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dememarquette · 7 years

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ASHWATER: Epilogue [...pt 2]

[First Part by malum--in--se]

The only person I knew in this city was Adria.

I mean, really knew. As far as connections went, I was at a loss. My life had been rooted deep in good old California. Due to circumstances you can catch at 7 PM Central on HBO, it was violently severed last month. And while I was hitting it off in Modena better than expected, no one should have been at my door. Adria was also the only one who knew my address, but this early in the afternoon she’d be elbow-deep in CSI: Modena. My door beeped again. After the second time, sheer annoyance prompted to peek at the security camera. A stout woman, barely clearing five feet stood at the foot of the building. I don’t recognize her, but she sure was acting familiar with my buzzer. It pinged again, extended as she held her thumb on the button. This time I responded. ”Apartment 312 speaking; do you mind?” She stopped her pacing, pivoted, and jammed a finger on the intercom, a little too excited. “Mr.Marquette? Hello, hello! This is Kathy Grover- I’d like to sit down with you for a meeting. It’s- it’s confidential.” “Confidential?” “You’ll see, uhm." She adjusted the large messenger bag on her shoulder. "I'll only need fifteen minutes for a quick chat. It’s in your best interests, honest! Pretty please, please pleaseee.” Well that doesn’t sound creepy.

I glanced at my television. Noting that the Kardashian’s weren't going anywhere, I supposed I could postpone my afternoon plans a bit. I sighed, giving her the all-clear. “I’ll bite. Come on up.” She disappeared off the camera. Three minutes later, tiny knocks hit my door in record time. I welcomed her in. She rushed inside, already flipping open her laptop to make herself at home before a proper introduction. I smirked, admiring her spunk until it looked like she was about to have a mental breakdown on my coffee table. I require coasters, even for tears. “If Julia asks,” She exhaled. “I’m not here.” “If Julia asks, neither am I." I pocketed my hands. "What’s this about?” “Ashwater. I'm writing your account.” Right, I snorted. I knew she was going to milk it for everything it was worth. That line in the contract about a book deal was much more appealing a year ago. “If this is really about business you really should have made an appointment.” It's worth nothing that I'm using the terms ‘business’ and ‘appointment’ lightly. Things aren’t what they were. I was out of the limelight, but our personal notoriety in the city had gotten me somewhere within healing the community. To put it lightly, the mass suicides completely fucked up Modena. Not that they needed a dose of Catholicism to fix it right up- but my niche and trendy factor multiplied by survivor status gave me a leg-up on the competition. It’s not television, and it’s little more than a step higher than where I started at the inception of my career but the church I operate from is mine. Mine. At one month in, I’m wondering how lost track of that concept in the first place. "-And I have made it clear I'm done with that whole mess." “I am here for my business, but it is about your business.” She paused, nose wrinkled. “I’m sorry- she did tell me not to contact you, but I can’t help it. It’s your life. The history major in me wants it to be accurate.” I can't blame her for that. Part of me knows Julia would dance on the border of defamation of character all day if she could. I pulled up a chair. “Noooow that you mention it, I think I'd rather it be accurate too.” Sure, it was valuable time but I will never pass up the chance to talk about myself. "Most if it is on film though, what do you need to know? “This romance with Adria. It’s so confusing.” Record scratch. Uh. “What?” “It’s up, down- off, on- it’s difficult to fill in the blanks between takes.” “What do you mean ‘romance’?” Now she was confused. “W-what?” “There is no romance. Nada.” “Oh no..." She cupped her mouth. "Did it fall apart after you moved to Modena?” “What?! No. It never happened. Where are you even getting that? Don’t tell me the forums or I'll kick you out right now.” Suspicious, she turned her screen my way. Alright PAUSE. It's time for me to admit it: Adria and I's closeness has...never been an easy subject to broach. I'm not oblivious to my on screen chemistry with Adria. What am I saying- I'm not oblivious to our chemistry in general.What made Ashwater great, and not a repressed episode of trauma, was Adria. She was a breath of fresh air when Hollywood met a cornfield. Our banter was great, her devotion was pure, and I'll be the first to say I came out of that town a new person. The US audiences saw that within us. That was the whole draw- aside from all the spooky shit, of course. We just worked really, really well together. Miss Kathy thought so to, and decided to condense that down into a ten minute montage. She spliced together our interactions. Starting from a little bit before the family dinner, to post-Boris, to the kid's hospital, and then the whole Crocotta roller coaster that was only nuanced on television, but never clearly explained. I don’t blame her for losing track. While I can account for all the stupid stuff I did between takes, the cameras couldn’t. I found myself smiling when reliving Adria's candid honesty, and cringing like a kicked dog when I had fucked up. "Uh-" I stopped her as soon as the two of us stepped into the frame in disguise. "We can skip this part..." “Well fine- one last one though! This is my favorite.” Her cursor jumped ahead on the timeline, and my heart stopped. I had no idea the film was salvaged that far into the night. It was post-Modena in the heart of the cult warehouse. The entire scene was dark except the licks of fire on the edges. How the camera was still rolling, I had no clue. It was on its last leg. The footage shoddy at best. All scratched up, and battered. The woman I was following was barely visible, completely obscured by smoke, but by the time I had gotten out of the wooden shack the lens was clear. Adria was in the background, at the edge of the trees. You could tell the moment I saw her- she was my focal point. She was my purpose. It captured every step I limped towards her until I ultimately collapsed by her side, and the frame turned upward into the storm clouds. The feed went still. Nothing except the wave of trees overhead, and smoke clearing out until Kathy sped it up again. She stopped, just before- “Deme?” Adria’s voice cracked. It still gave me chills. But in that moment, a wounded and battered Adria had a different connotation. The view turned- energized, and sharp enough to catch a frame of our hands interlocked. Our voices were so bad it merited captioning, but miraculously every detail was intact through the trauma. I hadn’t realized I stopped breathing until the screen was ripped away. Kathy pulled up a littered word document, eyes wide and grin stretching ear to ear. “See! You can’t hide anything from me, Mr.Marquette.” I blinked, faltering when ripped out of the past and put on the spot. “I’m not hiding anything- what- what are you writing?!” I ran around the table. Her fingers, going a mile a minute, tried to capture my reaction. Something about warmth in my face, the light in my eyes. She completely scripted a flashback that honestly didn’t happen. The moment in the raw was way better than any metaphor she could twist around. “'That's the moment I knew we were destined to-what?! That is NOT how I’d say that.” “How would you put it?” “Uh- I’d say that yeah, I was happy to see her alive, but-” “No, no.” She primed her hands back at the starting line. “Start from the beginning?” Fifteen minutes, my ass. It was the longest two hours of my life. - - - 6 AM the following Sunday, I was setting up the chapel. I couldn't get her film off my mind. The scenes, everything. I'd never get around to re-watching the series because: A. My shoulder revolted just thinking about it. B. It was still a sore spot for both of us. Not the whole thing, obviously, but what it’d inevitably lead up to. Though we got past that. I’d like to think she forgave me after all this time, but I'd understand if she didn’t. Point is that we set it aside to grow as people. I was content with how our cards fell. We were close, and we cared about each other. A lot. That was sort of it... But then the weird part kicked in. Someone else saw something...Not some creep online, but someone trusted enough to write my fucking autobiography, for example. She saw something was there. That's when it really