In this episode, Mike TV discusses how he went about making Get Set Go's 24th studio album, Dynamite. He also announces the end of Hesitation Cuts and explains why, despite the show very much being a labor of love, he must table the series. This episode features the following original songs, Holes In My Skull, Any Body, (W)retch, Dynamite, The Way We Dance.
0:00 Episode Intro
5:46 Cold Open - Holes In My Skull Lead-In
9:46 [song] Holes In My Skull
13:09 Main Title
13:45 Any Body Lead-In
17:26 [song] Any Body
20:14 (W)retch Lead-In
21:55 [song] (W)retch
24:57 Dynamite Lead-In
27:14 [song] Dynamite
30:36 The Way We Dance Lead-In
33:41 [song] The Way We Dance
36:38 Closing Summation
38:07 END
Episode 9: Dynamite
Episode Intro: Hey, I’m Mike TV and this is Hesitation Cuts.And it is with a heavy heart that I have to announce that this will be the penultimate episode of the show. It has been extremely gratifying working on these stories these past couple years. Unfortunately, the amount of work, the hundreds of hours of effort that go into each season are not commensurate, in any way, with the amount of revenue that I generate. Additionally, my audience is simply not growing. So, as much as I adore you, my listener, as much as I humbled by your listenership, the balance of work to benefit ratio is completely out of whack. And it is eating up way, way too much of my time.
So, I have to table to Hesitation Cuts, alas.But, I will continue to assemble a one-act version, so about 7 to 10 minutes of spoken word that lead into an individual song, and I will be making those available for my paid Patreon patrons going forward. One every month. I will continue to make this current show available on all podcasting platforms for the next year, in the hopes that maybe my audience will grow and maybe I can revisit this format in a year’s time. But, if that doesn’t happen, then, this time next year, I will package these episodes as for-pay downloads on my GetSetGoMusic.com website.And I will probably pull the podcast from all podcasting services. Because, alas, I need to see some sort of return on my thousands of hours of work.
Upon reflection, I do think that this podcast has done what I set out to do. I do think it provides a peek into my particular brand of indie-rock, and that it, more or less, elucidates the difficulties independent artists face in an ever changing and increasingly hostile financial environment for said indie-artists. And again, I qualify the term indie as truly independent. I don’t have a team. I don’t have a label. I do everything myself. From the writing, to the recording, to the promotion, the setting up of tours, the booking of shows, the live-streams, absolutely everything is done by me and me alone. Now, of course, I do have a social media manager that was helping me for many months but we have gone dark, for the most part. Mostly because, for me, I was overworked and underpaid and was losing my enthusiasm for anything but the music.
And I am this independent not because I don’t like working with others, it’s just the people that have approached me about joining my team over the past two decades, haven’t had the experience or the relationships that I require and getting them up to speed is a full-time job.And I’m already working a few full-time jobs.
So, part of me has been seriously considering pulling a Willy Wonka. Where I mostly disappear from public view and just put out a new album every three months. You know, the factory is closed to the public but the chocolate keeps flowing. And as much as I fantasize about that, that’s just completely the wrong direction. My focus, going forward, is going to be about my community. About the fans, identifying what I do that they love, and then making sure they get exactly that.
But, having done this for decades now, I realize that sometimes my fans can’t articulate exactly what they want from me.Or, sometimes I take them down unexpected paths that lead them to somewhere unanticipated and exciting for novel and singular reasons.
So, with that in mind, in this episode is going to walk you through some of the thought processes that went into the making of my newest album, Dynamite. The way I tackle the themes, the writing, and even the recording process is very much me.It’s a confluence of skills learned at the feet of folks who have been doing this way longer than I have, and then through repeated practice, and I do have 24 full-length studio albums in stores, including 2 quadruple albums, 3 triple albums, a few double albums, and bunch of side-project stuff.
In fact, that’s why I created the podcast in the first place, I have so much music. And even though the albums are intended to be chapters in my personal autobiography, for the most part, people don’t treat music like they do a book series. If I had druthers, everyone would start with So You’ve Ruined Your Life and then listen all the way through to Dynamite. And I do actually have a handful of friends who are very vocal about listening to a new artist starting with their first album and then progressing to their latest music, but those folks are now an ever rarer breed of music listener.
