In this episode, Mike TV discusses the prerequisites necessary to endure failure and upset, frustration and setbacks, to the point that a person is dropped to their knees, and yet, somehow, they climb back to their feet, dust themselves off, and begin again. What is it that inspires some people to persevere where others falter? What inspires a person to keep climbing back into the ring after they have receive a sound pummeling? This episode features brand-new recordings of the following Get Set Go tracks: Light It Up, Into the Deep, Secret of My Success, We Will Be Stars, From a Little Room in Downtown.
0:00 Episode Intro
0:31 Patreon Patron Shout-Out
0:40 Cold Open
7:25 [song] Light It Up
11:08 Main Title
11:37 Into the Deep Lead-In
15:01 [song] Into The Deep
18:31 Secret of My Success Lead-In
21:27 [song] Secret of My Success
26:19 We Will Be Stars Lead-In
28:59 [song] We Will Be Stars
32:51 From a Little Room in Downtown Lead-In
34:57 [song] From a Little Room in Downtown
37:49 Episode Summation
38:43 A desperate plea for people that like what I do to please show up so I don't end up selling my body parts in Mexico to pay my electric bill.
40:00 END
Episode Introduction:
Hey, I’m Mike TV of the band Get Set Go and this is Hesitation Cuts. And today’s episode is about starting over. What motivates a person who has failed to pick themselves up, dust themselves off, and do it again. Most folks try something a few times and if they don’t see good results pretty quickly then they walk away. But some people go the distance. And going the distance, unless, of course, you’re independently wealthy and can afford help or tutors or time enough to learn the ropes, going the distance often means your gonna misstep, your gonna stumble, and your gonna fail. But, it’s what you do after that -- that makes all the difference.
Patreon Opening Statement:
Now, before we get started, I just want to give a little love and respect where it is due. If you dig this episode. If you dig the stories, the music, the insights, the jokes, the artistry, it is entirely due to my Patreon Patrons. They are the wind in my sails, the juice in my juicebox, the miracle workers who work miracles simply by showing up.
Cold Open:
So, let’s take the way back machine, again, back to 2010. It’s a place we’ve visited before. If you recall, it was a time just following the year where I tried to walk away from making music. I was living in the Bay Area, it didn’t work out, and so I had just returned to Los Angeles and I recommitted myself to making music. To telling my story through music. And, so, I was writing new songs every day, and I had picked up a new laptop, and an Mbox, and ProTools, and a Blue Baby Bottle microphone, and some mic cables, and a little 61 key controller Axiom keyboard, and bam, I was now making music on my terms. And it was liberating. Just me and my thoughts and my melodies and my songs up against the world. And I was not going to be stopped.
Now, in my adult life, I’ve started over 11 times. Eleven times!There have been 11 instances where I had to walk away from one life and start something completely brand new.And literally, start from scratch.Start completely over. Either a new location. Or a new approach. Or a new business model. And of those 11 times, only 5 of them did I start with enough money in the bank to fund the first few months of my new venture. The other six times I started over, I did so completely by the seat of my pants. And I know I’ve talked about some of these moments in previous episodes, me taking a job at Universal, me walking away from film and tv to pursue music, me walking away from the music scene I helped create so that I could take better care of my band, me moving to the Bay Area and trying to walk away from music completely, me coming back to Los Angeles, me moving to Austin, me starting Twitch, over and over again, I have had to reinvent myself and reinvent what I do and how I survive by doing it. And 100% of the time, I’ve managed to make a pretty decent living, keep telling my story, and riding this new whatever wave it was for a few years before it was no longer tenable.
Now, the good thing this, for the past 20 plus years, I’ve been committed to music for the most part.Other than that horrible lapse in 2009, basically, music has been my life for the past few decades. But what I do with that music, how I transform the music I make into revenue that pays my bills, that is constantly changing, and often, it changes because I am just trying to keep wind in my sails and my ship of state afloat.
