Denizens of the local music scene undoubtedly have seen Michelle Romary, either with her three-man Michelle Romary Band or Michelle Romary Trio, at locations as varied as on the Lorain County Chamber’s Jet Express event on Lake Erie to Moosestock, an annual music festival in Celina, Ohio. But the 39-year-old singer/songwriter insists they’ve never really heard her before — at least, not the way she sounds on “Floating Shift,” an independently produced five-song EP available for $5 on Amazon, i-Tunes and michelleromary.com as well as at Girl’s Best Trend in Lakewood. Unlike her band sets and previous three releases, this is a solo effort of all-original material she’s written in the indie pop/rock vein mined by Alanis Morrisette, Sarah McLachlan and Sara Bareilles.
“It’s really my introduction as far as my songwriting,” says the Avon mother of three. 
“Floating Shift” (the name refers to the shift key on an old-school typewriter) is the latest chapter in Romary’s eclectic musical career, one that began when she left her work as a geologist at Berea-based Geo-Sci in 2004 to stay at home with her first child and devote herself to a sideline as a busy wedding-ceremony and funeral-Mass vocalist. She began writing songs during her stint with Pout, a five-piece pop/rock group she helped form while she was singing with a wedding band. The band recorded two CDs between 2009 and 2013. In 2014, Romary released a CD of inspirational covers called “Songs of Comfort & Devotion” that contained her first solo original, the popular wedding song “My Vow.” That summer, with Pout on indefinite hiatus, she teamed up with Pout drummer Efrain Hernandez, guitarist Dave Shaw and bassist Blake Kniola to form her eponymous band. Together they “do everything from Led Zeppelin to Amy Winehouse.”
“Sometimes I like to try to accommodate smaller rooms, a more intimate setting,” she explains when asked about the trio, which consists of Romary, Hernandez and Shaw.
Although Romary hopes fans like the EP, she isn’t writing and recording for mainstream acceptance.
“Maybe it’s just my age,” she says. “I’m never going to be a big star – that’s not what I’m going for. At this point in my life, when I write, I write for me.”