Music consumption today seems to be about singles, about film and tv placements as introductions to a new song, and then very little to no intellectual curiosity about the makers of those songs and their extended catalog. I know this because I experience this, every single day. The songs of mine that were used on Grey’s Anatomy get tens of thousands of plays a month. My song, Wait, easily gets 30 to 40 thousand plays a month. But, you can’t tell me that Wait is a significantly better song than Somedays or A Wound that Never Bleeds or The Rain is Here to Stay. Because it’s not. It’s a great song, but I have a lot of great songs.And I have a lot of listeners that have absolutely no curiosity about anything other than the songs that have been on hit shows.
The idea of exploring a bunch of never-before-heard bands, choosing an album based on their song titles, or album artwork, or simply taking time enough to listen and explore their catalog, which is so easy to do, nowadays, in the effort to discover hidden little gems to turn your friends onto, that seems to be a dying music-discovery paradigm.
Which is, on its face, really nutty to me.You know, if you paid attention to only Get Set Go’s top Spotify songs, you’d get a very tilted perspective of what my music offers. In fact, it’s funny, I can’t tell you how many people will look up the band after I tell them what I do, and they’ll come back and offer their opinion. “I really didn’t like it.” You know, I like harder stuff. I like punk rock. I like folkier stuff. I like classic rock and roll.” And I don’t even try to correct them anymore. If they are unable to surf even the first five songs of my catalog, which has a super-diverse sound, Wait vs I Hate Everyone vs Die Motherfucker Die vs Break Your Heart, all from my first two records, but if their intellectual curiosity extends to only listening to a few bars of Wait, and then deciding they don’t like my music, I do not want listeners like that. They’ll never get what I’m all about.
And so, I figured I’d use this episode to explain how I put my records together. From a 40,000 foot perspective. I don’t want to dig into the nitty gritty of how I eq the drums. But, instead, how I write the songs, how I have a tendency to quasi-unconsciously write around themes that are ubiquitous at the time of the writing and recording. And then when I record the songs, I always have a sound perspective to keep each album unique. I am not married to a particular sound because, my music will always sound like Get Set Go. So, whether it is a folk record, or a pop record or a punk record or a rock record, I can put it out, and it always sounds like Get Set Go. Which is awesome. I sound like Mike TV, for better or for worse.
Holes in My Skull Intro:
So, let’s take the way back machine to august of 2021. I was hanging out with some Diamond Club friends. And if you don’t know the Diamond Club, or ChatRealm is another sobriquet that is often used for this community of wonderful, goofy, clever, absurdly awesome Internet geeks. But, the Diamond Club is a group headed up by my brothers-from-another-mother, Brian Brushwood and Justin Robert Young. Two successful podcasters who host a number of really compelling and immaculately produced shows. And it is a community, of which I am part, and they have been going strong for 15 plus years now.
And so, many Diamond Club folk were in town for an event, I believe it was at Brian’s studio compound in West Austin and a day or two after the main event, I was drinking with some Diamond Club friends at a bar literally right around the corner from my house. It’s maybe a half mile away as the crow flies. A full mile if you’re taking city streets. So, super-close. And I’ve ridden my little electric scooter over there. And we hang out and we have a couple cocktails and good fun and cheer are had by all. And at around 1am, I say my goodbyes, I hop the scooter and proceed home.
And I make the turn onto my street, zipping along nicely, and then bam! I wake up in the hospital. Intubated.Completely confused as to what is happening. Time dilates for me. My sister is there. And she lives in California, so why was she there? My brother-in-law is there. Brian and Justin are there. Like, I’m in pain and seriously confused.
And it turns out that I was hit from behind by a car, left on the side of the road, bleeding out, and some good Samaritan pulled over, dialed 911 and got me transported over to the hospital just down the street.
I fractured my face in a couple places, shoved my left eye socket back a measurable distance, I had a concussion, and frankly I was muddled and befuddled for weeks afterwards. I kept having conversations with people where they were like, Mike you’ve already told me this. We’ve already had this conversation. You know, I had suffered brain trauma, yet again.
