From The Voice to Tower of Power and Back: Mike Jerel’s Unexpected Return

After a Vocal Injury Threatened His Career, the Former Tower of Power Singer Turned to Berklee Online—and Then Returned to TOP in a Different Role

Tower of Power have been together for nearly 60 years, so it’s not surprising that more than 60 different musicians have been members. A number have left over the past six decades, and a handful have even come back, but Mike Jerel is the first to return in an entirely different role: After two years as Tower of Power’s lead singer, he suffered a vocal injury and had to leave the band. With his musical future uncertain, he enrolled in a Berklee Online graduate program. Less than a year later, he rejoined Tower of Power, this time as the band’s keyboardist.

“Honestly, for a minute, I thought my career might have been over,” says Jerel about receiving the diagnosis of phonotrauma, a vocal-fold injury caused by excessive or strenuous voice use.

“I started applying for jobs,” he says. “All of the positions that I thought I wanted to teach, I wasn’t qualified for. And so I was just like, ‘Maybe this is my cue to get something else under my belt, and what better institution to do it than Berklee?’ So this was like a dream come true because I could do it remotely and I didn’t have to move to Boston.”

Jerel says he applied to the Interdisciplinary Music Studies Graduate Degree program because he wanted to keep his options open for his next professional move. By then, Jerel’s career had already taken him from teaching music to competing on NBC’s The Voice to fronting Tower of Power.

“I was trying to wrap my head around what I wanted to do,” he says. “I do love to write songs, but I’m also in the studio. But I wasn’t trying to be a mixing engineer. I knew I wanted to do songwriting, but I also wanted to learn something about the music business, and how to create messaging for myself.”

That interest in shaping his own message led him to Music Career Strategies: Brand Identity Development for Artists, Songwriters, and Producers.

“That one was probably one of the most important classes that I’ve taken in my life,” says Jerel. “It was a lot of work, but the information that I gained from there, I just felt like it’s  has helped me to round myself out and give me a better scope of what I would like to do and how I want to go about it.”

After one semester in the graduate program, Jerel received an email from Emilio Castillo, Tower of Power’s sax player, founder, and bandleader, inviting him to return to the band and replace retiring keyboardist Roger Smith.

“So I was thinking, ‘Maybe I’ll take a break from Berklee,’ and then I was like, ‘No, I’m so close!’” remembers Jerel. “So I packed up my laptop, packed up a MIDI board;, I had a travel interface with me everywhere I went.” 

This wasn’t the first time a member of Tower of Power had reached out to Jerel while he was busy pursuing a different path. Years earlier, while teaching music full-time at his alma mater in Georgia, Jerel received an unexpected email from Tower of Power drummer David Garibaldi.

“David Garibaldi, out the blue, sends me this email, and he’s like, ‘Man, I saw your audition on The Voice, do you want to audition for Tower of Power? We’re looking for a singer,’” recalls Jerel. “At this point in time, I’m a year and a half into school teaching and trying to get these kids to understand what music can do for you, and then I’m dealing with a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to tour with the legacy act.”

When Jerel rejoined the band as a keyboardist, did he have to convince Jordan John, the singer who replaced him, that he wasn’t gunning for his spot?

“It’s funny, man,” says Jerel, with a laugh, “because he was like, ‘Bro, any of these songs you want to sing, just let me know.’ And I said, ‘Man, I’m just going to enjoy my milk chocolate before the show, because I know you can’t eat cheese, and I know you can’t eat bread, so I’m going to have all this stuff for you, to let you know that I’m there to support you.”

Jerel has since taken John up on the offer, stepping out from behind the keyboards each night to help sing “(To Say the Least) You’re the Most.”

“It’s one of my favorite songs, as verbose as it is,” he says. “And that’s the one I do every night now.”

He says that touring with a band and playing the keys is a different type of challenge than singing, but he’s been enjoying it. 

“It’s such an easier task,” he says. “I mean, mentally, I still have to be there, because just to execute and do that for 90 minutes straight, you’ve got to just really zone in, and that’s what I like about it, but I’m not up running and jumping off stages and stuff like that anymore.”

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