This is Bringing the Darkness to the Light with Katherine Nadal, professional psychic
media.
Today's guest is Mike Krompass.
He is a guitar player, multi-platinum producer, songwriter, mixer, engineer, multi-instrumentalist,
and music executive with expansive career spinning chart topping, billboard, hits,
millions of album sold, global streaming successes, and high profile sync placements
across film, television, and advertising with close to billion streams over 17 billion
views on his catalog.
Mike stands in the top 1% of producers and songwriters worldwide.
It is a pleasure to have you on, Mike.
Oh, man, I'm so happy to be here.
Thanks so much for having me.
Well, I had the pleasure of meeting you in person.
Just recently, probably less than a month ago, I went up to upstate New York to a town
called Liverpool, and I saw you in the band The Fell, which has my very good friend,
Billie Sheehan in it.
And many other people went to see you guys.
I was shocked when I walked in.
I was like, wow, this is a cool showing.
It was the first day of your tour.
And I'm a fan already.
I mean, I love every song.
I actually went to the merch table.
I bought the vinyl.
I got the signed vinyl, and it comes with a CD.
So that's like a bonus.
But the band together works so well.
I mean, the lead singer, Toby, he's like on fire running around back and forth, just
to me, so exciting because this music for me hits so well.
It's different.
Every time I start telling people about it, they're like, well, what does it sound like?
I'm like, you got to hear it.
I'm like, I can't describe it.
I'm like, it's just especially my favorite song is footprints.
But I can just play it on repeat.
And that's when you know you have something really good.
It's like, I don't want to turn it off.
I just play it in the background all the time.
So again, welcome to the show.
You have to tell me all about you.
I mean, your bio is so impressive, but I want to hear it straight from you.
So tell me about your life, how you got involved in music.
Oh, man.
I mean, there's so much to tell.
And I hate talking about myself.
I'm not a big fan of like, trying to talk about my accolades and stuff.
But that being said, I started really young.
I started playing guitar when I was four years old.
Ever since being a little guy, that's all I've really wanted to do.
But I remember seeing Michael Jackson on my mom's shoulders like 1980, something victory
tour and seeing Jennifer Patton rip it up on stage and going, I need to do that.
But I really wanted to do that in Michael Jackson.
But anyway, fast forward.
Here I am now.
But I grew up playing copy tunes in bars.
I played in funk bands, disco bands, metal bands, progressive rock stuff.
I always loved all music.
I wanted to do everything and anything I could.
I just wanted to surround myself in music.
So anything that I could be a part of, I really tried hard to do that.
And the same goes for the studio.
I always wanted to immerse myself and learn about drum sounds and learn how to record
things.
And I think all of that stuff led to where I am now.
I even worked in music stores, teaching guitar.
I worked in a drum shop where I got to learn how to tune drums and be around amazing drummers.
So I picked up a lot of things and learned things from a lot of inspiring people over
the years.
So I just kind of worked my way up.
I was born in Toronto.
I grew up in Toronto, Canada.
Very young age.
I moved to Los Angeles and I tried to pursue my rock star.
Rock star dreams of moving to LA and being a big rock star.
And that didn't really work out the way that I wanted it to.
But when I got to LA, I started doing a lot of film and TV and writing production stuff.
And then I moved on to producing records and I produced in Rhodes songs for a lot of American
idols and pop stars and different.
Country stuff, rock stuff, everything.
I tried to just not be a one trick guy and tried to do something with every style and
every genre.
And because I love all of all styles too.
I never wanted to just limit myself to that one thing.
And then just played with whoever I could.
I wrote songs with whoever I could.
I immersed myself in every aspect of the music business to try to make things better for myself.
And then I did 20 something years in LA and I got a place in Nashville and I started doing
that stuff and focusing on the Nashville songwriter.
There's so many great songwriters there and I met some really great inspiring people there
and learned a lot there.
And did the back and forth LA Nashville for years.
And then I decided I wanted a break and I moved to the UK for five or six years and
here I am back in Toronto, Canada right now.
So it's been like a, around the globe.
So interesting.
I know.
I want to start out when you just said that you started playing when you were four.
It sounds like your parents were very supportive of you bringing you to a concert at Young Ages.
Were they musical?
Some musicians find the music in the family.
Some others are the only ones.
So what is that for you?