Now, of course, I’ve discussed my first experience with significant brain trauma on season 1 of Hesitation Cuts. In Episode 7, the episode called Small, Easy Payments. And it’s funny, I did write a song about that experience but my first record label, TSR Records, felt that Ordinary World really captured my drug using experience, so they didn’t want my albums to simply be about drug addiction. And so, I just let the song disappear. Yet another song that I wrote that was just never fully captured. I mean, maybe on some old tower in storage the song may exist in demo form. But, even that, I just can’t say. And that’s okay. I’ve written hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of songs. Losing one every now and again isn’t a terrible loss.
But, in this instance, I didn’t want to write a song about getting hit from behind and being left for dead on the side of the road. I didn’t want to re-experience that, over and over again. But, whenever I sit down to write songs in a given year, I often will block out a few months, where I write a new song every day. Monday through Friday, sometimes on the weekends, particularly as I’m building up steam, but, always at least one song a day, Monday through Friday.
So, I usually end up with 20-25 songs a month.Sometimes a little more, sometimes a little less, but I start with really simple songs, using simple chords progressions, and then after a write a good 10 songs using these common chord progressions, then I start to get a little more experimental. Until, after I have a good 70 new songs, and feel confident that I have, at leaset, 20 or 30 potential hits, I’ll then write ten or twenty songs that just try to mess with the listener’s brain. Can’t Last Forever is a song like that. Where the progression is just all over the map. Songs, where if you listen to just the chords themselves, you’ll think, there’s no way this could be a catchy song. And then, I try to make it catchy.
And so, during my most recent songwriting period, I had already written about 100 songs, and I decided to start writing the weird ones. The challenging tunes. Of which, this entire new record, Dynamite, is mostly comprised of. Not all the songs. Not the singles. But, pretty much every other tune has elements that are just odd enough to distinguish the songwriting from typical Get Set Go fare. And in this songwriting process, I ended up writing a song about getting hit by a car and left, bleeding out, on the side of the road.
And the primary reason why is because I walk about 10 miles a day. And for months after the accident, I would, every day, walk past the significant bloodstain I left on the road. So, I had a constant reminder of what had occurred and it just stuck with me.Month over month.
But, the song I wrote wasn’t about the hit and run aspect of the event. It wasn’t about the cowardly behavior of the person who hit me. Or the heroic behavior of the woman who stopped to help me. It was about something else entirely different.
Holes In My Skull Insert:
One moment I was riding my scooter home. The next moment I was in the hospital. Like I’m playing some weird computer game and I just used up another life.
Main Title: Hey, I’m Mike TV and this is the show where we open the kimono, expose the tender flesh, insert the scapel, peel back the skin and dive headfirst into the blood and guts of a working class, indie-rocker. Disgusting, yes. Stinky, very much so. Delicious, depends on your personal diet. In today’s episode we explore Mike TV’s newest album, Dynamite. From the initial concept all the way through to the finished product. So, strap on your party helmets, don your surgical masks, and let’s get cutting.
Any Body Lead-In:
So, 2023 has been a very musically productive year for me. This is my ninth episode of Season 2. So, that’s 45 new recordings, for the most part.Additionally, I have also put out four full-length studio albums. And I wrote a number of songs for podcasting friends such as Andrew Heaton and Brian Brushwood. So, super-super productive.
But, I’ve also made way less money this year than I have in recent years, because, again, my music revenue is always all over the map. Thank god I switched to making my albums available exclusively via Bandcamp because without that revenue, I would have lost my shirt. And the shirt of my partner, and the fur of my dogs, and the leaves of my plants. We would be one very sorry shirtless, leaveless, furless bunch.
But, because my revenue has been diminishing month over month, I’ve realized, I need to pivot my business model, yet again. And that is always a very daunting prospect, because, as this show clearly indicates, I can put a lot of work into something, employ all of the skill my decades of experience have given me and it’ll still land with a thud. I mean, no effort goes unrewarded. It’s just, as of right now, the rewards have not been equal to the effort and so I’m floundering. And this has been trending now for a couple years. And, so as I was saying, last year, I wrote a bunch a songs, and at the very end of my songwriting cycle, I was writing my weirder, more musically challenging songs, that expressed a lot of the chaos that was happening in my head and in my heart at the time.
