Your favorite band announces a tour.

San Francisco. Portland. Seattle. Reno.

Sacramento?

Nothing.

I’ve spent years looking at schedules like that and thinking, “You’re literally driving right past us. What the fuck?”

Now that I’m actually booking bands myself, I’m finally learning what’s happening behind those tour posters.

Episode 3 of Mikey in the Pit gets into tour routing, venue availability, holds, ticket history, radius clauses, oversaturation and all the other things that can decide whether your city gets the show.

I also talk about the weirdest part of this job so far: the concerts that almost happen.

Dates get discussed. Offers get considered. Venues get checked. Everything gets close.

Then one piece doesn’t fit and the entire thing disappears before anybody outside the email chain knew it existed.

Sometimes there’s no drama.

Sometimes nobody screwed anything up.

Sometimes its just a fucking Wednesday

A few months ago I thought booking a concert meant finding a band and asking them to play.

Apparently that was the easy part.

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I’ve spent 25 years around concerts, and until I became a talent buyer, I thought the math was pretty simple: book a band, sell tickets, pack the room, make money.

Nope.

In this episode, I’m opening an actual concert deal and showing you where the money really goes. We’re talking artist guarantees, venue expenses, support bands, hospitality, backends, split points

and all the other shit quietly eating that big impressive number at the top of the deal sheet.

One show can gross $10,230. Sell 189 tickets. Have a room full of people drinking, singing, and posting videos like it was a massive success… And only be about $20 above break-even on tickets.

I’ll also show you how another promoter put 223 people in a room and still lost $920, why “I fucking love this band” is not a business strategy, and how I accidentally proposed a terrible deal while sincerely trying to make it fair.

I’m only a few months into doing this, so this isn’t some industry expert talking down to you. It’s me learning how concert promotion actually works and realizing that almost everything I assumed about it was wrong.

So when you spend $30 on a concert ticket…where the fuck does that money actually go?

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Three months ago, I had never bought talent for a concert. Now I’m negotiating guarantees, calculating break-even points, chasing local support, obsessively refreshing ticket counts, and pretending words like “backend” have always been part of my vocabulary.

After more than 25 years in radio, I thought I understood the music business. I interviewed the bands, hosted the shows, covered the festivals, stood backstage, stood side stage, and occasionally drank somebody else’s beer.

Then I became a talent buyer for The Boardwalk in Orangevale, California—and discovered an entire side of live music I had never seen.

In this first episode of the Mikey in the Pit podcast, I explain how getting fired from radio eventually led to Muscatello Media, my relationship with The Boardwalk, and the completely unexpected career turn that put me in charge of booking concerts.

I’m not starting this podcast two years from now and pretending I had everything figured out from the beginning. I’m documenting it while I’m learning: the shows that sell, the ones that eat shit, the negotiations, agents, bands, ticket counts, mistakes, and the economics of keeping a small independent music venue alive in 2026.

Fans think tickets cost too much. Bands can barely afford to tour. Venues are struggling to survive.

Nobody is wrong so where the fuck is the money going?

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Ryan Brown from Titan and Titan Fest jumps on Mikey In The Pit and basically pulls the curtain back on how this shit actually works. From a Halloween house show with 300 people and no cops, to a full multi‑day Titan Fest and playing Aftershock, he’s fronting costs, teaching himself design, and bleeding for a festival he refuses to hand over to suits.

We get into why “pay‑to‑play” is trash, how his ticket model actually gets local bands paid, guarantees that make zero sense, and why your favorite big bands are grinding reels just like locals now. Ryan talks about networking without being a leech, dealing with haters who say Titan “didn’t deserve Aftershock” but still beg for fest slots, his parents helping build stages, and what it looks like to turn Titan Fest into a traveling, Warped‑style thing tied to mental‑health nonprofits.

If you’re in a band, book shows, or claim to care about the Sacramento scene, this is one you probably need to sit with.

🎟️ GET YOUR TITAN FEST TICKETS
Ryan isn’t just talking about building a DIY festival, he’s out here fronting the costs and giving local bands real ways to get paid. If you’re anywhere near Sacramento and you support this scene, show up in person.

▸ Tickets, lineup, and info: https://titanfest.live
▸ Direct ticket link: Eventbrite – Titan Fest
▸ Follow Titan Fest for updates and presale links:
  Instagram – @titanmusicfestival
  Facebook – Titan Music Festival

Grab your pass, tag the band that sent you, and go support the people actually building something for Sacramento heavy music instead of just complaining online

Thomas Flowers from Oleander jumps into The Pit with Mikey to talk about the band’s Sacramento come‑up, playing early Aftershock, and having their first show outside Sac be freaking Woodstock ’99. 