sunk in. Was it that obvious? And did its obviousness meant she felt...something too? The signs were there. It sounds nice on paper to say she did, but is that why we were here? Is that why I invited her? Did I pick Modena because I honestly thought this was the only place I could make it after Julia? And did she only join me because she was intending to go there anyways? Or was it more? I acted on impulse in that hospital- or at least that’s what I played it off as. Why? Because I don’t know how to explain an alternative. It’s truly what I wanted at the time. Now I have to figure out what it all means, and what's is going on in her head- which is easier said than done, by the way. She hasn’t said anything about it! And if there was any reoccurring theme from our time there, it was that I don't know what she’s thinking. I didn't know, and maybe I never will. She's so different. She's everything I'm not, and would never think to be, but inspiring. That's what made her exciting. Not that golden Jesus would agree. Throughout the course of this mental monologue, I didn't realize I had dusted His head so many times he was starting to get a bald spot- ah… These thoughts were best saved for a time outside the church. I coughed, trying to dismiss the shallow guilt wadding up in my chest. "Sorry Jesus." - - - Our schedules had a tendency to clash when she got into detective boot camp. Communication became sparse. We caught each other at odd times on odd days just to keep in touch. It was fine. I understand it was a whole lot of settling in for the both of us. I had a whole community to cultivate, and she had be rehabilitated into dealing with delicate humans instead of kicking monster ass. Reasonably, that'll take awhile. Still- that left me bored after services were said and done. I don't miss the danger. God no, I don't. I missed the interaction. I missed the dependency, my partner in crime. Restlessness became an itch anytime I had too much time on my hands. Small at first, until the two month mark when it became maddening. I thought it was attention deprivation at first. I put myself out there. I would do stupid AMA's online, and reply to fan mail in an attempt to catch the same high I did a year back. Surprisingly it.... Didn't help at all. Especially not when little postscripts on the letters asked how Adria was doing, too. It left a sour taste in my mouth when I didn't know what to tell them so that hobby ended rather quickly. Community events were my next go-to. That had more luck. They were equally productive and fun. I got the chance to raise funds to spruce up my chapel to what it should be, and could be the center of the attention while doing it. That cured idle hands a little more. One of the latest was a bake sale benefit held downtown. It wasn't exactly my scene, geared toward your more elderly audiences. Don't get me wrong, I'll always have fun charming the older ladies, but they had it under wraps. I snuck out when the chance arose but stopped cold on the stoop. “What the-” A sudden flash of fury sparked when I saw a pink ticket on my dashboard. I did not put that EXTREMELY tacky parking pass on my windshield of my 'Rari for nothing. I stormed over and swiped it off the dash, ready to raise all sorts of holy Hell with the city of Modena when I noticed it was a blank form. Nothing was scribbled on it but the word ’Lunch?’ in sloppy cursive. Her handwriting. I put it with the other one. - - - The weekly lunches started back up afterward. Absolutely non-negotiable. Not even the sickest orphan could make me work within the noon-3PM block on Fridays. Granted, we weren’t at Jo’s. I didn't have any show on the air, and she didn't have to play damage control for her mom, but it was pleasant. It was a tiny piece of Ashwater I'm glad we reinstated. Location changed weekly as I found new spots I thought she’d like. Hearing she'd never had sushi before was unacceptable. My hands around hers, I guided the grip of her chopsticks. With a little adjustment, they were functional. "-That's horrifying." I balked. "What? It was worse training to be a cop! This was more procedural stuff." "But running five miles in how long? How is that humanly possible?" "Hey," She grinned. "That's just keeping in shape. Join me at the gym sometime. I'll make you the buffest preacher in New England." "Pass." I said, rejecting that mental image. "But really, how’s the force?” “It’s great!" She beamed. "Surreal compared to Ashwater, which is saying something. Exciting but different. A good kind of different.” “‘Different’?” I asked, giving up chopsticks for a fork when her dexterity as a newbie already had mine beat. At least I know what a soup spoon is. “That’s not what I was expecting. Just not the same as running straight into monsters, huh?” “Maybe I don’t have anyone to chase.” She propped up her chin with a hand, warm smile from across the table. “Except, you know, the bad guys.” “Except the bad guys.” Somehow I don't think they'll have as much fun being tailed by her as I've had. Their loss; but that would be weird to say. Instead I accidentally opted for something weirder entirely, because I'm a teenager. “How’s your partner?” Her eyebrow flicked up. “Partner?” “Yeah, don’t you get assigned one? Or something.” I picked at the sashimi with practiced disinterest. "Cops are never alone on TV." "Well yeah. Uh. He's fine. We get along great. He's been on the team a lot longer than me, I've got a lot of learning to do." "Oh, he's way older?" "Uh...yes?" I tried not to sound too relieved. "Oh nice, nice. He'll be a good, uh. Mentor." Puzzled, she lost sight of where I was going with this. "...I guess?" "I'm happy for you." Great. Now it's awkward, but you wouldn't have known that from my attitude. She finished her lunch, and I flagged the waiter over. Adria reached for her wallet, and I stopped her. "No- no. Don't worry about it. I got this." "You? Pay?" She said, in exaggerated surprise. "Am I dealing with the fake Deme again?" I laughed, painfully. Ha ha ha. Now she did it. I felt even worse, itching to make a desperate call. "Consider it a congratulations for making it through training." "I was done two weeks ago-" "Oh, if you don't want me to, I won't." I recoiled, defensive. The beginnings of a coy smile crept into her lips. She let go of her wallet like it’d explode with any sudden movements, sarcastic. I wanted to run. "No, I won't stop you~" "Great." "Great." - - - For the first time in forever, I couldn't wait to shove her into her car to LEAVE. I screwed that up. Royally. What kind of message was I trying to put out? That I'm into her, or that I'm a freaky stalker? Subtly isn’t my strong suit, and if any RomCom had ever made it okay just to say ‘Date me, already, god.’ and skip the formalities, I would. Thankfully, my phone still had a very special number on speed dial. The second her vehicle turned the corner, I was on the line. "Ashwater Cottage, Margie speaking!" "Marg, I need your help." - - - Our call spanned the entire drive back to my apartment. I explained everything. I went over the signs I was seeing, to how badly I screwed lunch up. It was irredeemable in retrospect, but Margie didn't think so. In fact, she reassured me three separate times that hand holding wasn't something Adria did with just her best buddies (and that she was really, really sure) before I cracked. Little did she know that was another hour long conversation in the making. “Okay- how about this:" I splayed my fingers on the steering wheel. "DRIVE IN MOVIE. Or is that too much of a smalltown cliche?” “A drive-in would be lovely.” “I don’t know- Footloose was just on the other night, she might know it was uninspired.” "You're overthinking it, dear." “I don't think so! There has got to be a reason she hasn't said anything. I haven't really wow'd her yet. How did her parents do it?” “Uh…” “No! No, you’re right. That’s creepy. Ugh, do you see why I need help?!” Margie chuckled. “Honey, have you dated anyone before?” “Well YES-” I paused. “No? Maybe?” “Not like this?” She suggested. I slumped against the the steering wheel. Yeah, exactly… I've never had to deal with this. Any of it. Even in high school I was the type more interested in fun for the night than anything that spanned longer than a week. And before a year ago, that just made more sense. You want to know why? Because this is hard. She knows me deeper than a flash of the smile, and pretty words. She knows ME me, and some of the gross, off-putting selfish stuff Demetrius Marquette entails. Like, even the literal gross gore and inner tendons. If you asked me a year ago what it’d take for someone to be my better