And so, having mined the 130 songs that I had written previously to create my albums Juggernaut, and Outworlder, I….thinking about how to close out this year, how to capture the desperation, the psychic damage that attends a failing indie-rocker as what was working no longer does, the self-doubt, the heartache but also the obsession to keep on keeping on, no matter what the world throws at me. Like, my continued failure is only a test of my resolve.
And the older I get, the more nuanced life becomes. Or, actually, I think that’s not correct. The older I get, the better able I am to appreciate and discern the nuance and the complexities of my day to day. And so, looking at my struggle, feeling it very much on a soul level, I was like, okay, let me put together a challenging record that attempts to capture this moment in time, with all of its tribulations but also triumphs, just smaller, less obvious triumphs, I mean, fuck dude, 45 tracks for the podcast, another five coming up, 4 albums with at least 10 songs a piece, that’s 85-90 songs. That’s 8 full records worth of music. So, let me try to capture the complexities of this cognitive and existential dissonance and let me try to capture all of it as perfectly as I can.
And, fortunately, I had the songs. I just needed to record them in a way that felt as intimate and as authentic and as earnestly true as the actual compositions themselves felt to me. So, I spent some time considering musical experiences that for me, conveyed that sense of authenticity. Shows I had witnessed in person, such as The Breeders at Mr. T’s, Karp at Spaceland playing their hearts out for 20 people, At the Drive-In opening up for them and just tearing the roof off of the place, again, in front of 20 people, but also, some shows I saw on television.
I remembered the MTV Unplugged show with Nirvana. I was a fan of Nirvana, through my friends and though I really dug them, they weren’t my favorite SubPop band. That crown belonged to Mudhoney. But, there was something very compelling about hearing songs that I previously known as distorted, noisy rock songs being played acoustically. There was a really powerful juxtaposition between the compositions that seemed to cry out for distorted guitars, simply because that was how I knew them, and instead were given a deeper degree of intimacy just based on the arrangements. Acoustic guitar, drums, bass, vocals. Done.
So, I thought, what if I were to do the same thing? I’d limit my arrangements to drums, bass, acoustic guitar, and I’d throw in a tambourine, because, as my buddy Shmed says, tambourines make every song a party, and then I’d focus on building cool and interesting background vocals.
So, that way, I could take these musically challenging songs that were about my current struggles, fraught with all of the chaos that churned in my heart and my head, and I would try to create an album that put you right there, in my head, with me. At this moment.
Any Body Insert: This episode has vexed me for weeks. Because, I’m trying to condense a full ten-song album that has its own narrative built into the sequence of the songs into a discussions where I use half the songs to attempt to tell the story about the story that is the narrative of the record. Which is way tougher than it looks.
(W)retch Lead-In:
And, it’s really crazy because once I’ve defined the limitations of an album, in this case, I’m only going to use the four instruments, drums, bass, acoustic guitar, and tambourine, it makes it much easier for me to consider how best to fill up the empty spaces. In that last song, Any Body, I threw in the call and answer elemeent. And, I tried to Motown it up a bit, with the little, He Ain’t Hurtin’ Himself. And, going with such a limited arrangement means that I can let each instrument take over in various sections. The tambourine, throughout the record, is used to amplify the emotional oomph, for lack of a better word, of each section. Sometimes it’s groovier, other times it’s more percussive, sometimes it’s just single hits, but with such a limited group of instruments, it means that I can really make each attribute stand on its own.
Now, this album is sequenced very particularly. As I said, there is a narrative. The opening song, which I will be playing for you in a bit, is a celebration of music.It’s designed to let you, the listener, know that yes, my life is very difficult, particularly right now, when I have less than a hundred dollars in the bank and credit card bills and electric bills coming up and we’re almost out of dogfood and have no groceries.Why would I keep doing this to myself.And the answer is, the music.It’s the closest thing I get to touching something perfect.