They get into hustling radio with donuts, getting ‘Why I’m Here’ into heavy rotation, landing songs in American Pie and Dawson’s Creek, and why the band is finally having fun again. 

Thomas shares plans for new Oleander music, their Aftershock 2026 hometown return, and why they’d rather hit blue‑collar secondary markets than grind 5‑month tours. 

They also rant about AI‑slop rock, nostalgia festivals, and what it really takes to stick around in this business.

If you grew up on Oleander, Papa Roach, Deftones, Korn, Limp Bizkit, Creed, Sublime, and that whole late‑90s wave, this one is straight nostalgia and real talk.

Follow the show, drop a rating, and share this episode with a rock friend who needs it.

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🧨 Foo Fighters might crash Aftershock. Maiden’s bringing the nuclear heat. Sam Rivers is gone. And Ian Watkins? Still dead — now with bonus arrests.

This week’s pit report hits harder than Gary Holt’s guitar tone:

• Foo Fighters drop stadium tour dates, new music, and a suspicious gap around Aftershock 2026 👀

• Iron Maiden’s 50th birthday meltdown is official — Megadeth and Anthrax are joining the firestorm

• EXODUS wraps a brutal new record, and Gary Holt’s back foaming at the mouth

• Five Finger Death Punch "write" a few songs and drop a solid collab with BABYMETAL

• Slash calls bullshit on the Vegas Sphere

• RIP Sam Rivers — the soul of Limp Bizkit

• Ian Watkins finally bled out, and four inmates might get charged for doing what karma couldn’t

👂 All that, plus guitar giveaways, festival speculation, and rock’s weirdest headlines.

📢 Follow Mikey in the Pit for music news, festival updates, backstage interviews, and chances to win free concert tickets.
🎧 Available on all major platforms

#MikeyInThePit #RockNews #FooFighters #IronMaiden #LimpBizkit #Aftershock2026

OG nu-metal survivors Spineshank sit down backstage at Aftershock 2025 to talk about their first run of shows in decades, old-school OzzFest chaos, upcoming tours with Drowning Pool and Head PE, and why this scene still hits harder than your Stepdad.

If you’re into real music news, raw festival coverage, band interviews, and your shot to win free concert tickets follow the show.

Mikey In The Pit brings you backstage, in the dirt, and face-first into the loudest shit that actually matters. No BS. No industry handjobs. Just music, mayhem, and the people who live it.

Death. Delusion. And a goth Christmas tree. 🪦🎄

Ace Frehley’s gone. Mudvayne’s calling themselves classic rock. Ian Watkins finally met karma. Spineshank rose from the grave. And apparently, Christmas now wears black eyeliner.

It’s a hell of a week in rock.

Follow @mikeyinthepit for the loudest rock news, festival coverage, and artist interviews every week.

Paul McCoy of 12 Stones is back — and he’s got a lot more to say than just “wake me up.”

In this episode of Mikey In The Pit, we talk about everything from surviving melanoma to ditching the 9-to-5 grind and getting back on stage. Paul opens up about sobriety, mental health, his love/hate relationship with the industry, and why this isn’t some cute little comeback story — it’s about purpose.

We also get into:

• Touring with Evanescence (and the weirdness)

• Getting mislabeled as a Christian band

• Screaming again after 24 years

• Playing Aftershock and getting thrown into the crowd

• What 12 Stones sounds like in 2025

• And the real reason he came back

Whether you’re a longtime fan or just here for the truth behind the voice, this one’s real, raw, and worth the full listen.

Follow the show, leave a 5-star review, and check out more interviews, music news, and rock-fueled nonsense

https://linktr.ee/mikeyinthepit

164,000 people. 115 bands. Four days of noise, sweat, and total mayhem.
Aftershock 2025 was the biggest one yet and I somehow survived.

From Blink-182 and Good Charlotte to Korn, Rob Zombie, Manson, Chimaira, and GWAR… this year hit different.

This episode covers everything you didn’t see on the livestream:

• Thursday’s pop-punk flashback

• Friday’s food poisoning blackout

• Saturday’s pit insanity, the record-breaking group photo, and the best f**king corndog I’ve ever had

• Sunday’s crowd-surfing chaos, a surprise Manson comeback, and one poor girl who got absolutely dropped during Rob Zombie

Plus: how Sacramento gave DWP a literal award, what’s changing next year, and what’s coming for Mikey in the Pit.

If you were there, relive it. If you missed it, fix that next year.

Follow the show. Join the Pit Crew.
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New content dropping all week.