half, I’d have said “zeros and commas.” Now, I have a whole list of strangely specific virtues, and adjectives that would only come to a poet. I don’t want to ruin this because I am damn sure I’d never find something like this again, and I don’t want to. Margie sighed, the pleasant kind where you could hear her smiling as she did it. My silence was intuitively taken as an affirmative. “Don’t you worry about it. Adria isn’t a girl who is going to be impressed by a diamonds and opera theater. She doesn’t need grand displays or money- she just wants you." “..She does?” “Haha, well I won’t speak for her! You’ll have to figure these things out on your own, but don’t dilly dally. Be yourself.” “Right…” I shifted. “Don’t...say anything to anyone about this, okay?” “Your secret is safe with me. Good luck!” - - - So drive-in movie wasn’t happening. Regular movie is too basic (and cheap). Not much else wasn’t much jumping out at me. Scraping the bottom of the barrel, I came up with nothing. Margie put emphasis on a personal flair instead of flashiness. But what if my personal flair is flashiness? I had to find a middle ground between, and that idea didn’t come to me until a horse and carriage tour clopped outside the chapel. It helped me come up with a plan. Mentally, too. No, I wasn’t going to take Adria on a stinky, over-crowded novelty ride around the town. I went on my own time, for a better grasp of the city. Something around here had to be us and I found it. The reservation to a five-star was an afterthought and the catalyst. This dinner itself would be the two of us. Despite the exuberant exterior, we’d content in our world just as we’d have been on the hood of her cruiser or on a bale of hay. I made the conscious effort not to think about what I was doing or what she was thinking because I never had before, and that’s what worked for us. What Adria was to me was comfort. I needed to stop saying things I thought I should and just...go with it. The skin-tight red dress was just a bonus. Afterwards was more important, anyways. I told myself if we got to that point, there was no longer any room for doubt. - - - After dinner, we took to the streets. I walked. My eyes were studiously focused on the sidewalk ahead. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught her double take in the opposite direction. This was the part where I normally walked her back to her car, but she didn’t say a word nor miss a step. Wordlessly confirming, my hand slipped out of my coat when the cool autumn air would normally advise against it. Our fingers didn’t brush against each other. Instead, they instinctively clasped. The city was gorgeous this time of year. And the park? Beautifully abandoned. Kids were in school, and the homeless populace had found shelters above forty degrees. I scoped this spot out via tour before booking our reservation. It was only a block away. It spoke to me. When you got past the statues and benches, the main attraction was the fountain. The guide warned that it’d be the last few days of the season where it’d be in up and running. Soon the ice would claim it; it felt like a metaphor, in a way. For now, it was left on, lights and all. We stopped to sit on the fountain walls. Sign dissuading it be damned, we only paid attention to the plaque. It was engraved on the side with the names and descriptions of heroes from another calamity before our time. Adria took the time to read over it. I was less patient, finding more to revere in the woman before me. I patted the concrete beside me. “We should have really got one of these in Ashwater, huh?” “Yeah. But they already dedicated a day to us.” She said, taking the spot. She shimmied closer until our arms touched. “What more do we need? Wait- don’t answer that.” “What?” I said, offended. “I wasn’t going to say anything. Well, except I don’t know how they’d fit Kyriakoulopoulos on it.” “Hey,” She nudged. “You learned my name.” I winked. Learning a woman’s name on the first date, Dating 101. I didn’t trust myself to say that out loud. Instead, the stillness baited our eyes to the water. The colored bulbs shifted under the icy surface in a continuous luminescent transition. Blue, green, yellow, orange, red... The glow on the half profile of her face was driving me crazy, even when I tried to ignore it. There's no word in English to describe the feeling when there’s so much comfort it hurts. It’s been full year of memories, broken boundaries, and new horizons. It all jumbled together into a rocky formation to spite me. It urged me forward because staying still was no longer an option. The fingers that curled around mine burned. Pulsing, like they threatened to disintegrate if I let another moment pass me by. If there was more to us, I had to have more. “Adria…" I broke the tranquility, stilted. "I need to say something. You’re...really important to me.” “I already told you I can’t get you out of a parking ticket,” She chuckled. I ignored the bite of sarcasm, moving my hand away from hers to free it. I rehearsed this so many times. I don’t know the words that go along with the scenes, only the motions. They're intimate- like a silent film. When she looked back at me, all humor drained away. ‘Oh no, he’s serious.’ Maybe I am. No- I bit my lip. There’s no maybe. I am serious. I am I am I am. We were heading for uncharted territory, but I needed to go. The change of scene wasn’t doing anything if we were staying in the same place. I couldn’t be satisfied with where we were anymore. Tonight, I was cashing in everything. “Deme...” Her voice broke. Instead of moving closer like she was scripted to, she leaned away. I twitched. Just as I was about to reach for her, the muscles in my palm turning to stone. “I always do this. I’m sorry.” …? My brows furrowed. Scratch that- what?! Okay, I was heading into uncharted territory, and she was fumbling on the opposite side of the map. “Adria...what- what are you talking about-?” “It’s so stupid- I went too far. You don’t have to say it.” Her freed hand balled into her other one, nearly aggressive in nature. “I’ve already made you leave once, and I can’t- I can't do it again...” My head was reeling trying to figure out where we got off track. She got up to leave, and I grabbed her hand. Her lack of conviction to keep going proved she didn’t really want to go. “Are you crazy?” “The whole priest thing, I know you-” “Can’t wait?” “What?” Her eyes finally met mine, glassy. “You’re not serious right? Adria, you're not asking me to do anything I don’t want to do. If I’m doing anything it’s because I want you.” I squeezed her hand like she had in the clearing. “Very bad.” “Deme, I-” Oh God. No. I pulled her down beside me to trade her hand for her cheek. Delicate- I held her chin, examining her slightly smudged mascara from different angles. “Are you- are you crying? You’re literally crying!” I laughed, brushing an icy tear from her cheek with my thumb. “You’re ridiculous." "It's not ridiculous!" She said, cheeks flushing at the touch. She was burning, too, but on the outside couldn’t decide what emotion she wanted to embody. That was…relieving. In that moment, I realized two things. One, we both really, really sucked at this, and two: if this- this unsaid, indescribable thing between us was wrong, I had zero will-power to stop myself. The time for talking was gone. The mist from the fountain was steaming off of us. Dead in the middle of Autumn, we were on fire. Our breaths fogged up everything around us except each other. The timing was right, so right. I went for it. I kissed her. With bated breath, I pulled her in. One firm hand on her cheek and the other at the base of her neck, I wanted her. So bad- and I let her know. She wanted me, too. She was waiting for it. Unlike the talk before, there was zero awkwardness. She was fluid. Her lips moved in perfect sync with mine with an ease stated the obvious. We held back too long, but it was the wait that ignited it. A warmth that pushed through our entire bodies. It drove us into each other, both equally fighting to make up for lost time in the other’s arms, and to say the things we had no words for. The girl with walls a mile thick melted into me. And I lured her in just so we could go down together. The hand supporting her followed the curve of her spine. Past the scars, past the pain- she fell with me, recumbent on the fountain’s edge. Her hands gripped tight onto the collar of my coat, while her legs went weak on either side. I held her steady when we threatened to throw ourselves over the edge. I’m not going anywhere. Nor did I plan to. Things were changing again, but there’s no way we’d hesitate.

