Interview with Mike Hale - Podcast 59

This is Mike Hale from Asian Man Records. You're listening to Sound Scene Revolution.

♪ music ♪

This very special Mother's Day edition, I guess. We're only a couple of days late, so. I know what I got your mom for Mother's Day. What did you get her? Hopefully penicillin, after what I got her. But anyhow, it's not talking about how I gave your mom the clap. We have a very cool episode coming up with Mike Hale, originally from Gainesville, Florida area. From a band called Gunmall. Now lives in Santa Barbara area. We'll discuss more on him in a minute, but first we have some winners of some contests that have been running for about a decade now that I want to get to. So, first contest winner is going to be for the Fake Problems Contest. And that is going to be Jeff M. out of Greeley, Colorado. C.O. is Colorado, I believe.

That's cool. We got people in Colorado who at least listen long enough to enter the contest. Congratulations, Jeff. You will be winning a Fake Problems 7-inch, I believe, a copy of their t-shirt, which is designed by Mitch Clem. And I think there might be something else in there, but there may not be. I don't remember. It's been a long time. So next up we have our Riverboat Gamblers Contest. And we have two winners. The first winner gets like a CD, and then the second winner gets a CD, a 7-inch t-shirt. And so the second place winner is Mark out of Lauderdale, Florida, which is pretty cool because it's like a party town. So if I'm ever down there for spring break, Mark, maybe you can show me them jugs, right?

Yeah. And then the first place winner is Drew F. out of San Angelo, Texas. Which really, if you're from Texas, you shouldn't have to enter a Riverboat Gamblers Contest as they are from Texas. But congratulations, Drew. You are the winner. I think Drew said his favorite comic book character was the Hulk, which is pretty fucking cool. So I personally am excited for World War Hulk because I am a nerd, and I spend most of my evenings alone reading comics. But on another note, before we jump into the interview with Mike Hale, I want to say thanks to, we got a couple of listeners who are pretty regular, and they send comments and emails and supportive stuff pretty regularly. And I just, I want to take a real honest moment to say that's pretty cool.

And we're just two guys who do this because we're pretty much not talented at anything else, and we're not really good at this, but we have talented people on, so it masks the fact that we suck. So the fact that anyone takes the time to write us or say thank you or even enter these contests is really, really cool. And, you know, I hope you guys enjoy it, and I hope the guys who enter the contest feel it was worth their time, and I hope everyone who listens just, you know, I'm just happy that you do it. And we pretty much just do it for fun, and the fact that anyone else gets a kick out of it is just fucking amazing to us. So thank you guys, everyone who listens and enters and writes and all that. So that's pretty awesome.

So I want to get into the interview with Mike Hale. Before we do that, we have a contest this week, new contest after like two weeks. Really fucking awesome contest. So Mike Hale hooked us up with a demo CD of five songs which have yet to be released. They're not like demo in his house. They're actual studio recordings. They just haven't been released. So we have a CDR of Mike Hale's demos to give away, which is pretty cool. And then in addition to that, they had these 7 Inches for sale at the show that I had to pick up. So I got one for myself, and I got one that we're going to give away here. These are Chuck Regan's 7 Inches that accompanied the pre-order of his Los Feliz CD on BYO. So they didn't get enough.

They didn't get 600 pre-orders, I guess. So they're selling them on tour. So these are two songs that are going to be on Chuck Regan's new full length coming out in the summer. And it's two songs, one 7 Inch. There's 600 of them pressed. That's all they're ever going to make. And they're all signed by Chuck Regan. So you're going to get the Mike Hale CDR of his demos and a limited edition autographed Chuck Regan 7 Inch, hand-numbered, I think it's 315 out of 600. So that's pretty cool. We'll tell you how to enter that contest at the end. But first, we got some music from Mike Hale. It's off his CDR. None of the songs really have names, and I don't feel like looking it up or writing them to ask him. So enjoy the song, and we will see you guys in a minute.