My Nana, she was musical.
She's sing for the troops and you know, so I probably picked up some DNA there.
But my mom wasn't really musical.
My real father passed away.
Always wanted to play guitar.
He wasn't a musician but he had the passion.
My mom remarried and then my stepdad who I call my dad now.
He wasn't a musical either.
He was an accountant.
So both my parents were accountants and bookkeepers.
And then my parents got divorced.
She ended up being with someone who was a drummer who was a massive influence on me.
That's kind of where I really immersed myself in learning drums and learning music.
And his best friend was a guitar player who ended up years later marrying my mother.
So it's a crazy story.
And I learned so much from him.
So his name was Al who was a really great guitar teacher.
And taught me, you know, most of what I know now just by being around music.
Even though I'm primarily a guitar player, I play drums too.
And I did play on the FEL album and most of the records I produce I do play drums on.
But I kind of developed my guitar style from learning drums and from rhythmic aspects.
You'll hear a lot of my guitar playing is very percussive and I think it comes from the
drum influence a lot.
Very similar to Billy Sheehan.
He talks a lot about that.
He's very connected with drummers when he plays in a band that he collaborates with
the drummer in the band the way he plays.
He spoke about it in his interview with me.
You're saying very similar.
So you must get along really well with him and the band the FEL because it sounds like
the two of you are on the same page with that.
Yeah.
And I think, you know, that's the drums are the foundation of anything, especially in
rock music, like having that solid, you know, back line is really, really important.
I think that that gives you the feeling and makes you dig in and all of those kind of
things.
So I'm super influenced by drummers and come on drums sound amazing anyway.
The louder the drums are, the better I play.
Yeah, that's for sure.
Yes.
I want to ask you, since you were young before you went to LA, what were the bands that you
really followed that really lit a fire under you that you thought, okay, I could totally
see myself doing something like that?
I mean, it was so all over the map.
It's everything from like funk and R&B stuff to P funk to earth wind and fire to hair metal.
I loved extreme.
I love Mr. Big.
I loved George Lynch and Dachin and Dio and all that.
I even like poison and like, you know, hair bands and the Beatles, Uncle Jackson is big
influence.
Prince was a big influence.
Stevie Wonder is one of my biggest influences.
So I think I'm melting pots stylistically from all of those kind of things.
And you know, my parents were very, their listening tastes were pretty diverse.
My dad was like, you know, stoner rock and black Sabbath and my mom was Beatles and disco.
So I got to listen to a lot of variety growing up and I think that's, I absorbed all that.
All sides of music.
Very cool.
When you went to LA, it's kind of interesting because we have so many people that listen
to the show.
When you got there, what did you really expect it to be like?
Did you think you were going to get an easy break or did you really feel like?
Because a lot of times people look at LA like, you know, that's the destination.
Is there any advice?
I know you did it probably more than 20 years ago, but it's still on the horizon for a
lot of young musicians.
I don't think I ever thought it was going to be easy.
I just thought that there would be more opportunity than in Toronto because when I
left Toronto, I was playing with a pretty big pop act.
I was playing with Nelly Furtado and we were touring the world with U2 and got to play
with Elle and John and lots of cool things.
But I felt like I was hitting a ceiling all the time as far as like, you know, session
work and songwriting and that was a different time.
And now everything's an internet.
You can really do anything over Zoom and be anywhere.
But back then it was like, all my friends are, you got to move to LA.
You got to move to LA.
That's where it's at.
And the truth is when I moved there, that's when the doors opened up, but it wasn't easy.
I didn't think it was going to be easy.
I was dead broke when I moved there and all I wanted to do was just go and see music and
be around it.
And however, I didn't have a plan.
I didn't really have a plan.
And I just kind of got in wherever I could, worked with whoever I could and it laid every
door open, another door opened, another door and I just didn't give up.
So anyone who's thinking of doing that, just do it.
If you're gut saying to do it, do it, it's worth a shot.
Exactly.
I have family that's musicians in Nashville and the scene is quite different than LA.
So what was your experience when you started to go over to Nashville?
When I went on my first writing trip, it was very country.
I was producing a lot of pop stuff at the time.
So pop wasn't super infused into country at that time.
And it was just starting like rascal flats in Keith's our room.
We're starting to implement pop and carry under was breaking.
