, pulled out an acoustic guitar and laid down a smooth, bluesy vibe in one take.

Then he sent a track of his version of “The Way You Make Me Feel” out to “some people I know.”

Stop’s people knew some people, too.

“And the next thing I know, it’s being played on Sirius radio,” Stop says. “It was amazing.”

Tim Stopulos, whose name was shortened by a manager’s business decision, is an Iowa guy who on this day speaks by phone in-between a songwriting class he is teaching at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay.

“It’s kind of new territory for me,” Stop says. “I haven’t done a lot of teaching.

“It’s amazing,” he says, “how much you learn yourself teaching what you know to these kids.”

Stop has an amazing way of using “amazing” in a humble, vulnerable, songwriter’s kind of way.

It’s the same way he took “The Way You Make Me Feel” and turned a Michael Jackson dance classic into a seductive, bluesy chill pill.

And it’s the way he approaches his own songs — the intricate, yet upbeat “A Little Bit Better,” for instance, or the heart-wrenching “Rollin’” in which he bares a Midwestern vulnerability that just refuses to surrender.

READ MORE: http://www.wsbt.com/news/wsbt-a-stop-worth-listening-to-20130808,0,4621015.story?track=rss

Source: wsbt / MJ-Upbeat.com