♪ song played ♪

Do you know the name of the place? No, Mike doesn't know San Jose We're in San Jose with Mike Hale If you could say hello Hi Hi So that's Mike So I guess the easiest place to start is Like a brief history of your background and music and all that Brief history I'm from Gainesville, Florida Play at a band called Gun Mall No Idea Records Moved out here to Be with a girl I love We're married now And I play in a rock band called In The Red And We have A couple releases out One On One, two, three, four, go records out of San Francisco And one on TikTok records out of Charleston, South Carolina I think we've got an LP coming out On No Idea Soon And That's landed me here Still doing acoustic shows For Asian Man Records And that's where I'm at Alright That's where we are We're here Stuck in my car Fantastic It's not so bad Stuck in your car No, it's a great car It's my life It's got a sunroof It's very spacious I'm surprised I figured, you know Most traveling musicians Real small cars No, it's just one night Just one night And taking it from her If it was like a month She wouldn't let you take it No, probably not I wouldn't let you take it If I had a nice car So I guess From there Where I want to go is You Have a split release Coming out In theory On Asian Man Right No, not in theory Quite in fact In fact A split release Is what you're referring to Yes, with Chris Woodward?

Chris Wallard Wallard God Yeah Oh, it's over No I know it's kind of funny We just kind of finished A show up here With Chuck And You're asking me About a split I'm doing with With Chris The other Guitar player From Hot Water Music No, that's actually No, that's true In fact Asian Man Has all of the songs And the artwork And It can take a couple months To press out But No, it's coming out And Yeah, it's coming out For a fact It's We don't have a date yet But No, we don't have a firm date Probably about Two and a half months from now I'm looking at probably Like ten weeks Cool, cool You know Now, I had read somewhere That it was going to be Limited pressing Like rolling No There was the idea That we could make it A limited pressing Like, oh, hey This will sell You know We'll do 500 on vinyl A colored vinyl And You know Those who get it Get it And those who don't Don't And We kind of changed Our way of thinking about it You know I'm going to be playing Under the name Mike Hale For the rest of my life You know Chris is In a handful Is in You know One of the greatest bands You know I've ever known You know The draft is amazing Hot water music Was The focal point Of Of all of our music And You know But the bottom line Is He's going to be putting out Music for the rest of his life too So We You know We just decided To put it out You know Seven inch Under both of our names And Not worry about So much A limited edition But I guess the point being Is that Ten years from now If I'm If I'm playing a show In Santa Barbara Or You know Los Angeles Or whatever I want that represented You know I want that represented Of what I did With one of my My closest friends You know There's no reason To limit that I don't think You know We We Just going to keep Pressing them As long as we can Sounds like a good plan How many songs are on it You know Two each Two each It's a seven inch But I'm I'm actually Printing up A whole shit load Of The CDRs By myself At home On my My little Mac I'm just Printing one After another After another And I'm probably Going to come up here And just walk An Asian man The day that The records Get there And just start Shoving CDs In each final case So that You know Even if you Buy this evidence You still get it On a CD So you can listen To it Whenever Wherever That's cool Now you mentioned During the show You've been You got your own CDRs that you've been Giving out Where do you record Those at home Or do you do that No all my recordings Are done by My good friend Pete And Pete He's been kind enough To do this record For me And the demos Beforehand So I've got About 17 18 songs Recorded Down in solid And what I'm Releasing What I'm Giving out Demos here There's no real Thought behind it You know It's just like Okay I get to Go play with Matt and Chuck Tonight You know What do I do Hey let's pick Five songs And just burn 50 copies So that's what I'm doing for Right now That's not a bad idea Well I You know It's not like We got a ton of Money here to Just keep Mass producing it You know So I just figured You know If I can get Something to somebody For free And if they like it Then they get Some free music Well That's a good way I mean Big buzz Yeah For Almost 11 o'clock At nine It's running late It's really that late Close I'm keeping you But So I wanted to ask You're in this band And in the red Now what's Are they In the red Still active as well Yeah In the red rocks Yeah We We lost our bass player Right after we finished Recording a full length record That full length Hopefully Will Make a little appearance On No Idea Records But It was kind of A traumatic experience At the same time Directly after that Our drummer The drummer Matt He Had a baby He had a second child So A little time off there For It becoming a dad And shortly after We had some Personal tragedy In my little family So Here we are Weeks and weeks After recording our record And haven't played In a while So Our first Show Back at it Will be At the very beginning Of June But In the red Is definitely Where it's at For me Yeah As far as Rock goes Yeah You'll be doing this But you know You'd like to keep Doing a full time Rock band as well You got to Exercise both Demons You know That's the way I look at it I've been doing this For so long And You know Playing acoustic Is so great It lets you It lets you Really fulfill Something Inside of oneself Musically But You know When you come From a A little bit Of a different Background as far As what you do In a rock style You know If you can't Get away from it You just can't Get away from it Some guys Just kind of Quit and Never look back And That's just not How it works For me You know I love Screaming And I love Playing hard And I love Playing fast And that's what In the red is You know That's That's where That's what That's just what we do That's cool And you Well I guess You haven't done A lot of touring Doing solo acoustic stuff No I'm brand new at it Yeah I've been I've been recording And playing it forever But as far as Getting out and playing And actually touring And playing in front Of a lot of people Brand new at it Is it hard?

