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sellinout · 7 years ago

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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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365-money-diary · 8 years ago

Text

DAYS 43 - 48

DAY FORTY-THREE

8:45 AM - Wow. Determined to not spend a boatload of money this week. I picked the wrong time for a coffee subscription to kick in as well as buy IKEA stuff AND go to Costco. I grab my brown rice from the fridge and head to work.

9:10 AM - I arrive at work, pour myself a toddy, and make some toast. I pour the last batch so I make more for the rest of the week.

12:30 PM - I walk the long way to Sprouts and grab a cucumber and two avos which are on sale. I bring them back to the office and make salad with the rest of the stuff I have lying around and eat that with my broth & rice. $1.72

3:00 PM - My period is definitely approaching because I can’t stop craving something sweet. I grab my assistant and we head to Starbucks and I buy a coffee Frappuccino with coconut milk. I’ve got a gift card from forever ago, so it’s free!

4:00 PM - I ask boyfriend about dinner. He says, “we’ll see,” which means we’re probably going out to eat. My hyperness has lead me to the vegan baking part of Pinterest and I realize I have almost everything at home to make carrot cake.

4:50 PM - I dip out a little early and walk to Sprouts. I buy powdered sugar, a tub of Tofutti cream cheese, nutmeg, and apple sauce. $9.70

5:45 PM - While the cake is baking, I eat a pita with some butter slathered on it.

7:00 PM - CAKE! I fucked up the frosting though and consult a vegan Facebook group for tips. I try again it comes out much better. I peel off the old frosting and add the new.

9:00 PM - We haven’t eaten dinner yet and while I’m not actually hungry, I go with it. We run to Chipotle really quick and I get a salad with black beans, veggies, corn, pico, and guac. Boyfriend pays.

10:30 PM - Today’s weird eating habits make sense to me because my period is finally here.

11:00 PM - Boyfriend and I fall asleep watching a rerun of the final Celtics v. Wizards game.

DAY FORTY-THREE TOTAL: $11.42

DAY FORTY-FOUR

8:30 AM - I wake up feeling like I was hit by a brick, usually my periods aren’t too bad but since this urinary tract stuff, it’s been very unpredictable. I hop in the shower and am excited to try the new conditioners I purchased from LUSH last week. I follow the advice of the lady who sold me the products and use the samples first.

9:15 AM - I arrive at work and I decide that I like the conditioner! My hair smells like baby powder and it feels nice and soft. The only thing I am worried about with this stuff is the cost and that it overall might not be worth it to me. I pour myself some toddy and toast some bread and spread some avocado on top.

11:15 AM - My 11:00 cancelled and my office wants to try the Chicken Chips from Taco Bell. Taco Bell is an exception to eating out Monday - Thursday since it’s so cheap. I get a Crunchwrap Supreme sub beans, no cheese, no sour cream and a water cup. $3.55

2:30 PM - I keep thinking about all the carrot cake I have at home while I dig a little deeper into my Discover Weekly playlist. There is a jam by Psychic TV, so I look to see the cost of the record and it’s $40. A little rich for my blood, so I decide to listen to the entire thing to see if it’s worth it.

4:45 PM - I roll up to QT on below empty. $24.64

5:00 PM - Home! I eat so much cake. Boyfriend calls and asks if I have it in me to go to Tucson to see Conor Oberst and I definitely am! It’s been years since I’ve seen him perform.

6:00 PM - We head to Tucson for the show and end up taking my car just in case boyfriend gets tired so I can drive us back. (He drives a stick and I don't know how to drive it.) His company booked the show so we don’t have to pay for it. Double perks because he also used to work at the venue the show is happening at and left on great terms, so everyone is super friendly to us.

8:30 PM - We arrive at the show. Boyfriend needs a water so we stop by concessions. They give it to him for free. He doesn't have cash so I offer to throw in a buck for tip. $1

10:00 PM - The show is amazing! I run into a friend from Omaha (my hometown) who is selling merch for Conor and she gifts me with a engraved commemorative harmonica. So sweet of her.

12:30 AM - We are home! I eat blueberries, applesauce and a half of a pita and pass out.

DAY FORTY-FOUR TOTAL: $28.19

DAY FORTY-FIVE

8:30 AM - I am so wiped, but driving to Tucson was so worth it!