#LONG OVERDUE #adria #ashwater #cop au #ngl i wrote this to 'I wanna - All American Rejects'#one day i want to tweak until it feels like that too #its so how i picture it #epilogue #story

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sellinout · 6 years

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TRANSCRIPT for EPISODE 2

[music]

MICHAEL PFOHL: I can totally see people that are super married to DIY eethics being like, “you sold out,” but like...if DIY means that I should put in a ton of effort so that you can do what you want and not have to pay me anything, then fuck DIY.

MIKE MOSCHETTO: Sounds harsh, I know, but when real life and gig life collide, it’s not pretty. I’m Mike Moschetto, this is Sellin’ Out.

[music: I’m a casino that pays nothing when you win / please put your money in”]

MIKE: Hi! Hello. How are you? Thanks for tuning in or logging on or surfing the web over to another episode of Sellin’ Out...I don’t really know what the term would be, you don’t really tune anything to find it. It just shows up on your phone, in your feed, whatever. In any case, thanks for listening! I’m Mike Moschetto and my guest today is Michael Pfohl. You might know Michael from his emo band Secret Stuff, got a couple releases out on Spartan Records, a very underrated label. He’s also in a newer band called Low Mass that I’m very excited about, and if you live in the vicinity of Nashville, TN and you’ve gone to see bands play at a DIY space or a house show in the last few years, there’s a good chance you’ve attended a Michael Pfohl joint. So we talked about his old show house Exponent Manor (that I’ve had the pleasure of playing a couple times), and how he actually wound up in court. My dude had to literally fight for his right to party...and he won! So that’s good. Sometimes the system works. We also chatted about ambition and success and what’s fair in DIY and so much more. He’s just a friendly, talented, hardworking, genuine guy. So here’s Michael.

[music]

MIKE: So you do a lot of different things, central to music and DIY and underground and all that. When you introduce yourself...I guess it depends situationally, but how do you think of yourself?

MICHAEL: I guess recently I’ve been pivoting a little...I haven’t been doing as much promoting or booking in Nashville as I used to because I don’t have the house that I lived at anymore, so whenever you don’t have control over the calendar it’s a lot harder to do as much work for as many people. So I’ve been focusing a lot more on Secret Stuff, and then I joined another band called Low Mass. So I’ve been focusing a lot more on the music aspect of it than the business side, which has been nice because there’s been a ton of stuff that’s been happening in my personal life that if I was in control of so many people’s touring schedules like I used to be, then it just would’ve been a recipe for disaster.

MIKE: Right, because at least at one point you had the house, Exponent Manor. You were booking presumably other places around Nashville, not exclusively the house – though that’s a great thing to have. You were booking other people’s tours, AND you had your own music projects-

MICHAEL: At that point I was still in college, too.

MIKE: Jeez! And then probably working…

MICHAEL: Yeah, I was working 30 hours a week at a barbecue restaurant.

MIKE: So...did you sleep? Will you doze off in the middle of this?

MICHAEL: [laughs] It was very fun. I didn’t have as much responsibility in terms of personal relationships or, now I’ve got a dog – which is...not crazy, like “oh dogs are trainers for babies” like some people say, but it is still a lot of work.

MIKE: I can see it, I can see it...So what came first in all of this? My guess would be that it was playing music.

MICHAEL: Yeah, sort of...I played in a band in high school in Christiansburg, VA, which is kind of in the middle of nowhere-

MIKE: That’s right, because I was gonna say the first time I met you before I knew that you did music, it was as a concertgoer - and I mean that not in a passive “I go to shows once in a while” sense. We were in Blacksburg playing I Got Brains Fest – I think that’s where we met right?

MICHAEL: Yeah, yeah.

MIKE: That’s right. And I don’t think you were still living there, I think you had moved to Nashville but you came back.

MICHAEL: I’d moved to Nashville but I came back for that. I definitely credit those two festivals, I Got Brains Fest 1 + 2, as my biggest entryway into DIY and into understanding what DIY really was.

MIKE: Wow, I caught you early.

MICHAEL: Yeah you did, because before I played in a band in high school and I was still doing a lot of sports then so it wasn’t my main focus, but when you’re in high school and you’re not in a town that other tours come through, you kind of have to book your own shows and so that’s what we would do. My best friend at the time, his dad was the pastor of a church and so we would use space in the church to throw shows and the businessman side of me was like, “oh this is cool, I can buy some pizzas for cheap, sell ‘em for a little more, blah blah blah, capitalism yaaay…”

MIKE: [laughs] So you kind of fell into, like you said, the business out of necessity.