And I think it was a good time for me to go there because they were starting to do programming.
And I was a little bit different than everyone else that was kind of coming into the Nashville
scene at the time.
There's a hybrid thing starting to happen.
And I think I just got lucky with a couple good co-writes that utilize that kind of production
style.
But it was still pretty country and it was still a different world than what I was used
to.
But I mean, as a living place, it was great.
The housing's affordable.
The scene was expanding.
There's so many amazing writers there too.
It's incredible how many great songwriters are there.
And now it seems like Billy's moved to Nashville.
All the rock guys from LA are now living in Nashville.
So it's the new LA, I guess.
Everyone from New York and everyone from LA that's kind of in that circle is there now.
And it has such a history of music just with the Grand Ole Opry and the whole scene.
Like the past is alive there.
And that's the piece of it that I think attracts an audience.
The fans of music often visit that area for the history of music.
So you always have an audience when you're there, which is a second plus, you know?
Yeah.
And they appreciate the songwriters too.
There's a lot of times in pop music, it's about the star.
It's about the artist.
Which is great, but Nashville has a real appreciation for where the song came from and the writers.
And you go down Music Row and you see this number one song written by these people.
And normally you wouldn't know who wrote what song you think of the, okay, that's a Slain-Dian song.
That's Slain-Dian.
You wouldn't think about who wrote that song.
And I think that's a really cool thing because they nurture the culture and they nurture the tone.
And that's one thing that not a lot of other places do that I think is really an amazing thing.
So you have to tell me how the fell got together, how this creation came together.
Because I just love it.
I just, I love how you're all different and you're all together and it's just amazing.
So how did the idea come about?
Initially I was working on a bunch of projects and I was a bit sick of doing that kind of same thing all the time.
And my soul from an artist's guitar player standpoint was like I was missing doing my own thing.
My own creating songs for myself and just for the love of music.
Because when you start doing it for a job or for other artists you kind of lose the reason you get into it in the first place.
And that's for the passion that you have for yourself.
So I would write songs and keep them for myself.
But then you forget about them and they don't really do anything.
They just sit on a hard drive.
So I thought you know what I really want to put a focus into whether it be a solo project or a collaborative effort with a bunch of musicians.
I want to do something that's completely different than what I was doing.
Go back to my rock roots.
Not be afraid to play guitar solos because guitar solos were not cool at the time.
And just do something that was for me and if it was successful great, if it's not who cares it was just.
You know let's put some great songs together.
So naturally I thought okay if I was going to do a rock project who would want to play bass?
What Billy Sheen?
You know Mr. Big was a massive influence.
Steve Weil, Paul Gilbert, all those guys were heroes of mine.
So he could have the best.
Why don't we have the best?
So I sent him a message on Facebook and surprisingly he said yeah man let's get together tomorrow.
He comes by my studio.
So I had some instrumental things kind of worked out and I play him a bit of the first song
maybe 30 seconds and or something and he stops me and he goes hmm what do you want to do with this?
And I'm like oh damn he hates this.
He's not into this.
He's like you want to start a band?
I'm like yep I do.
Well it was like I could pay you to play on this or you know what do you want to do?
And he's like start a band.
So I was working separately with Toby Rand on doing a bunch of writing and working with
some of the guys from Inaccess and you know Toby's an incredible talent.
He's an incredible singer, front person, an amazing songwriter and we were working on
some stuff and I just thought why don't we bridge those things together.
And the cool thing about Toby's he brings a modern element to it too.
He brings like a really different approach.
It's almost like a 90s rock approach with you know a little bit of me who is a little
bit of this but it has throwback stuff to all the stuff we grew up on but he's got
a lot of swag and like that rock star persona almost like a Michael Hutchins vibe a little
bit like I thought man this would be really cool and that's kind of how it started.
So we wrote a bunch of songs and kill switch and footprints and tripping those songs were
like the first little batch that we wrote.
Unfortunately we had to park the project for like nine years because Toby got caught up
in a deal that his management wouldn't let him proceed with the fell so we did try to
go play some shows but it was never the same in that core band of Billy Toby and I that
was the magic and it never was the same no matter how much amazing talent we worked with
other people.
It just wasn't the same as what it started with and I think the three of us missed that
and then everyone kind of seemed to come back together and say you know that stuff's
really good we really missed that.