And so, this episode is about starting over, and what it takes to start over, but it’s also about the obstacles we must overcome to start over.
In fact, that’s actually what I’m trying to do right now. I’ve grown sick and tired of working with third party companies that treat me as a revenue source and not as a partner. They take unfair percentages, charge me money to access my audience, my following, they charge me money to do their jobs, even though we are ostensibly partners. And I’m sick of it. So, over the past couple years, I launched this podcast, I created a new streaming service, I revitalized my record label, I put out multiple records exclusively on Bandcamp, you know, I given it the old college try.
But this time around, there have been some really significant factors that, and again, I’ve talked about in this in previous episodes, but there are some really significant factors that have damaged not only my ability to make money through music but damaged every musician’s ability to make money. Just this very last month I’ve had 80,000 plays on streaming services. I have a little over 2000 daily listeners. For which I will make a hundred bucks and my original record label will make two hundred bucks this month from those streaming services. 80,000 plays. 2,000 daily listeners. 100 bucks to me for the entire month.
And the way these third party companies treat music not only devalues music from a dollars and sense perspective, but it also devalues music in our hearts and our heads. We don’t treat music like there are thousands of hours of effort being put into it. Even though there is. I mean, I know that probably a lot of you feel that this podcast is just me, stream of consciousness, just palavering.You don’t see the week or two weeks working on the music, all the while, during my breaks, I’m pacing my apartment, contemplating this script, and then the writing of the script over two or three days, and then editing and editing then recording everything, which is a couple hours of getting decent takes, and then assembling the episode in Sound Forge.Listening to it, revising and then re-recording, re-assembling. It is an pretty labor intensive endeavor. It is on average about hundred hours of work to give you 35 to 45 minutes of story and song.
You know, while I was working on Hesitation Cuts the album, my 45 song behemoth record, St Edwards University, the school directly across the street put up some dormitories. And they started putting them up while I was writing the album and they completed the dormitories months and months before I finished the record. I worked longer hours, day in and day out, than the construction folks did, and I worked a longer stretch of time. I built something with my own hands that I hope outlasts those dormitories.But, the way the world treats my efforts is mostly with a shrug if any acknowledgment at all.
So, it’s in this universe, where we are being trained to devalue music, trained to think of songs as being an entire universe of music that we should have access for twelve dollars a month, like every single song, and that that $12.00 getting disseminated across all the people responsible for making the music you listen to, oh, and the service that provides that music, that the $12.00 dollars getting split between everyone, that this is somehow okay. Like, really? Twelve bucks.Millions and millions of songs?Does that add up in your mental arithmetic?
So, my point is, it’s in this universe, where we are being trained to treat music thusly…well, it’s making starting over virtually impossible for me this time around.
You know, what I do has less and less value, actual monetary value. It still captures people. It still moves them. They still sing along. They still go, “man, this song is fire!” “Oh, this song kills me.” But, for the most part the price they expect to pay for music is the price that everyone else is paying. This is the crux of the whole Hollywood strike right now. Writers are being asked to work way harder for way less.But, fortunately, for them, they have a union. And that union has friend unions. And so they have muscle. They have clout. Musicians, however, particularly indie-rock musicians like me, do not. Or, if we do, if there are unions out there, they’re not actively recruiting nor are they doing a single thing to help.
So, when you’re trying to start over, in this day and age, doing what I do, I have often found that the options afforded you grow ever more limited. The services you work with charge you to access your audience. They’ve now realized, “ohmigod, we can literally make money off of the artists! This is great!” They’re charging you but you’re not making any money. And these business practices are becoming the norm. Because, for every one artist doing well, there are a thousand that don’t. And those thousand that don’t work day-jobs and are willing to spend that day-job money on the dream of becoming an artist that makes money off of their art. And these companies know that. And they profit off of that dream.