Is it different? It's really hard man It's really hard You know With an electric guitar And a band I just don't Fucking care Yeah You know Like you know What I mean You can stand up In front of A hundred people And it just Doesn't matter You know It's You're comfortable You're in your element And that's fine Here in this Kind of situation Especially like Tonight You know Opening up For Chuck and Matt You know There's a hundred Kids there Looking at you And none of them Know who the fuck You are You know They don't know Any of your songs You're waiting To get booed Off stage You know Or something Thrown at you It's different It was a lot better Than that It did It did thankfully But it's still It's a lot different It's It's um It's really putting Your heart out On a sleeve And hoping that Someone out there Just kind of Hears what you're saying You know And Most people don't Most people don't But you know They're the ones You hear chattering In the background And those 15 people That are staying quiet And inching toward The front You know Those are the people That end up saying Hey you know This is This guy's really Really singing From his heart And it's a good thing It makes me feel Really really good To be able to do this That's cool I mean I imagine In any Any type of Musical venture You gotta focus on The 10 or 15 kids And any show Who are gonna like it As opposed to If one person Will sit and listen You know Play for them That's cool That's really awesome I wanted to ask How did you get Hooked up with The Asian Man For the split release For the split release The split release Is actually A byproduct Of Of My full length I am Acoustically speaking I'm an Asian Man Artist You know I guess Is the way to put it Is the way to put it I I believe The label Not an actual I believe In what I believe In Mike Park Yeah Like There's no other Way to put it I believe In Mike Park If he was running For president I would vote For him tomorrow Yeah I believe In what he says I believe In what he does Independent music Is It's so far Beyond important With all the Bullshit That gets Shoved in your face And your little Sister's face And You know The 8th grader You see walking Around The stuff that Just pushed on Them And the music They listen to Mike Mike Park An Asian Man Records Actually stands For something You know It's beyond Important It's beyond Important How do I get Hooked up with Them Is a different Story I'm lucky Enough to come From a town Like Gainesville Florida Where rock Bands seem to Flourish and Tour together And hang out No idea Records is a Big thing There And coming From that Family Moving out To California And having A lot of Mutual friends I was able To send Mike a couple Letters You know And we have A couple Phone calls Discussing Our personal Beliefs And What we Both see And want To see Accomplished On a Musical Level The side To me That does The rock Band Will always Belong To no idea Contractually No no no No there's no No no I know What you mean No no there Is no contract Though it's There never Has been There's never Been anything More than a Handshake and A simple You record It I'll put It out You know And I adore That record Label And their Owners And And that's Where my Heart will Always stay This Acoustic Thing Is something Completely Different It's It's a Heartfelt Thing It's a Religious Thing It's It's a Lot more Than I Thought it Would be And Mike Park Owns That As far As I'm Concerned You know No one Else No other Label That I Could There's No other Label That I Could Share That

Adoring Him And What He Stands For All All right So we're Going to Take a break From the Interview There To bring You some More music From Mike Hale When we Come back At the end Be sure To listen As we Will tell You how To enter To win A Mike Hale CDR Of some Of his New and Unreleased Tracks CDR Burnt By Mike Hale Himself We