Let's finish it off and Billy was wrapping up with you know sons of Apollo wasn't touring
winery dogs was winding down.
Mr. Big wasn't going to go tour anymore.
This timing couldn't be any better so that's what happened and here we are and we got the
revisited the songs got the stuff together pretty quickly and released an EP and now
we're deep into the album like recording the album very close to having a full length
album ready for release this year so and here we are.
Yes and it's so exciting for me to speak with you because I got to meet you all in
person and the event was terrific because you had a kind of like a VIP hour before the
venue really opened to the event and we got to meet all of you up close and personal and
you're right Toby has this persona off stage that matches his on stage you know he's full
of like energy he reminded me a lot of like David Lee Roth and when I was watching him
on stage he was like running from left to right and then up through the center and then
back again and you know really really it was eye catching you know which was really great
but all of you were great.
I thought it was quite interesting because you're right when in between the songs Toby
would say something like you know just a couple of things to like you know engage with the
audience and one of the things he's like oh we're gonna wait for him to change his
guitar again you must have had like 12 different guitars that are like all the big colors.
Yeah but you had a pink one and you had all the four ones and I was like wow you know
but to me for someone who's not a musician it drew our attention to you you know like
wow you know he's special for this reason and you know all of that you know it's kind of
a secret that's what I do I just bring enough guitars so people that are just shining and
sparkling and then people look at it.
No it was like you know what that's funny they all bust about it too like why do you need
so many guitars and the reason the main reason is because every song was in a different tuning
so we didn't have a lot of pre-production times like to you know use pitch down pedals
and things like that so it was just easier to grab the guitars and then just leave them
in those tunings and then have a redundant in them so you know next time I won't go out
with this many but they were all like Billy went with one bass and he's incredible because
he had learned everything in that one tuning and relearned a lot of things that would be
very difficult in some of those tunings.
I wouldn't have the patience for that like what he did was really crazy crazy cool but
no I couldn't scale down to one instrument unfortunately.
Wow well I really loved it and so tell me about footprints because we're going to discuss
footprints how the song came about how it makes you feel and then we're going to play
it for the audience.
So footprints was one of the very first songs I'm not sure that it was the first with Toby
but one of the very early songs and we wanted to have like a mainstream radio kind of song
and have a big hook.
It just it came out really fast the chorus I think was written first and then we brought
the verse around it and the cool thing about that song it was the first single that we
ever released way back and we went to Poland Billy Toby and I went to Poland to shoot in
this bunker.
So if you look at the video we actually took the original old video and synced it to the
new version of the song and we took clips from that and some clips from the kill switch
video and put them together to release a new video but there's there's shots that we did
in this World War II biohazard Polish bunker that was like we got there there were armed
guards it was pretty scary and it was freezing and that's kind of the cool story about that
song is we were able to keep the really original things that we came out with back then in
the original video.
The video is super unique in fact that that's a real bunker that's not staged it's not
a film set it was like scary there was like biohazard things everywhere.
So how does the video fit the lyrics?
That's a good question I don't think it does really the director guy wanted to throw a
bunch of girls dancing around in it we we kind of just you know it was one of those things
where we let him go with it and and it wasn't exactly what we wanted to do but we just you
know we're on this tight budget we're gonna go with this and and we made it work but I
don't know that it really he he had this thing that he wanted to do something like make it
like the shallow owl nurses or whatever and like he's creepy women chasing us and it
didn't really translate that way so when you watch the video you're like oh maybe that's
it but there's not really a straight storyline in it and we switch it with a lot of performance
shots to get away from kind of like that cliche rock band girls in the video Motley
Crew Style which I love but it's not really a now thing.
I know it.
Wow.
Well it's one of my favorite songs on your new EIP so we're gonna play Footprints Now.
Hey I'm in Crossfire don't you see I'm on the wire face being a demon pounding in
my chest.
I'm bleeding for weed just a little bit more one last chance to cut the cord wide wide
I'm coming under fire already gone to shape this life with my brand new Footprints
so I know the emotions for the rest.
Pull on the edge so I don't leave no damage for friends.
When I listen to all of your music one song sounds very different than the other but it
still gives me the same feeling like I just want more so can you tell me more about the
other songs like for instance Trippin.
I think they have a cohesiveness they all have sonically it comes from the same place.