And so, there are many services popping up that purport to be egalitarian and be on the side of the artist and the writer and and the musician and the people who actually make beautiful things with skills honed over years and years of practice, but, you read fine print, and they’re mostly parasites. They want to make outsized fees and take outsized percentages for doing a pretty terrible job. They’ll give you some gee-gaws and some emotes and access to some Zoom calls with folks that will tell you what everyone pretty much already knows. But what they won’t give you is a fair distribution of money. Their fingers, no their whole fist, is slammed down on the scales.
And so, I’ve been like, okay, screw all of this. Where’s the gasoline? Where are my matches?
Light It Up Insert:
And, so, thinking about what motivates someone who has failed to pick themselves up and begin again, for me, man, it’s passion, right.? You see something that is broken and you want to fix it. You love something ferociously and you want to share that love. You see something that needs protecting and you set out to protect.You have a story to tell and that story burns inside you. Therefore, failure is not an option.
Main Title:
Hey, I’m Mike TV and this is episode 7 of Season 2 of the only podcast that provides the daily recommended dosage of weep-laughing and rage-melancholy. Today’s episode is about starting over. Making mistakes, losing big, falling apart, and then somehow, magically, finding endurance and moxie enough to get back in the ring.
Into the Deep Lead-In:
In fact, this podcast was actually an attempt at starting over. I saw that I had way too much music. Where does a new fan jump in to Get Set Go’s catalog? I have over 20 albums in stores, how do I help direct a longtime fan that hasn’t paid much attention in recent years, how do I direct them to the new hits. How do I contextualize my songs so that people see that what I’m doing is full of humanity, and thoughtfulness, and passion and humor and darkness and melancholy and all the things that make Get Set Go … Get Set Go, right?
But, alas, even though this is an enormous endeavor. That gobbles up a hundred hours or more every month, it’s not easy to monetize a podcast.You need a huge audience. And my audience, you my dear listener, you’re not a large cohort. Not yet.But, even so, every month, I record five songs for each episode, I write and record a brand-new song for the bonus content. I script and record a musical featurette, I live-stream throughout the month now utilizing green screens and background graphics that take me four days a month to collect, edit and assemble. And that’s on top of the recording and releasing of new albums. Of which I have released three this year. So, the deeper I dig into all of the things that I do, as satisfying and as purposeful as my life has become, I’m also going broke.
Which begs the question, when is the right time to start over? When do you decide to put one thing aside that is no longer working the way it was, but it still works, sorta, to instead pursue something new in the hope that you’ll see great success down the line? And that’s a very difficult question to answer.
And it’s a question I have faced over and over again in my life. Moving to Los Angeles. Walking away from film and tv. Walking away from the Mr. T’s scene to take care of the band. Leaving Los Angeles. Leaving Twitch. Again and again, I’ve had to face these difficult choices. And for me, the guiding principle has always been, what will let me make music and tell my stories in way that will keep them a joyful experience for me.
Because the moment it feels like a chore, the moment I feel I have to do it even though my heart and my head aren’t into it, that’s the moment my relationship with what I do changes. And I know that, because I experienced it working in film and tv as a development executive and writer. Building worlds and creating characters and finely tuning stories in the company of other skilled and thoughtful writers, only to have them altered and perverted and fucked with by the money people, by Merchandising, by the toy companies, by people that don’t really care much about the story and the universe. They just want to put their fingerprints on the show. And then you add the politics and the propensity for these organizations to work you like a mule and the art that you love, the crafting of story and characters and situations and dialogue, it becomes toxic. And once the poison sets in, I don’t know if it can be cleansed. I couldn’t cleanse it with writing. Not until now. Not until this podcast.
And so, I’ve spent my whole life pursuing a music making experience that allows me to treat it as a joyful experience but then because I don’t write for other people, and don’t embrace the business side of the music business, because, at my level, it’s really not a business, Spotify and Apple Music saw to that, and because I’m not a great salesman of my own stuff, because frankly, I think the music speaks for itself, all people need to do is listen, but even so, I have to hustle to pay the bills. And I have constantly invent side-hustles to earn my daily bread.