All right Here's Some more Music By Mr. Mike Hale

♪ song played ♪

About The Acoustic Side Of Things Well There's A lot Of Artists Like I mean Matt Skeba For Example Kevin Seconds Who Of All You Wouldn't Typically Expect To see Them In Kind of An Acoustic Type Scenario They've All Put Stuff Up On Asian So Yeah It's Almost Like A new Fad Yeah But You know I guess As with Anything The Strong Will Survive Those Who Really Believe In What They're Doing And Mean It Well Do It You Know Like Chuck I mean Look At That Fucking Guy Sure You know He Believes In What He's Doing I Mean He Is He's The Poster Boy For It You Know He's Out There He's Doing It And And People Respond Man Very True Very True I Want To Ask You

Show Or The Fest This Year The Fest In Gainesville Yes I Will Be Going To The Fest In Gainesville But I'll Be Playing Under In The Red The Rock Band In The Red We'll Be Playing Awesome We're Going To Touring Out There With Vina Cava And Tilt Will There And Back Whiskey Sunday Will Probably Be Joining In I'm Really Hoping That They Will So Yeah We Are In The Red We'll Definitely Be

Also The Chance Well You Never You Never Really Know If This Is Going To Happen Or Not But There's A Slim Possibility Gun Mall Might Have A Reunion Show Yeah I Read You've Never Had The Final Show For That We

I Know For For A Fact One Of Is There Right Now But And I Think In The General Scheme Of Things If You Limit Yourself To Creating Music With People You Really Like And Really Create Well With You're Just Fucking Yourself In The End Yeah And I Think That's The Bottom Line And All Of Us Agree With That So You

Hero Are Playing Their Last Show Yeah You Know But I Don't See Us Ever Doing That You Know We May Never Record Another Thing And We

You Know The Fest Is Coming Up And I Don't Think We'll Play As A Part Of The Fest But There's Usually Always Late Night After Parties Yeah That's That's What I've Thrown Down Yeah And I Think We We Would Fit Really Well Into That We've Talked About A Little Bit There's There's A There's A Good Possibility That You

Yeah Yeah Me Too I'd Be More Excited Than Anybody Else Even If No One Was There To See It Just Playing With John And Darren That's Where It's At For Me It Really Is That's That's The That's The Prize So Hopefully When We're Out That Way We'll Have A Little Bit Of Time To Get Together Yeah You Throw Down For A Night Yeah That'd Be Awesome Well We'll See We'll Wait And See How That We Will I Want to Ask One More Kind of Off Topic Question You Are A Carpenter In The Daytime I Am A Carpenter Are You Part Of Like A Secret Woodsmith Society With Chuck Reagan Because I Know He Is Also A Carpenter No Chuck And I Have Very Very Similar Background In Carpentry It Kind of Stems Back To That To That Old That Old You Know Well I'm Going To Tour For A Month Well What The Fuck Are You Going To Do When You Get Back Yeah You Know A Lot Of People Go Work Restaurant Jobs A

Chuck Did The Same The Same The Same The Same The Same The Same Rope You Know Look At It Right There Walking Around Oh Is He Just Going In Yeah He Looks Like He Wants To Build Something Doesn't He He Is Looking For A Piece Of Wood And Saw To Get Busy Yeah We Both Fell Into The Same Kind Of

Especially Living In California Where All The Money Is Rich Assholes Want To Pay Top Dollar For You Know Stupid Things To Be Done Yeah Just To Look Real No Yes You Want To Tell Them Dude Go

To Creating Something Beautiful Out Of Something Natural You Know I Know It Kind Of Seems Kind Of Weird Right Like Old Friends From The Same Town And And You Both Moved To California About The Same Time When Chuck Was Coming Out Here To Be With Jill And I Was Coming Out Here To Be With My Wife Kelly And You Just Another Thing I Will Add To The Long List Of Things I Would Love To Say About The Guy You Know I Was Totally Lost Coming Out Here Man And You Know That's One Of The