My music is my prayer.I get to mingle my broken thoughts, my heartache, my loves, my joys, my fears all of it, I get to frame these ideas in something perfect. Scientifically, it’s perfect. An A chord will always be an A chord. Even if you opt to tune to 432hz or 453hz instead of 440hz, the relationship of the A chord, no matter how you tune, will always maintain the same distance from the B chord. Otherwise, it’s not a B chord. Or it’s an out of tune B chord. But, music is scientifically perfect. And I get to frame my imperfections within the fabric, the architecture, of perfection.Making something that is uniquely me.Framed within the miracle of notes and intervals and rhythms and melodies and counter melodies and harmonies and all the magic that music has to offer.
(W)retch Insert: And it is getting better. Year in and year out, things have improved. I moved into this place, with a laptop, an air mattress, one microphone and a couple instruments. And now I have a full studio. So, it’s been incremental but it’s certainly gotten better.
(W)retch Insert 2: Now, you may notice that I’m not really discussing the actual content of the songs themselves. And that’s intentional because I do want to invite you to hop on Bandcamp and give the album a spin. There is a very much an intentional narrative and I don’t want to spoil it.
Dynamite Lead-In:
But to just give you a little peak into some of the thoughts behind the songs. The idea of of the sweater in that last song, sweaters are like hugs, right?They cover you you up, keep you warm, but offer very little protection, other than extra warmth. Sorta like the ideas that allow me to keep on keep on keeping on through the cold, stark darkness that is a life as an indie-rocker when I’m in the weeds trying to figure out my next direction. And these sweater, in quotes, ideas a like, what I do is important. What I do has value to people around me. My struggle and the music that comes out of them has value. These ideas may or may not be true, but I cloak myself in them and they give me strength to keep on keeping on.
But one of the hardest things about doing what I do is simply the impact I have on the lives of everyone around me.Right? Like, struggling to pay the bills and keep food on the table was tough enough when it was just me and Sioux. But, add in my partner, the fact that we’re still waiting on her work documentation, plus the Moppet, and it’s only my music and my music alone that is keeping us afloat, music that is growing increasingly less valuable as my footprint decreases month over month. Thus, it gets very hard to justify why I am doing what I do and the way I do it.
And that weighs on me, which, of course, tilts my thinking, and I grow ever more despondent, to the point that, now, despondency is just where I live. Every day, all day long. But, I do get a reprieve. Temporary reprieves from the constant onslaught of despair and despondency.Making music and throwing myself into the music I make is a wonderful respite. Watching shows or movies. Listening to books while I walk the dogs. Or getting deeply embroiled in conversation with my partner, all of these distractions allow me to ignore the 60 ton fire-breathing dragon in the room.For a little while.
And, so when I look about at my life, the details of my life, as it stands, right now, it feels like the writing is on the wall. It feels like my career is coming to an end, that my best years are behind me, and that I have nothing more to contribute because people just don’t want what I have.And that is a poisonous brew that I keep bring up to my lips.
Fortunately, however, I’ve been here before.After our first record was released, I felt this way. After our fourth record was released. After I moved to Austin. Time and again, I’ve felt like, oh dear, it’s all over. Time to hang up my guitar and do something else.
And that pressure is palpable and constant and often debilitating.Sorta like Spider-Man crushed under a collapsed building. And just like Spider-Man, I panic, I lose faith, and then I rally. And I begin to shove. I have family to take care of, I have fans in my corner, I have a music to be made. And so I fight on, I press on, and I force the world around me to bend.
Dynamite Insert 1:
But let me tell you, man, having the woman that I love ask me when we might be able to buy groceries, and met telling her I don’t know, that’s a serious kick in the nuts. And so, I just work harder.