And living this way is very lonely.Because I don’t know many people that do what I do. And do it as doggedly as I do. I decided long ago, after seeing my love of writing long form and writing scripts turn toxic, I decided never again. The way I make music is the way I want to make music and I am doing it this way.Forever. Fuck it. And that is my guiding principle, every time I start over. Keep the making of the music a joyful and ebullient experience.
And maybe it hurts me. Maybe this perspective is going to ruin my life. I don’t think so. But who knows. But, if it hurts me, I’ll write songs about the hurt. And it if ruins me, I’ll document the ruin. I will tell that story. And I’ll do it with song. And I’ll do it for as long as I possibly can.
Into the Deep Insert:
And every time my ship runs aground, it feels like I have failed. Like there is no coming back. And that all my best years are behind me, that I have utterly failed, and now I just get to live in ruin. And it hurts and it is exhausting and it is as scary a time as I have ever experienced.So, how does someone motivate themselves out of that hole? And the answer is faith. In yourself.In what you do and why you do it. And what you offer the world.
Secret of My Success Lead-In:
One significant reason that has kept me going and excited to jump back into the fray after all of these years of struggle, 11 do overs, the perpetual side-hustles, the clawing and fighting and constant self-re-invention is due to the fact that I have heard from a few score of people over the course of my music career that my music helped save their life. No exaggeration. No hyperbole.Over the years people reached out to me via email and Facebook and at live shows and on MySpace, since very near the beginning of the band, and they were mostly kids, mostly high school age and early college age, but almost to a person, they confessed that they had been struggling, they were depressed, they were considering self-harm, and that my music helped them endure. And reminded them that they weren’t alone. And that other people contend with the same stuff and still manage to keep on keeping on.
And, it’s funny. Because, I first started getting these messages in 2006. After Ordinary World. And I still get them from time to time here in 2023. But in 2007, after TSR Records started to apply the brakes to our promotion dollars, and the Mr. T’s scene was no more, I was feeling less and less connected to my fans and friends, these letters, and I would receive one or two a month, they kept me going in the same exact way they said my music did for them.
It’s an ouroboros of struggle and support.
I write the songs I do, the way I do, because I need them. And they’re often about my darkest impulses and my most frightening perspectives, their about the wounds and the melancholy and the failure and fear. And I’ve been doing it for so long, and I’ve been living with my lyrics for so long, I often forget the impact that they can have on the uninitiated.
And because I still get these messages, the most recent was a couple months ago, I feel like, if I quit making music, I’m not only quitting myself, and quitting my songs, god forbid, I’m also quitting the people that need them. I mean, how many people were in the exact same boat, felt the exact same way as those who wrote the letters but just didn’t write? I’m figuring that the letter-writers were probably in the minority.So, a hundred people? A thousand? More? And if my music helped one kid, who was really hurting, really in pain, and really wanted to just check out. Just end the pain. And she listens to my song Suicide. And feels like, “oh, I’m not alone.” And she decides to hold on. What is that worth? What’s the monetary value of that?
I can tell you. $.004 cents? According to Spotify. One penny according to Apple music.
So, I’m keeping people alive. With my songs. And even though my situation is making it extra difficult for me to take care of my family and keep food on our table, I do what I do, the way I do it. Yes, I am stubborn. Maybe it leads to my ruin. And if I have to start over, again and again and again and again, fuck it.It’s exhausting. I hate it. But I’ll do it.
But, if that’s the case, I’m gonna need a way to vent. To scream out, what the fuck, universe. Get the fuck over yourself. Show the fuck up or get the fuck out of my way. Which is silly. I know that.But, sometimes feels good to just lean into the idea of saying screw it, I’m done. It’s over. I can’t take it. I hate it.I hate it. I hate it. I hate it. I hate it. ….. I hate it.