Why I I Will Drive Five Hours After Work After A Day Of Work And Drive Home You Know After A Night Of Playing Because Chuck Reagan Is He's A Light He's Something Else Sure He Is Just Something Else And His Music Speaks Volumes Very True I Mean I Don't Think I've Met Anyone Who's Ever Met Him He's Alright Everyone He's He is So There's No There's No Club We Long Happen To Be Lucky Enough To Be Able To Share That Common Interest With An Old Friend But You Know You Just A Couple Dirty Southern Boys Do What You Do To Get By On Tour Kind Of Catch Up

I Feel Like I Can Do Anything In The World But I Know As Long As I Building Something I

All Possible Absolutely So I Want To Thank You We'll Wrap This Up Is There Anything Else You Like To Say Anything You Like To Plug Website Shows One Message To The Masses Check Out What Mike Park Does With Asian Man Records He's A True Believer I Hope Everyone Everywhere Hears That You Got The

And What He What He's Doing For Music And What He Does For The Industry As Far As Keeping It DIY And Honest And Truthful He's The Man To Look At He's The Man To Look For For Answer Hopefully More People Look To Him Than A Hell Of Other People Who End Up

Move Or So They Seem To Be Ones In The High Power Positions That's What We Got Guys Like Chuck For You Know And Tim Barry And And Var From No Idea Records And Mike Park Here From Asian Man Records That's We Got Them For To Lead Us In The Right Direction Yeah Well They're

So That Wraps Up The Interview I Had A Really Good Time With Mr. Mike Hale Oh For Real I

All Right Yeah I'm Here With Another Interview You Know But Things Have Been Good I Think It Worked Out Well But So Eric Had Mentioned To Mike Hale The Watch Out Because Apparently We Were Pretty Hard On The Fact That Dover Was Pretty Sloshed During The Whiskey Sunday Interview And I

So If You Get The Chance Check Out Whiskey Sunday And Tell Them We're Sorry That They Won't Take Our Calls We've Tried I Mean We're Not Trying To Be Creepy I Mean I'm Not Going To Hang Outside Of His House Long So Anyhow That's That And Mike Hale Fucking Awesome Guy So Here Is The Contest This Week Mike Hale Comes From Gainesville Florida Chuck Reagan Both Played In Bands Which Have Been Compared To Each Other In Some Form Or Another Chuck Reagan Moves To California For His Wife Mike Hale Moves To California For His Wife Chuck Reagan Is A Master Carpenter Mike Hale Master Carpenter They're Doppel Gangers Of Each Other Oh And By The Way Chuck Reagan Leaves Hot Water Music To Do A Solo Mike Hale Leaves Gun Mole And Does Solo Work They're Like Yeah It's Like You'll Never See Him This If Mike Hale Didn't Look Like Jesus And Chuck Reagan Didn't Look Like I Don't Know A Lumberjack You'd Swear They Were The Same Person But Either And Jesus Was A Carpenter Is Mike Hale Jesus I Don't Know Yes He Is He's Totally Jesus But I Just Thought That Was Interesting So Who Do You Think Would Be Cool To Be A Doppel Ganger Of That's This Week's Contest So If

Mr. Chuck Reagan And All You Have To Send An Email To Sound Scene Revolution At Gmail Dot Com Put Mike Hale Contest In The Subject Line Extra Points If You Spell Hale Correctly Put Your Name Address All That Good Shit In There And Tell Us Who Would You Like To Be A Twin Of And You Can't Say Me Because I Suck So You Don't Don't Think You Don't And You're A Liar And Not Only Will I Eliminate You From The Contest I Will Mail You Like My Shit In A Can Or A Jar Whatever Is More Sanitary Probably A

Just Fucking The Show Up We're Going To Take A Couple Of Weeks Off We'll Probably Be Back End Of May Early June So Keep An Eye Out We'll Put Out A Big Ass Gay My Space Friend Request And We'll Be Like We're Totally back Ante Internet Add Us And Send Us Your Friends And You Can Get A Free Ringtone And An iPod And You'll Know We're Back So Enjoy Enter The Contest Thanks Again For Everyone For Listening Thanks To Mike Hale Have A Good Week And We'll See You Guys All In The Future Peace

♪ song played ♪

You And Made Me Patient My Love

♪ song played ♪