MICHAEL: Exactly, and a similar thing happened once I went to college. I went to Belmont in Nashville and it was a similar thing where I started a band and I didn’t have the relationships yet of “who do I hit up to open these shows?” So I just started booking our own shows. There was a place on campus called Boulevard which was just a music store, and I convinced the owner there to let us move some of the gear out of the way and throw shows there. It was a lot of fun, and people eventually started coming to me being like, “Hey, can you book us shows?” and itt just organically grew from there. I started doing more stuff at a venue called Rocketown and when their room fee went up to a point which was unsustainable, I got involved with this DIY spot called the Owl Farm. And how Exponent came about was, there were probably 14 other promoters that were booking at the Owl Farm at the time, so there weren’t days available on the calendar all the time. People would hit me up and I’d be like, “I can’t do it...” I wanted to avoid that happening as often as possible, so I set out whenever I moved out of my dorm room to find a house that I could conceivably throw house shows at, and I happened to stumble upon the perfect one, honestly.

MIKE: You did.

MICHAEL: A lot of rooms upstairs, downstairs was its own thing...We had our own world upstairs where everyone lived and then downstairs there was a room for all the gear, a room to play, a living where everyone could chill, a back porch and then a kitchen where everyone would sell merch and we’d put out the pizzas we got for free because Two Boots Pizza sponsored our house.

MIKE: That’s right!

MICHAEL: It was crazy, yeah.

MIKE: I don’t want to say that was the best part, but…

MICHAEL: No, but it’s definitely-

MIKE: Huge perk, yeah.

MICHAEL: Whenever you’re on tour and you don’t have to pay for food, and when it’s like...not just Little Caesar’s, it’s really great.

MIKE: It’s almost surprising to me in a city like Nashville which is so renowned as being a music city that there would be all this congestion around one venue. Is it maybe a hostility to underground music or were there other spots that were equally backed up?

MICHAEL: Sort of? I mean that was really one of the only DIY spots at the time.

MIKE: That was the one that I heard about.

MICHAEL: There were certainly some other houses that were doing stuff, but they were a lot more...niche. So I think the Owl Farm’s openness to a wide variety of genres is what made it so indispensable.

MIKE: So who actually ran it? I mean you guys booked it in sort of a collective, but whose space was it?

MICHAEL: A person called Rose and another person called Jazzy who both do their own thing now – I believe Jazzy moved to Richmond with their partner. Once the Owl Farm was done we were all looking for our own spaces and our own things and they started doing some stuff at some other spaces I can’t remember the exact names of because they operated in another different world than I typically did. But it was great because they managed the Owl Farm and they managed all the funds for it. It was kind of a trust thing, like “make sure you leave 25% of whatever is made in this cash box” and stuff, so it was definitely not super heavily-monitored. It was a “you have the privilege to use this space, please make sure we can keep the lights on” sort of thing.

MIKE: That’s good, because as opposed to just having a flat room cost, if the show doesn’t do well you’re not on the hook for it. Obviously it incentivizes you to get people there and through the door and everything – not only for the band’s purposes, but for the people who own the space.

MICHAEL: And I always did a similar thing at my house where obviously if a show didn’t do super well, you know if there’s 10 paid at $5, I’m gonna give all $50 to the band. But say we throw a show where it’s $5 and 100 people come, I’ll give the band $400 and keep $100 and use it to pay for all the shit that gets broken in my house.

MIKE: I think some people get weirded out at the concept of house venues and people who operate those things taking any cut of it because it’s all profit margin, but what do you say to those people?

MICHAEL: I spent the vast majority of my time for three years putting on shows at the house.

MIKE: And you put on some huge shows...did you have Counterparts?

MICHAEL: Yeah, Counterparts played, that was a free show we announced four hours ahead of time and 250 people showed up. It was totally insane. On the other side of that we did a show for Beartooth...there was a contract, Red Bull sent out a film team from Australia to film the whole thing, and I did an interview for AP in my living room. It was very weird. So there are totally different sides and I can totally see people who are super married to DIY ethics being like, “you sold out” or whatever. But I managed to make that band a ton of money and sure, I made a cut from that, but should I not for all the work that I did?

MIKE: Right, and it’s a personal liability thing too because you don’t own the place, you’re renting it. You could get thrown out anytime.

MICHAEL: There was a show where the floor collapsed and I spent money-

MIKE: In your living room?!

MICHAEL: In my living room.

MIKE: Jeez.

MICHAEL: The floor collapsed and I spent money putting up new floor supports and everything like that. When we moved out on bad terms – not due to shows at all, simply due to the rapid gentrification of Nashville and the fact that the owner could sell the house for five times what they bought it for in four years of ownership-

MIKE: Thanks in no small part to your replacement of some floor supports. Probably had “new floors!” on the listing.

MICHAEL: I did a ton of stuff right before they attempted to evict us to fix it all up. I was on tour and I got a call from my roommate and he’s like “hey, there’s an inspector here.” Which is illegal in our lease – they’re supposed to give us at least 24 hours notice. And technically there were only two of us on the lease, five people living there. It was a four-bedroom, four-living room house so one of the living rooms was a bedroom. There were five people living there, but technically those other three people were not supposed to be there. We were only allowed to have at max three people on the lease, which is very strange for a house that has more bedrooms than that. But the inspector never saw those people, they just saw the house was kind of in shambles and they were like, “fix all this stuff.” We were like, “okay,” so we fixed everything. They came back and did another inspection. I got the email that said “you have two weeks to fix it,” while I was on tour for another ten days. I came back, stayed up four days straight, repainted the whole house, did a ton of work making it look very, very nice. They came back and they were like, “...this is great.” “So we can stay?” “Yeah, sure.” “Awesome, cool.” A month goes by, I’m at home in Virginia and I get a call on Christmas day: “Hey, they just nailed an eviction notice to our door.”

MIKE: Get the fuck out…

MICHAEL: Yeah. I get back a week later and like, a day after I get back we go to court. I just watch this lawyer for this realty company – because it wasn’t the owner who managed it; it was a realty company that managed it – they just call case after case after case where they’re evicting these people, and the people aren’t there so it’s just like, “Tandem Realty wins.” Boom, boom, boom, boom. And they call our case, our lawyer stands up, their lawyer looks over at our lawyer and is like, “oh shit.” He’s like, “could I have a sidebar, your honor?” And they walk outside, come back in? Our lawyer’s like, “Yeah, they’ll drop the case and give you your security deposit back if you guys leave by the end of the month.” We had two shows after it happened: one for my buds in Ivadell-

MIKE: OUR buds in Ivadell!

MICHAEL: Yeah! And then the last show that ever happened there was for this powerviolence band, ACxDC. The house looked great, I took a ton of pictures from it – they actually used those pictures in the Craigslist listing for rent now. When I lived there it was $975/month total. Now it’s $2500/month total, plus $2500 security deposit, first and last month’s rent due at move-in.

MIKE: And is it still capped at three people living there?

MICHAEL: I don’t know, I actually delivered a pizza there the other day-

MIKE: Oh man, that’s brutal.