Secret of My Succes Insert 1:
Giving up is a great thing to fantasize.And I do fantasize. Man, 8 years from now, when this podcast is through, and all my albums have been released, and hopefully, I am significantly wealthier, and a little better well known, and able to live off of my titanic efforts in perpetuity, and I can finally put the guitar down and the pen aside and just enjoy. That’s gonna be a fucking fabulous day.
Secret of My Success Insert 2:
My hope is that at some point in time, other nascent artists will hear my story, listen to my songs, hear the earnestness, and the honesty, and the vulnerability, and, maybe, just maybe, it will ring a little bit more true and little bit more artful than that of the glitz merchants, and the rage mavens, and the peddlars of paucity and pugnaciousness and puerile pedantry.
We Will Be Stars Lead-In:
Ha! Ha! Yeah, see you tomorrow. I just said screw it, I’m done. I’ll never do this again. I quit.See you tomorrow. And that’s basically human beings, right?
But what happens if this next time I start over, suddenly people show up. And get excited about what I’m doing. And start sharing it with their friends. And suddenly, I’m making a living wage. And my numbers start growing exponentially. And when I tour, I start drawing 200 people to each show instead of 30 and I’m able to put money away in the bank. So, what happens then?
And part of me thinks, oh, well, I just live happily ever after. But, I know so many people with lots of money and lots of success that are mostly miserable.And I can’t speak about their lives.‘Cause I’m not living their lives.But I do know that my life is pretty awesome. Worrying each month about how bills are gonna get paid really does suck. And it does create a lot of stress. But money and the lack of it, and the stress that creates, is my only stress. And the thing is I’m not married to my life as it is. I can always change things up. I can always start something new. Of course, the joyful creation of music will always be a part of my life. But, I can put this podcast down tomorrow and it will not have a significant impact…no, actually, it will have a huge impact on my life. It will free up so much time for me to pursue revenue through music in other ways.
I could just start over with something new that’s more financially feasible.
But, I love this podcast. It is super stressful, it brings in very little money, but it is a ton of fun. I love telling these stories and weaving the music and the words together. And now that I have this unique and singular way of telling stories and framing my songs, I would do it even if no one listened. Because it’s part memoir and part album and part novel and part one man show. And it just feels perfectly Mike TV. And maybe the larger audience, you my fabulous listener notwithstanding, maybe the larger audience, just doesn’t exist yet. Maybe they haven’t even been born. And who am I to deny them these stories and songs?
You see, what I do is something I don’t think a lot of people get to experience. Doing something they feel they were put on this earth to do and doing it in a way where every day is full of brand-new adventures and excitements and possibilities that are constantly realized. And that is my life. Money is hard. Everything else is amazing.
But, that said, now that I have a family, I feel like, uh-oh, my go to move over the past 20 plus years has been just setting my life on fire whenever I need to. Just burn it down and rebuild it. Just start over. And that is, sorta, what I’ve been doing these past couple years. The podcast. The record label. The albums.The live-streaming. I keep trying new things. And they’re not working. And, now I’m making these decisions not only for myself but also for my partner, and my puppies, and that becomes, and is very much right now, a much scarier and much more difficult prospect.
We Will Be Stars Insert:
Asking your family and your friends and your fans to join you as you change directions, as you tack your ship, plot a new course, start navigating under brand new stars, that is terrifying. Because, what if they say no. What if, this time, they say, sorry friend, you’re on your own.
From A Little Room Lead-In:
In the interest of total honesty, just so you know what it is costing me to do what I do, to put this podcast out, the three plus weeks of effort I have poured into it just this episode alone, I have $115 dollars in my checking account right now. Actually, no, I just borrowed a couple hundred bucks from a friend.So, $300 dollars. And I have $20 dollars in my savings account. Fortunately, this month’s bills are all paid. I have $20 dollars of gas in my gas tank. But, I, also, have a ton of debt. Which I just added to. Both personal loans as well as credit card debt. And it is a very frightening time for me. I’ve had family contribute to our welfare. I’ve had big tips from friends and fans on my live-stream. But, it’s all band-aids. It’s just limping along, one financial calamity to the next.And what this pressure is doing is, it is compounding the amount of time it takes me to complete things. It’s hard for me to stay focused. I check my bank account every hour. Just in case some bill I forgot is gonna overdraft me.