9:15 AM - I arrive at the office and pour myself a toddy and make a piece of toast with Earth Balance. I sit down to my desk and see that I have an invitation from Facebook to participate in a research study and will get a $100 Amazon gift card if they pick me. I reply quickly and fill out the NDA.

10:30 AM - I work on my stuff while continuing to listen to that Psychic TV album. Only half of it is on Youtube and it’s not on Spotify, so I might just cave for the sake of “obscurity.” I take a chance one one of the listings which allows sellers to make an offer. It’s listed for $44 and make an offer of $35. The seller instantly accepts and I am still paying $40 including shipping, but hey at least that’s the median price it sells for and not $10 more. $40

1:00 PM - I walk to Sprouts super quick and grab a Big Sur Breakfast Burrito and a giant tub of nutritional yeast (It will last me 6 months.) which are both on sale so I save $6.50. $22.09

1:30 PM - I eat my burrito with some broth & rice. Facebook emails me back and wants me to do the research study. Yay $100 (upon completion)!

5:45 PM - I arrive home and see that my dress from Etsy came. I try it on and it’s a total winner! I eat a small slice of cake, watch the East Coast Finals with my boyfriend, and dip out to meet some friends for dinner.

7:30 PM - I meet my friend and his new girlfriend at Noodle Bar downtown. We take our time dining and it’s really fun and super nice to see my friend with someone who seems to be evenly paced with him. He bought me a record in LA so I pay him back for it. $8

9:00 PM - Our server cashes (apparently that’s not a word) us out. Food’s 9 something but I feel weird tipping anything under 3. $12

10:30 PM - My boyfriend shows me the first episode of Trailer Park Boys and I get it now, but I still think it’s stupid.

DAY FORTY-FIVE TOTAL: $82.09

DAY FORTY-FIVE

8:45 AM - I refill my half gallon mason jar with broth and head to work.

9:15 AM - Toddy and toast. Same old routine.

1:15 PM - I’ve spent three hours straight in meetings. My boss heads to Even Stevens for food and offers to buy mine since I make a cringy face about spending money on lunch Monday - Thursday (and because I kicked our last meeting in the butt!). I get the Jackfruit Torta. It rules.

4:20 PM - Broth life with brown rice. Will this keep me from eating more cake when I get home? Probably not.

5:30 PM - Cake. I eat some applesauce too.

7:00 PM - My boyfriend is feeling pretty good after the launch of ticket sales for the new venue his company is opening, so we go to AZ Mills. We’re surprised to find that the entire Nike Store is 40% off. He ends up buying two pairs of shoes, a pair of basketball shorts, and a ridiculous shirt with Michael Jordan on it for me.

8:30 PM - We stop by Zia to look at records. I don’t find anything, but I’m also not complaining.

9:00 PM - I am up for whatever in terms of food, so I let boyfriend pick and we end up at Chipotle. I get my usual -- a salad with black beans, veggies, corn, pico, and guac with medium salsa on the side. We take home our food and I drizzle a little ranch on top -- I know, sounds gross but don’t knock until you try it. I cover our food. Dang Chipotle is cheap! $14.05

9:30 PM - We spend the rest of the night watching really ancient basketball games. I pass out a little after 10.

DAY FORTY-FIVE TOTAL: $14.05

DAY FORTY-SIX

9:20 AM - I arrive to work a little late this morning on account of having to shower badly. I pour myself a toddy and skip the toast. I’m still really full from last night. I have a ton of really tiny things to do today which is the least favorite part of my job. I sit down, make a list, and start plugging away.

11:45 AM - Office decides to grab lunch at Olive & Ivy. I get a salad with couscous, almonds, onion, and tomato and decide to jump the gun and try a sangria. I wasn’t going to drink until next Friday but I’ve been missing it so bad. $25.59

1:30 PM - I’m not sure if that sangria was worth it and I’m probably still too sensitive. I take some Midol which should calm my bladder down because it feels a little agitated.

2:00 PM - My first MistoBox subscription has arrived! I have 1.5 more pounds of super old coffee to go through before I can start using the new stuff, but it smells so good and I’m very excited!

3:00 PM - Phew! Feeling better. I also heat up some broth for good measure.