MICHAEL: I knocked on the door and I was like, “this is weird but could I come in and take a look around for a second? I used to live here.” And they were like, “holy shit...you’re the dude!” And I’m like, “what?” And they’re like, “we know about you.” So I walked in and hung out. It was just a bunch of Vanderbilt college kids smoking weed in there, and I really wanna knock on the door and be like, “Hey...I will pay half of your rent for a month – let me do another show here.” It would be amazing. I’m not saying that it’s going to happen but it’d be very, very fun to do a throwback, you know? Have a bunch of bands that were very important to me playing there. All that to say, the house was super important to me and I think it’s definitely one of the most foundational parts of who I am. I learned way more running that house, throwing almost 400 shows in three years there than I did in four years of music business school. So I guess to circle back around to your question of, “what do you say to people that are uncomfortable with a house taking a cut?” Why am I required to give of myself for three and a half years – so much effort, so much time, honestly so much money – so that other people can have a good time? Why should the burden only fall on one person? Whenever another house in Nashville called The Other Basement fell apart – not really “fell apart,” Belmont bought the house and caused them to move out – they needed a place to throw shows, I let them throw shows at my house. I was like, “you guys take 70% of the money, I’ll take 30% of the money because it’s my house just so we can make sure that everything stays above board.” I remember the person who I let throw shows there, one time at a show two of our inputs got broken and I had to hunt them down for like…$40 or something. Like the band still made a decent amount of money; they only had to pay one touring band. And I wake up the next day, and they and all of their friends had just flamed me on the internet. “Fake DIY, bullshit, capitalist taking money, blah blah blah.” They even brought it up in an interview with a magazine. They didn’t call me out specifically by name but they were like, “there are some houses in Nashville that are masquerading as DIY and they totally are not.” And I’m like...if DIY means that I should put in a ton of effort so that you can do what you want and not have to pay me anything, then fuck DIY.

[music]

MIKE: How much do you think that same mindset spills over into...I think people expect a lot from artists now. I don’t know exactly what caused the sea change, I want to say maybe it was Radiohead “pay-what-you-want,” maybe that kind of opened the floodgates to this expectation that art should free. And I think that it should be accessible and affordable, but there’s a cost to all of it. How do you navigate that mindset?

MICHAEL: The world that we live in is currently set up in a capitalistic way and if you truly value the art that your favorite artists are creating, then you should want them to be able to live a sustainable life off that. I’m not asking to be rich. I’m asking to be able to pay my rent and bills off of my art, and people don’t get that a lot of times. They think that artists themselves are being exploitative and I would argue that oftentimes it’s fanbases’ unreasonable expectations that creates the real exploitation.

MIKE: Like…“exploitative” of what? Like a gas tank worth of money? I think you could just as easily say to anyone who’s saying “this house is fake DIY” or whatever…“Yo, why don’t you come see me at the pizza place that I work at because obviously the house show thing isn’t paying the bills. I’m not raking it in from Secret Stuff money.”

MICHAEL: Exactly.

MIKE: So here’s another venture that I wanna bring up is More Than Me Touring – booking tours for other people.

MICHAEL: Yes.

MIKE: You have to like doing it. You have to find some kind of satisfaction because it’s not a lot of fun.

MICHAEL: I joke around a lot with my friends that are promoters and especially my friends that are also agents that booking is the worst part of the music industry. It’s the most thankless job and it’s a ton of work.

MIKE: When does that come in? When do you decide to start not necessarily Doing It Yourself...I mean I guess YOU’RE doing it YOURself…

MICHAEL: Helping other people Do It Themselves...Together. [laughs]

MIKE: Does that speak to a larger aspirational mindset? Like, “DIY is cool, but…” everybody wants to get to the point where somebody’s doing stuff for them.

MICHAEL: I was literally having this conversation with Tyler from Save Face on the drive over here. We were talking about...honestly the biggest reason why I would want to get to a point where our bands were “big” and we had a team around us is that it would free up more time to be able to create more meaningful art. Like that’s honestly my whole endgame. I want to be able to create art that matters to people, and I don’t want it to just be like, “oh I have to go home and I have to work 70 hours a week delivering food” and all this stuff where I don’t have time to make the album that I want. And that’s literally the story of my summer. We recorded all these instrumental demos in May over three days. I had half the songs done lyrically and it took me like...three and a half months because I just did not have time to sit down and try to make art. I literally finished the last two songs’ lyrics the day before we left for this tour because it was just like, “I have to get it done so we can go and shop these demos around, because otherwise I’m going to have to postpone studio time until I personally can pull in the thousands of dollars that it’s going to take to create this thing the way I want.”

MIKE: You’re telling me.

MICHAEL: I basically would use the money that I made booking tours to be like, “okay, this is my savings. I’m putting this into a mutual fund or Bitcoin because it’s essentially money that I don’t need immediately to be able to live,” that’s why I have a job.

MIKE: “Funny money.”

MICHAEL: This other stuff I can put away so that I can feel like, “okay, I can still chase these creative endeavors and not wreck my 40s through 70s.”

MIKE: Just in doing that you’re leagues ahead of most other folks doing this because I haven’t been in a regular touring rotation since March of 2016, that was the last long run I went on. I’ve done a week here, a week there, but since then...I have a savings account now. [laughs] It’s not much, but that should’ve started when I got out of college,

MICHAEL: Yeah, and it feels good too honestly. Having that safety net provides so much mental comfort and emotional support. They say “money can’t buy happiness,” but it sure as hell can keep some anxiety away.

MIKE: I don’t know that it necessarily feels better than being out doing what you’re doing and getting out there.

MICHAEL: And that’s the gamble that I’m taking is that I don’t think it does. Otherwise I’d like to think I’m a fairly logical person and if I thought that music was not going to be as fulfilling as working a full-time job at home and spending all my time with my girlfriend and dog, then I wouldn’t do music. No reasonable person would.

MIKE: Opportunity cost...yeah I don’t know how much of it I would consider to be “rational.” But in terms of booking other people’s shit, are you still doing it?

MICHAEL: Yeah I’m still doing it. I’m about to get started on doing some more stuff for next year. Like I said, I took a little bit of a break. It’s been a rough year, I’ve had a lot of bad things happen to people in my family...car wrecks, etc. Like I said before, it’s nice to not have that responsibility on my shoulders but I think I’m ready to take on more, which is not something I thought I would be saying [laughs]

MIKE: So you kind of ramped up for a while, got really into it and then scaled back?

MICHAEL: Yeah, I had a roster that was a lot bigger. Some of my bands have been poached, moved onto larger agencies-

MIKE: That’s good!