Starting over when you have four mouths to feed is a whole new level of difficult. And I’m already playing in hard mode. And so I haven’t been sleeping that well. And my partner and I are quicker to argue. And poverty just ups the ante with everything. By putting everything on the line. All the time.
And so, again, I am faced with the challenge of starting something new. I have to change something. Because what I have been doing simply isn’t working. And the only reason why I can be somewhat sanguine about all of this is because I have been before. The one thing I can do, is I can work. I can go to work. As I have been doing every day of my life since I started working at Dominoes Pizza at twelve years old. I’m will just throw work at the problem. I’m gonna post this episode, and then I’m gonna get to streaming. I have a new Kickstarter that is currently getting close to 50% funded, and I will work like a maniac until things are fine.
And then, when I can take a little breather, hopefully I will come up with some new angle, some new hustle, some new perspective on all the things I do, that will hopefully lead to growth, and lead us out of this jungle.
But until then, until I hit that point where I can stop stressing about bills, and stop worrying about money, and worrying about my family, and the conditions under which we live, where I can reinvent myself yet again, in the hopes that I can interest enough of the world in my songs and my stories that we don’t have to limp along, until we hit that point, all I can do is sing…
From A Little Room in Downtown Insert:
I have been at this music thing for close to three decades. Get Set Go is turning 20 this year. Our first record came out September 30th, of 2003. And I know that a certain type of person might consider me insane for putting myself through this for almost 30 years. Starting over, and starting over, and starting over. And yes, I am a little crazy. You have to be to work this hard for so little. But, I also want to remind you that my music has also saved lives. So, maybe the struggle’s been worth it. I think it is.
Episode Summation:
So, that’s the episode. And first, I do want to let you know how much I appreciate you for listening to this episode. Because, you are the reason I work my ass off, and keep starting over, because I am doing everything in my power to find other people like you, for whom my stories and my songs resonate, so this ball of mud and chaos that is hurtling through space at 60,000 miles a second, doesn’t feel as lonely, as hostile, as duplicitous, as self-entitled, as pernicious and as grasping as it sometimes does for me when I’m at my lowest. Starting over is a tough thing to do. Because 9 times out of 10, when you starting over, you feel like you failed. But, as F Scott Fitzgerald once said, “It’s never too late to become who you want to be. I hope you live a life that you are proud of, and if you find that you’re not, I hope you have the strength to start over.”
Patreon / Everything Plug: I just want to remind everyone that Patreon is my most stable income. Right now I make about $1,100 each month from my patrons. So, it’s still not a living wage but it is my only budgetable income.Which makes planning each month super-hard. But, I now have 235 patrons and that number is growing. And if you have no money, you can still join for free. And if you have buck a week, or five bucks, you will certainly get your money’s worth. I put multiple releases a month. Songs, podcasts, albums, rare tracks, alternate tracks, musical featurettes, bonus content, and a weekly update. Every month.
Oh, and I have a new Kickstarter, to commemorate 20 years of Get Set Go putting out records. It features a new songbook for my album Juggernaut which was Get Set Go 20th studio release, so 20 in 20, and for one of the pledges you can actually get all of the music from Hesitation Cuts, season one! That’s fifty songs!
But, if Patreon and Kickstarter don’t work for you, show up in my live-streams. Join my Discord. Tip me $20 dollars and buy me and the family dinner one night. Heck, tip me a dollar just to give back a little something. Be an active participant in my life and I will always endeavor to be an active participant in yours.
I love you all very much. Thank you for listening.
Be well. Eat your veggies. Live forever.