The Way We Dance Lead-In:
So, yes, I know, I know, there are many people who have taken umbrage with my decision to pursue my music even in the face of all of this hardship and potential financial calamity. People that demand that I go find a normal day job so I can take care of my responsibilities. As if, for the past 30 years, I haven’t kept myself fed and clothed and sheltered. Sometimes I need help, yes. Sometimes my family show up, sometimes my friends show up. You know, there’s very few jobs where you spend hundreds and hundreds of hours making stuff that a large group of people say they love and, yet, you make practically no money at all from it. We will spend 7 dollars on a Caramel Machiatto at Starbucks and then expect all the music and all the songs of the entire world, every month, for 3 dollars more.
So, yes, it’s tough.
But, don’t forget, I’ve tried walking away from making music a number of times. The first time I tried to walk away, I wrote songs like Suicide and Music Makes Me Wanna Die. And Grey’s Anatomy came to my rescue. The second time was the worst year of my life and it led to me writing and recording Fury of Your Lonely Heart, Loose Tongues, Wicked Hands, and tumors. Every single time I try to pursue a life without music, I quickly descend into even deeper depression, despondency, and despair. And then, when I return to music, my life and my disposition improve substantially.
I am a music maker. And for the past decade, I have spent my time trying to be comfortable with that fact. Because, music never came to me easily. Melodies, certainly. Lyrics, very much so. But, everything else was a struggle. It’s still a struggle. But that’s part of the story as well. Part of my narrative. And people are listening. You are.You’re listening. My music and my stories found you. I hope you dig what I’m doing. And if not, right now, I hope you’ll keep yourself open to what I offer in the coming months. Because there will always be new music coming from me. And it will always change as I change.
And I think that’s the thing that been the hardest lesson for me to learn. I know I have found my purpose. But finding your purpose and pursuing it in a way that keeps a roof over your head, much less your pool heated, well, that’s a complete different adventure. Finding my purpose and knowing in my heart of hearts that it is why I’m on this earth, that’s crucial. It took me longer than most too get here. But, now that I know it, I need to figure out to turn it into a sustainable living. And that’s a whole bundle of its own complexities.
This new album, Dynamite, for me, is exactly the album that I need to hear, right now. That’s what I get to do. I get to make records that are perfect for my ears, and for my heart, and for my head, at that exact moment. And because I’ve been doing it a long, long time, very often, those albums are perfect.For me. In fact, Juggernaut, Outworlder, Precious Mettle, and now Dynamite, all albums that have been released this year, there’s not a single song I doubt or wonder about. There’s not a single filler song. Not a one.
Music is my religion. Each song is a prayer. It is me surrendering myself to something greater. Something that connects us all. Something that heals even as it, occasionally, wounds. The best music is built of truth. It is a little slice of beauty and order in a world beset on all sides by fury and chaos.
And even though this new record, Dynamite, is comprised of challenging songs, for the most part, it’s a necessary record for me.It captures me and where I am at just a perfectly as Ordinary World, or Fury of Your Lonely Heart, or The Pleasure of Being Sad did when I wrote them. And the fact that I get to contribute my songs to the world and people like you hear them, and hopefully appreciate them, or better yet, feel them at a gut level, well, I wouldn’t trade that for all the heroin in Afghanistan.
Episode Summation:
So that’s the episode.I’ve re-written this sucker about six times over the past few weeks. So much so that I can’t see the forest for the trees. But, I can tell you this. There is not a single Get Set Go record that I have ever put out that, for me, in that moment, wasn’t a perfect release. An album that I was extremely proud of.
I love making music. I hope, as I pivot my career, yet again, that I eventually find an approach that allows for steady growth, even if it is extremely incremental. Juggernaut was an aptly named album for me, because I refuse to quit. And refuse to bow. No significant brain trauma, no financial calamity, there is nothing in the world that will keep me from adding new songs to the universe. And that is beautiful. Because, when I’m gone, when I shuffle off this mortal coil, and I have left all the struggle and hardship behind, the music will remain. And hopefully, and I believe it to be true, there will be some young kid, looking for real, honest, authentic music that talks about not what we want our lives to be, but what our lives actually are, and that kid will find and embrace my music, and perhaps, it will help him overcome his own struggles. And my prayers will be answered. Each song, a prayer. Each song, a little light to help those who struggle navigate the dark. So, I guess, even as an agnostic, I do harbor some faith.
Be well, eat your veggies, live forever.