MICHAEL: It’s good! I mean, it’s something you know will happen, and you just have ot hope that you did a good enough job that they’ll be loyal for as long as they feasibly can be. I don’t want anyone’s careers or their pursuit of art to be held back by any loyalty to me if I’m not doing a good enough job. And I’ll be the first to admit that I’ve totally fumbled some tours and stuff, but everyone does.

MIKE: I’ve had my own experiences with folks doing that. And it’s funny because the person who...well, he didn’t actually fumble our tour, but everyone else around us that was working with this individual –

MICHAEL: I think I know who you’re talking about.

MIKE: I think you probably do. So we actually got a tour out of it, which is crazy.

MICHAEL: That person’s fumbles I would credit as being what started More Than Me Touring.

MIKE: Really?

MICHAEL: Yeah. A lot of my friends were working with them and had very negative experiences and were left hanging. At the time, I was pretty much just booking for Secret Stuff and I was like, “I have these contacts, I know how to put together tours.” We toured a lot more than a lot of similar bands in our bracket, I would say, so why I don’t put these to work helping my friends? And that’s kind of where the name More Than Me came from too. I wanted to give back to more than just me, and ironically enough it has pretty consistently always been just me doing it though. I’ve had some people that I’ve worked with but they’ve come and gone for various reasons and it can be definitely stressful to have all that fall right on only one person’s shoulders.

MIKE: Absolutely. It’s kind of funny – did you find when you were booking other people’s tours, were you more effective at it or at least more able to devote time when you were on tour yourself? That was the experience that I had.

MICHAEL: Really?

MIKE: So the guy who booked us – it was hard to get in touch with him or at least it was hard to hear back until his band was on this full US run and he would respond like [snaps fingers] that, because he was sitting in a van doing nothing.

MICHAEL: He just had time in the van. I honestly had kind of an opposite experience? I do get that feeling especially the first week of being on tour, like “okay, I have time in a van and if I’m riding with another band or whatever, then yeah.” Other times, touring takes up a lot of your mental energy and you give a lot. You’re very emotionally invested in your sets, so sometimes I don’t want to be in constant communication with a ton of other people. I’m already being very outgoing and extroverted at a show; I don’t want to have to do that in my alone time so I’d just rather read or play Civilizations 5 on my computer.

MIKE: So how much in a year are you on the road? Could be just you, and it could be you with a band, Secret Stuff full band?

MICHAEL: Over the past three years where we’ve been fairly active it’s been over 100 days a year. Last year we broke 150...this year [2017] I purposely scaled back because I knew that I was getting a dog-

MIKE: And you were writing a record.

MICHAEL: Exactly, I’m writing a record and I know that realistically it’ll be out in the summer, so I’m expecting for the second half of 2018 to be out almost the entire time, because I want to really push it as hard as I can and maybe hit the next level if possible. But like I said before, I just want to be able to create art in a sustainable way.

MIKE: You’ve gotta be like me where you plan out a whole year, like we’ll do a month at the beginning of the year, take a few months off to recoup – is that kind of how you structure it?

MICHAEL: Yeah, and I kinda take it comes sometimes too, because I want to be on tour with bands that I really like.

MIKE: So you get offers?

MICHAEL: Yeah, so if other people are going out on tours...For this tour, for example, I’ve been Save Face’s agent for like three years and they were going to be on a west coast tour right before, but it ended up not working out. Some stuff wasn’t coming together and they were like, “we should definitely take some time for ourselves,” because they hit it hard. They’ve done like 220 days in the past 17 months or something.

MIKE: Jesus Christ.

MICHAEL: It’s pretty crazy. They’re true road warriors, so this is pretty nice because they’re about to be at the end of their album cycle and they’ve got a new record, and it was just like, “let’s just go on tour with people that we really like and not worry so much about whether or not the shows are good or bad, just be out there and enjoy the process.” So I would say yeah, I plan my year, but I leave myself more open than some other people.

MIKE: And is part of it that, as Secret Stuff, you’re adaptable to play solo or with your band?

MICHAEL: Definitely, and if I had my way I’d be playing full band every tour except for the tours that are specifically marketed as “solo tours,” because I really like those. But whenever I’m doing solo on a tour that was booked for me to be full band, sometimes the venues are different. Sometimes I’m playing with a bunch of fuckin’ loud rock bands, so it’s like, “oh are these people that are here to rock out really going to care about this guy whining on the mic over ultra reverby guitar by himself?” And a lot of times I’m surprised that people stay inside; they don’t just go smoke the whole time. But sometimes they do, and it’s super disheartening when that happens.

MIKE: No, what they want to hear is an ultra whiny guy on the mic with a bassist and a drummer.

MICHAEL: Yes, exactly. See, they’re like, “where’s...where’s the rhythm?”

MIKE: Changes everything.

MICHAEL: My dad would listen to my music and say, “it’s gotta have a beat, son. It’s gotta have a beat!”

[music]

MIKE: So do you come from a musical family?

MICHAEL: Not at all. Like, I love my parents so, so much, but they are so tone deaf. [laughs] My sister can sing very well, but I do not know where either of us got it, at all. We’re not a musical family, like at all.

MIKE: What got you into it then?

MICHAEL: It’s gonna sound super cheesy, but listening to The Devil And God in sixth grade…

[v/o slow down]

MIKE: Whoops! Hey everybody, Mike here...obviously now you can tell that this episode of Sellin’ Out was recorded conveniently right before we found out that Jesse Lacey is a great big piece of shit. Maybe you already knew that. I left this once reference in; I thought it was contextually important, but if you hear any choppy edits between here and the rest of the interview, that would be me removing any extraneous, superfluous references to unsavory characters like that. If you have any questions, concerns, any pause about editorial decisions that I’ve made in cutting these shows, feel free to reach out to me at [email protected]. I think we’re clear of that from here on out though. Should be out of the woods, so enjoy of the rest of the interview thanks byeeeee

[v/o speed up]

MICHAEL: And there came a time in my life in junior year of high school where...I was a pretty good lacrosse player in high school and I was getting some college offers, and I was thinking, “do I want to pursue this and go into medicine? Or do I want to go to Belmont and pursue music and music business?” And I was just thinking, “what is going to be more different every day? What can I do longer and still feel fresh?” And I thought music, and certainly that’s the a lot harder, less sustainable choice, but I don’t regret it at all. So that’s really how that all came about.

MIKE: Does that still factor in today? What’s your ideal situation? What are you working toward or is it just a constant work?

MICHAEL: It’s a constant work. I just want to be able to create music, and I said this on...my buddy Alex hosts a podcast called The Local Wave-

MIKE: Oh yeah, I listened to it in preparation for this so I wouldn’t go over the same shit. That was the one little thing I did.

MICHAEL: [laughs] Nice!

MIKE: I tried.