The hooks might be influenced like the thing about Trippin I like it totally came up with
a really cool chorus melody in that song it kind of reminds me of that band Faith No
More and Mike Patton sometimes I think he has hints of that in that song and I'm a big fan
of that band so when he kind of blurted out some of that melodic sense in there I've
really really dug it and I think the songs all they're all very different because they're
written at different times and we have different influences but there's a thing that kind of
brings it together sonically you know the drum sounds are very similar the guitar sounds
are really big so we try to keep like it authentic to what the felt sounds like but
not afraid to go out on a limb and try things and experiment with different melodic approaches
and I think at the end of the day we want to be able to play any of these songs on an
acoustic guitar and then translate as a song so even if you stripped out all the crazy
you know wanky guitar parts and bass parts and all the fan sing is they're just basic
songs that have a first chorus and a middle section and that's we wanted to keep it more
about the songs and the melody and having Toby's voice be the focal point because a lot of the
stuff especially with you know with Billy a lot of the stuff is very music centric and
very guitar driven we want a bit of that but I think it's more about the song than it is
the the show-off factor not that that's not cool because I love that and sometimes I try
to sneak it in as much as I can and get away with but very good wow so we are gonna play
trippin now
I want you to be with the biggest needs while you first up my phone it's wrong you dare triple the
seat as you just have been there more won't say the new year's time I'll be wanting to fly so you
can be down
I'll be the one to survive and we're out of take your throne won't be trippin on your broken bones
you want to take it away from the people still the freedom of guilt and hope you'll see the reality
it's not to make you stand now won't say the new year's time I'll be wanting to fly so you can be down
I'll be the one to survive and we're out of take your throne won't be trippin on your broken bones
I'll be the one to survive and we're out of take your throne won't be trippin on your broken bones
I'll be the one to survive and we're out of take your throne won't be trippin on your broken bones
now I'll be the one to survive and we'll take it away from the people still the world will survive
yeah we'll take our throne won't be trippin on your broken bones
I'll be the one to survive and we'll go away
you'll be the one to survive and we'll make you stand
before we move on to another song I wanted to go back to when you spoke earlier about your background being a songwriter but also being what I would call as a music producer
your experience is so vast so how do you feel which pieces of those do you feel that kind of help you along the way because producing really is helpful being a musician but also you have all of those components
it's probably so much easier for you to play all of those parts in your career
I think it will definitely makes it more cost effective not having to go out and hire a producer and rent the studio so when you're making records you can do it in a different way you can almost produce it as it's going along rather than have to go into months of pre-pro and rehearsing the songs
a lot of the stuff we just do in the studio you can see behind me like my drum kits right outside the window there and I'll get an idea later down the guitars go out and cut the drums real quick and I can come in and play some bass parts to send it to Billy he'll record his stuff send it back
I'm going to make the vocal process a lot quicker also just having those things like miked up and ready to go too we know what it's going to sound like almost right away there's no like it's not really a demo phase the demos are very you know the sketch of the song and then we just start recording so for that aspect it makes it really quick and painless almost
and with this project I'm trying not to even though I'm not you know I try to separate myself as a producer in part of the band I'm trying not to be over you know over producing this stuff and try to let it breathe and I've noticed over as we're doing more and more songs I'm taking less the guitar layers are coming a little bit less and we're trying to have it less like over produced because we wanted to still at the end of the day be a rock band and be able to go out live and pull it off because a lot of new rock there's no more to do that.
There's so many layers it's hard to get that you know you need 10 guitar players to go play live so.
Yes that's a good point and people expect to hear the live sound exactly like the recording and that's why it's so good when the band comes out tight you're hearing exactly what you expected to hear which is really important.
One thing that I had heard when you were playing on stage with the fell there was a conversation about the position of the drummer so was the drummer not always the drummer or the band.
Or I think they kind of introduced the drummer so is he a new drummer to the band I couldn't figure out the way they were.
Oh yes so I try to throw him under the bus.
Nick's been in the band so basically when we started the record initially it was a guy named Randy Cook who's a big session guy an amazing drummer amazing friend and he played on some of the initial things so the early early demos I played drums on them and then Randy replaced some of that stuff
and we never really got to properly release it so when we revisited all the songs I ended up recutting the drums on a lot of that stuff because we hadn't gotten Nick in the band yet.