5:45 PM - Home from work! I make plans to grab dinner with a friend who just graduated from ASU. She basically put herself through school with no parents (literally) and is planning to move to Chicago. I cut her a check to help with the move and to congratulate her. I’ll also treat her to the dinner place of her choice. $100

6:00 PM - My friend arrives at my house. We head to Phoenix and dine at Crescent Ballroom where my boyfriend actually happens to be working. We don’t really see him because, you know, he’s working. Our food takes a while to come out and it gets comped. I make our server charge us for something so I can tip the shit out of her. She charges $1.09 for the chips and I tip $15 on top. $16.09

8:30 PM - We head back to Tempe and grab a drink at Casey’s. My friend doesn’t drink and grabs a ginger beer. I decide to take another chance and get a cider with a water. $10.50

10:00 PM - I drop my friend off and head home. I spend the rest of the night finishing season 2 of LOVE and texting my boyfriend who seems to have gotten stuck working the later event at Crescent which is a Beyonce vs. Rihanna DJ tribute night. Apparently tons of sassy ladies in stiletto heels are getting thrown out left and right!

DAY FORTY-SIX: $152.18

DAY FORTY-SEVEN

9:30 AM - I am surprised to find that my boyfriend is already awake. I thought we’d be sleeping until 11 because of his hectic week, but he is ready to hit the town. We head to Cartel and get a tiny hookup on our drinks from a new employee my boyfriend has made friends with. $6.50

10:30 AM - We head over to combo Einstein’s Caribou to grab bagels. Boyfriend pays.

11:00 AM - Since the Nike Store was 40% on Thursday, we head back over to AZ Mills only to discover they’ve changed it to 30%. Boyfriend buys two pairs of kicks, and then we head to the Adidas Outlet. I buy a shirt there. $18.95

11:30 AM - We head to Central Phoenix stopping at a couple record stores and bookstores, but both come up dry.

2:30 PM - Boyfriend wants Sweet Tomatoes, and I’m okay with it. I eat so fast and feel like death. He covers the tab and I leave a couple bucks on the table. $2

3:30 PM - Post Sweet Tomatoes nap because it’s basically mandatory.

5:00 PM - I wake up and make my way to the kitchen and eat the last piece of cake because I’m groggy and don’t have an excuse. I look outside at the weeds and start to get stressed. The dishes are piling up, dust is literally settling, and we haven’t folded laundry in what feels like a decade. But then I see while scrolling through Facebook my favorite local hardcore band (Gay Kiss) released its final 7”. I buy it. $9.50

5:15 PM - Why did I eat that cake?

5:30 PM - I clean the counters, do the dishes, and take out the trash. Boyfriend wakes up and we fold laundry together while watching the first half of the GSW v. Spurs game.

8:00 PM - We head out to grab some dinner. Originally we planned to hit La Santisima, but it’s too busy so we run over to Phoenix Public Market. We both get their veggie sandwich and he gets fries. I cover the tab. $31.06

9:30 PM - We end up going back to Zia in Central Phoenix and spend a long time browsing through movies. We end up finding the very expensive Criterion section and we both pick some titles and split them. I get Rosemary’s Baby and after a 20% coupon and using my points, it comes out to a more reasonable price. $16.28

10:30 PM - We arrive home, I make some popcorn on the stove, and we watch Moonrise Kingdom together -- neither of us had seen it before. It was so good.

1:00 AM - I browse for Suzy dresses on Etsy and pass out.

DAY FORTY-SEVEN TOTAL: $84.29

DAY FORTY-EIGHT

11:00 AM - We leave the house and pick up coffee, (Boyfriend pays.) and head to Zia to kill a couple minutes before meeting our friends at La Santisima for lunch.

12:00 PM - I get the fried avocado taco and a gandhi vegan taco. It’s nice to catch up with friends -- they invite us to go for beers after but my boyfriend comes up with an excuse because he’s not feeling well.

1:30 PM - I have been working on this e-commerce project for a while and saving up to launch it. My designer finally sent the revised designs earlier this week so I spend the rest of my afternoon making ref files and learning my way around the Live Paint Tool in Illustrator.

5:00 PM - Designs sent! Wow I hate Illustrator.

5:30 PM - We watch the Cavs v. Celtics game and order Jimmy Johns. At half time, I get bored so I make snickerdoodle cookies. $17.99

8:00 PM - Celtics hit a three at the buzzer and they win! Plus the cookies are great. Boyfriend and I each eat three.

9:00 PM - We head to Bookmans in Mesa but both leave empty handed.

10:00 PM - We end the night by watching a 30 for 30 documentary about Wayne Gretzky.

DAY FORTY-EIGHT TOTAL: $17.99

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