MICHAEL: Yeah, so like I said on there before...I want to be the biggest fuckin’ band in the world. And yeah, that might be like, “oh wow, who’s this asshole?” but...I don’t know! I want to create meaningful art and I want my art to be meaningful to as many people as possible. That doesn’t mean that I won’t be happy if that’s not what happens.

MIKE: When you get right down to it, that’s got to be everybody. I don’t think they would admit it, necessarily; I think there’s this aversion to – and I kind of get it too, because have you ever heard something that just...wicked fucking sucks? And you’re like, “I don’t want any crossover with this whole segment of people who like this thing.” But that’s such a learned way to think because in theory, music is art; you’ve got to share it. It’s sustained and given new meaning through osmosis and from person to person, especially at a larger scale. So I heard that, that was something where my ears pricked up. It’s an unusually unapologetic attitude.

MICHAEL: And I think specifically in DIY there is this aversion to desiring success, or aversion to publicly proclaiming your desire for success.

MIKE: Yeah! There’s an aloofness, a devil-may-care-

MICHAEL: Which, like, cool – *you* might not care, but this is the most important thing in the entire world to me.

MIKE: I wonder if part of that comes from...what you and I do, musically it’s still a niche. Maybe there’s a lot of kids who are into it, and that’s cool, but it’s not enough to coast by. You’re not selling millions of albums or anything like that, so I wonder if that “limited audience” thing has been internalized to say, “there’s a ceiling on this.”

MICHAEL: I think so, and you see the same thing happen with...I think people feel threatened that the mainstream is starting to accept this band into their own cultural zeitgeist, and I think that that threatens the “specialness” of the music to some people. I’ll totally admit that I’m guilty of that too, where this band has a lot of hype-

MIKE: Oh, we all are. And I think that threat is maybe warranted to some degree because part of that is an aversion to something like, say, Red Bull showing up at your house and putting you on camera, or maybe like...Vice News doing a writeup about the Springfield, IL scene. I get the aversion to that, but at the end of the day it’s a small community in the larger music community. There’s also a shitload of bands, and as much as I don’t like to frame it in terms of competition, they are competing for a limited amount of resources, so looking into a crystal ball, where does that go? Is it just more and more bands until it’s a fluid barrier between artist and...like, that relationship is certainly not what it was.

MICHAEL: Yeah, and I think the internet is all to blame or to credit for that.

MIKE: Equal parts.

MICHAEL: I think it’s become so much easier to find people that share this niche interest. It’s become much easier to create the music that you want to create. You have a laptop, or you even have an iPhone – there are people that are able to create the music that they want on that.

MIKE: The fucking guy who did the beat for Kendrick on his iPhone…

MICHAEL: Yeah! It’s crazy!

MIKE: What a jerk.

MICHAEL: It will just continue to grow and I don’t necessarily see that as a problem. I don’t think that the barrier between consumer and creator necessarily means that there will be less consumers. I think that people that make art should also be able to appreciate other peoples’ art. I can totally see it when bands are in bands, you can sometimes not want to be as vocally about what some of your friends are doing. But some of the coolest bands I’ve seen and some of the coolest communities I’ve seen have that in it. They have bands that are so vocally about what their friends are doing and are so for it that it is infectious. Like for example, even locally here, Counter Intuitive Records. The bands that are on that are so into the other bands that are on Counter Intuitive. It’s absolutely infectious and viral. It makes you feel good.

MIKE: I will say that that example specifically gives me an optimism about it, and it’s not necessarily a new thing. Growing up – and obviously we’re a couple years separated, but – that’s what I remember about it is the sense of community before...I mean, the internet was always around when I was growing up, but really with social networking it broke open geographic barriers, where not only are there more bands, there are more bands that tour now.

MICHAEL: And that does create a problem with scarcity of resources-

MIKE: Yeah, and that’s why I would frame it as a problem. Because if there are three shows going on in Boston tonight, you’re not gonna put six touring bands on a show.

MICHAEL: That’s another aspect that is good about the greater number of bands coming up. Secret Stuff can’t play local shows the amount of times a year that we used to. We want to play shows in Nashville once every two months. I love playing at home, but if you play too much you’re going to kill your draw, and we totally did that. We totally killed our draw where people were just like, “I don’t care, I’ll go see them next week in their living room.” But the thing is, there are always so many touring bands coming through, so there needs to be bands that do that.

MIKE: Yeah, it’s like a cyclical creation of demand. And it’s not necessarily demand from...maybe kids don’t want to go to shows six nights a week. Because you probably could have them. Boston is a market where that happens.

MICHAEL: Yeah. It happens in Nashville! It used to happen just at my house. Exponent was very blessed to have a sort of built-in crowd of people that would just come. “There’s a show at Exponent, I’m gonna go hang out.” I wanted to make it a space where everyone could feel like they were at home, and the #1 feedback that I always got at Exponent was “it deosn’t feel like a party.” A lot of house shows, you go and it’s all about the party. And it’s supposed to be all about the music there. I don’t drink; that culture beguiles me, so I didn’t necessarily set out to make it *not* a place to go and have these debaucherous parties, but-

MIKE: I think people are gonna do that...

MICHAEL: Yeah, and that’s fine, and there totally were people...Free Throw loves to drink and they’d play shows at my house all the time, but that’s not the main focus.

MIKE: I also think that having a few drunk folks is like, “well, you know, maybe they’ll open the wallet.”

MICHAEL: Exactly! [laughs] I’ve totally sold merch to people that thought I was in a different band because they were drunk. Just another aside, we played a show with The Menzingers right before this tour and this industry person came up to me and talked to me for like, 45 minutes. It’s a person that I know, I definitely know who they are, I tried to get a job as their assistant...they definitely do not know who I am. They thought I was in The Menzingers. They were drunk and thought I was the frontman of The Menzingers, and he introduced me to his fiancée, took me backstage to hang out with Bayside...I went and asked my friend who was the promoter for the show, “he thinks I’m someone else. Should I correct him?”

MIKE: Definitely not.

MICHAEL: He’s like, “You’ll just confuse him, he’s not going to remember who you are in the morning anyway. Just let him roll.”

MIKE: Just roll with it.

MICHAEL: [laughs]

[music]

MIKE: As always, if you like what you heard today I urge you to support Michael however you see fit. I’ll have the pertinent links and info in the description of this episode. If you want to support the show, you can find out how to do that at Patreon.com/sellinout, and I’m still taking submissions for what you want for bonus content at [email protected], or on Twitter @SellinOutAD. Leave a nice rating & review on Apple Podcasts, it helps others find the show – or you can just pick whichever friend has the worst forearm tattoos and the most asymmetrical haircut and hip them to it personally. Our theme song is “No Cab Fare” by Such Gold; photography by Nick DiNatale. I’m Mike Moschetto, this is Sellin’ Out.

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