Or some of the songs I had already been recorded to a certain part we just left my drums on and then Nick about a year ago when we started getting knee deep into recording the rest of the record he joined as a band member so he's on some of the songs I'm on quite a bit of the songs as a drummer.
So yeah he is the newest addition but he's very much a part of the band now.
And he's an incredible drummer and he's one of my favorite drummers and he's an incredible guy and just a good person to hang with and be around him.
He's also Canadian is that correct?
Yes.
Well so you have three of you that are Canadian in the band except for Billy is that correct?
Just two.
So the people who are the hired guy he's so half and half so really if the band members, Billy's from the US, Toby's actually Australian he doesn't count at all.
Toby's Australian I'm Canadian and Nick's Canadian.
And the keyboard issue had mentioned he was off to the side on the stage.
Yeah so Scott he's been around since the early days and he's an assistant that worked with me in the studio that played on a lot of the recordings all the way through from day one.
So he's a really important part to the project too.
He's a great player and a great guy.
Yeah it's so neat. I am so glad that I saw you live.
It really changes the experience for me now.
I don't know if fans have ever said that but sometimes when you just hear a music and then you see the band play live.
Sometimes it stays the same but with the fell it made it better to see the live performance.
So tell me about the tour schedule.
What is the plan for the fell?
I mean we'd love to be doing everything.
We just picked up a really great agent overseas.
We're going to do a bunch of festival dates and some club shows overseas starting November.
We really want to get some North American dates.
This first run the one that you saw that was our first show.
That was kind of like the warm up run.
Test the waters, see how the songs go over.
We didn't expect we're going to sell out venues.
Not a lot of people know about the band yet.
We need to get the word out there and do shows and we want people to pay attention and start getting the numbers up.
These days it's a numbers game and if you're not selling enough units or you're not getting enough streams,
agents don't want to touch you.
So this was a good test for us to see how we're going to start it off, what we're going to make better,
how we're going to get things out there and that's kind of now we have an idea of what we want to do.
But really we all want to put our focus into this project and make sure that it does well.
And at least busy, we all love to play.
Billy says something like, lift a play and play to live.
He said something I heard him say a million times, but it's true.
We all have that passion in fire.
This is a project we all truly believe in and really want to do something with.
And not everyone has to love it, but we do.
Yes, well I love it and I will help promote you the best I can because I am probably a new number one fan.
We're going to roll out with the song Kill Switch.
But before we do that, I want to hear about the song.
Tell me about how that song.
That one to me really sounds so completely different than Footprints, which is my favorite.
So it's kind of interesting when you play it.
You're like, oh there it is again, you know.
So tell me about that one.
I think the whole thing started off with this really cool bass riff.
The whole thing was written around this bass riff that drives the verses.
I see this Footprints, we wanted to have a very, it's almost like a 90's throwback kind of melody.
It's a bit alternative rock, but then in the middle section it goes to something that a band like Mr. Big would do.
There's unison guitar bass lines, some cool arpeggio fun guitar things.
It has those elements of throwback that we wanted to have in there.
And then the choruses are just hard rock.
It's just really fun rock.
It was never, you know, we didn't try to do anything.
It was just like whatever came out and that's what it ended up being kind of thing.
It's a little bit more complex than Footprints because we have the middle section and we get to like do some guitar wank a little bit.
And it's a bit self-indulgent and fun, but it's still, you know, form wise.
We're trying to, we try to keep a little bit of pop sensibilities in there.
Yes, I love that.
Personally, just for you outside of the fell, do you have items on your bucket list still that you would look at?
And your music career and say, I really hope I get to do this or I really want to do this in the future.
What does that look for you as a solo?
I guess that's the thing when you're an artist.
Like you always want something more. At least I do anyway.
It's like, it's never enough. I need more. I need to do more.
You know, I'd love to have a Grammy one day.
Whatever that means, like to some people it doesn't mean anything, but that's like something I've always inspired to do.
You know, and I don't really, it's not like I have to have it, but I would really love to have that.
It's a recognition thing and it's something that I've always wanted to have a Grammy.
It's like, it doesn't want to.
I want to do everything. I want to do jazz records. I want to do country records.
I love to have it hit in the charts again because, you know, music's like this.
You can have really highs and really low lows and you want to try to stay relevant and you want to try to stay on top and have success.
That lasts a long time and it's really hard to do that because there's always someone younger, better new artists coming out every day.
But I want to try to keep that freshness and try to stay on top of things.
And then like, you know, my wife and I, we own a record label.
So our focus a lot is on that.
We represent one of the biggest same catalogs in the world with extreme music.
So we have like Snoop Dogg and Hans Zimmer and we license all of that exclusively for Canada.
And then with that, we have a reciprocal deal where we sign artists to our label and then distribute it out for film and TV around the world and retain our commercial rights, which we distribute through Sony music.
So that's a big focus for me.
It's like really sometimes I want to step back from just like, you know, chasing productions, create music that I want to create with people I want to create it with and then put some focus into our label and really make that a success.
Yes, in your bio, it says that you're the CEO of noise nation acts, noise nation records and BCMG recordings.
So that's our company. So BCMG is the parent company and then we have, you know, we do distribution for artists, producers, labels.
Under that we have noise nation records and we have like some legacy bands like Honeymoon Sweet is a Canadian rock band that's there on our label.
And that's one of the records I produced over the last two of their albums over the last few years.
So that's like a passion, fun project that I got to do with those guys. And then we have pop acts, we have rock acts, we have a lot of different things that we put out on that.
And then noise nation X is our sync. So that's where noise nation X is where we have, we represent the entire extreme music Sony, TV production music library.
And that's the stuff like our clients are like Netflix and Disney and we do video games and feature films and commercials and TV.
And that's where we licensed music from, from the extreme catalog, which is a very successful catalog with some really unbelievable artists.
Quincy Jones, George Martin catalog, there's Dead Mouse, Snoop Dogg, Death Row Records, like it's incredible talent that we get to work.
So listen to Canada and get in film and TV and hopefully with that it grows our, we're growing our own catalog to add to that catalog of Canadian content that we're going to be streaming out to those same resources around the world.
Well, this is fascinating. I mean, just to think how far we've come with our own population, the way music is being viewed, like music in movies.
Now, there's so much accessibility to it with a company like yours, you know?
That's the thing. Music is available everywhere. I guess the challenge is making it like someone said this to me and I'm paraphrasing it, but someone once said to me, music's like water, water's free.
You can find it anywhere, but if you package it right and it's in the nice boss bottle and it's all fancy, people are willing to pay 10 to 20 bucks for a bottle of water.
So I think it's finding a way to get that music out there that has its own footprint and that has its own marketability factor, whether that's with the artist, whether that's a way that a non-traditional way to market that song, whether it's through a video game or whether it's through a place in a motion picture
or something that gives it legs that are beyond the traditional streaming and radio thing.
Because it's very hard as an artist to just get songs out there on the radio these days. There's so much content out there.
And then to, if you do, you are successful enough to get songs out there, to get it to place and to get regular rotation and all those things,
and to come to the top of a Spotify playlist up against one republic or whoever's at the top of the charts is very difficult these days.
So you got to do something that's outside the box. I think film and TV give it a good springboard that kind of get heard on a bigger level.
You make such good points with that because I may be dating myself, but it just proves that when someone hears a song that was tied to a movie,
they don't just think of the song, they think of the movie. A perfect example is like Survivor with Eye of the Tiger.
You know, with Rocky. I mean, literally that song went like when booming. The movie was booming. And even now, many years later,
I could still see the video of Rocky Balboa running on the beach, right? That was like an iconic scene with him running on the beach.
So that's so important. I wanted to give you the opportunity to plug any social media, any websites,
because we want everyone to be able to visit you and to find all of the things that you're doing.
The film music is our Instagram handle, the film music, and I think we're the same on Facebook.
For myself, you can go at my K hits, M-I-K-E-K-H-I-T-Z,
use my Instagram and it's my crumpus, I think, or my K music on Facebook.
And then, yeah, you can find us noisenationx.com, noisenationrecords.com.
Those are our websites you can send us a message to. And if you're an artist that has music to send, send it over. We'll listen to it, too.
That is so great. Wow. It has been a pleasure. And I hope to see more of you in the future and hear more from the fellow and from your own personal work.
We are going to roll out with the Kill Switch by the fellow. Thank you again, M-I-K. It's been a pleasure.
Thanks, Amelia. Thanks so much.
(Outro Music Plays)