The Shift with Mike & Joe
The Shift with Mike & Joe
Podcast Description
Welcome to ”The Shift with Mike and Joe,” the podcast that takes you on a journey into the world of entrepreneurship with your hosts, Mike and Joe! Mike is an 9-year veteran of the self-employment game and Joe is a recent entrepreneur who kicked off his journey about 3 years ago.
Both hosts are not only business-savvy but also talented musicians, adding a unique twist to the entrepreneurial conversation. Mike runs the ”Kent Island Academy of Music,” a successful music school, while Joe operates ”Image & Sound Media,” a thriving photography and videography business. Beyond their entrepreneurial endeavors, these dynamic individuals are also solo musicians who occasionally team up in Joe’s band, ”Heavy Fred.”
”The Shift” strives for biweekly episodes filled with insights, advice, and real talk about breaking free from the traditional 9-5 job and making your own path in the business world. Mike and Joe will cover a variety of topics related to entrepreneurship, including the highs and lows of their own journeys, lessons learned, and tips for success.
Beyond the world of business, the podcast will dive into various aspects of their lives, from hobbies and self-care to the adventures of fatherhood. Expect a mix of valuable insights and lighthearted banter as they share their experiences, challenges, and triumphs.
Whether you’re a seasoned entrepreneur, just starting out, or simply curious about the entrepreneurial lifestyle, ”The Shift with Mike and Joe” is your go-to podcast for inspiration and entertainment. Don’t miss out on the fun—subscribe now and join them every two weeks for a dose of wisdom, laughter, and the occasional dose of nonsense!
#TheShiftPodcast #EntrepreneurLife #BusinessTalk #mikeandjoeshow
Podcast Insights
Content Themes
The podcast focuses on entrepreneurship, personal growth, and balancing work with life, with episodes covering topics such as transitioning from traditional jobs to self-employment, productivity tips, and relationship dynamics within the business world. For example, episodes feature discussions on the creative process with musicians and entrepreneurs, insights from guests like J. Coursey Willis on managing multiple projects, and humorous reflections on personal interests such as music and hobbies.
Welcome to ”The Shift with Mike and Joe,” the podcast that takes you on a journey into the world of entrepreneurship with your hosts, Mike and Joe! Mike is an 9-year veteran of the self-employment game and Joe is a recent entrepreneur who kicked off his journey about 3 years ago.
Both hosts are not only business-savvy but also talented musicians, adding a unique twist to the entrepreneurial conversation. Mike runs the ”Kent Island Academy of Music,” a successful music school, while Joe operates ”Image & Sound Media,” a thriving photography and videography business. Beyond their entrepreneurial endeavors, these dynamic individuals are also solo musicians who occasionally team up in Joe’s band, ”Heavy Fred.”
”The Shift” strives for biweekly episodes filled with insights, advice, and real talk about breaking free from the traditional 9-5 job and making your own path in the business world. Mike and Joe will cover a variety of topics related to entrepreneurship, including the highs and lows of their own journeys, lessons learned, and tips for success.
Beyond the world of business, the podcast will dive into various aspects of their lives, from hobbies and self-care to the adventures of fatherhood. Expect a mix of valuable insights and lighthearted banter as they share their experiences, challenges, and triumphs.
Whether you’re a seasoned entrepreneur, just starting out, or simply curious about the entrepreneurial lifestyle, ”The Shift with Mike and Joe” is your go-to podcast for inspiration and entertainment. Don’t miss out on the fun—subscribe now and join them every two weeks for a dose of wisdom, laughter, and the occasional dose of nonsense!
#TheShiftPodcast #EntrepreneurLife #BusinessTalk #mikeandjoeshow
“I thought I invented something. I was like, I have discovered an electric guitar.”
Before he owned an electric guitar, Bryan wrapped a pair of Radio Shack headphones around the body of his acoustic and plugged them into the family stereo. It worked well enough that he was convinced he had invented something. Not long after, somebody handed him a guitar tuner with a bad solder joint. It would not tune anything. Plug a guitar through it and it distorted, which was the only thing he had ever wanted it to do.
Bryan Ewald is probably the most watched guitarist on this side of the bay that nobody stops in the street. He is the player in the PRS Guitars demo videos. Andrew Dorbin, who was on in EP 32, is the one filming them. Josh Willis, last episode’s guest, had an EP produced by him. Mike and Joe have been circling this one for a while.
The PRS job started as a wrong number. Somebody applying for a spot in the wood shop put nineteen year old Bryan down as a reference, PRS called, and by the end of the call they had offered him a job instead. He spent less than a year in the finish hall, worked out he was better at playing guitars than building them, and left. Years later Jim Cullen went to bat for him and a guitar turned up with no strings attached, no exclusivity, nothing to sign. Then somebody asked if he would make a video.
He is careful about how much credit he takes for those. He writes and records the backing tracks at his house, bass and drums included, then walks into a room where a guitar he has often never touched is waiting, and plays it live in a couple of takes with the cameras already rolling. No fifty passes, no editing to taste. Seventeen pickup positions and a marketing sheet he is allowed to ignore.
And he can hardly watch them. He puts the demos at maybe sixty percent of what he can actually do and describes most of it as his worst playing, filmed in what he compares to hospital lighting. There are a handful he wishes he could scrub off the internet, and one or two he loved so much he was annoyed when new pickups meant it had to be reshot.
The bands are the rest of it, and there have always been several at once. Non-Fiction with Meg Murray. Starbelly, which he joined right as its songwriter stepped out to go solo, and which has spent years backing other people, Pat DiNizio of the Smithereens and Warren Zanes of the Del Fuegos among them. The Jarflys, which took off like a rocket on Jimi HaHa’s name and held a Tuesday residency at Armadillo’s. Jimmie’s Chicken Shack, which he only joined four years ago once his kids were grown. A ten piece Steely Dan tribute. A Ray Charles show with Take 6 that started as a Vegas residency and got chased across the country by the pandemic, city by city, until the airports went quiet.
The money conversation is the one Mike and Joe keep coming back to with everybody, and Bryan is unusually plain about it. He was twenty and out-earning every friend he had. Five years later they had all passed him, because bar gigs never kept up with the cost of living and there are only seven nights in a week. So he raised everything at once, teaching, studio, gigs, and waited for the phone to go quiet. It rang more. He built a rate card priced at the top so he always has room to come down, quotes backyard barbecues at five or six times what people expect, and has noticed that the clients who pay the rate without flinching are the easy ones.
Underneath all of it is a kid in Arnold whose family had no musicians in it at all. A grandfather with a chain of camera stores in southwest Virginia, which is where the gear obsession came from. A beat up fifties Harmony for his ninth birthday because his mother could not afford a piano. A stepmother who would not have drums in the house, so the amp went in a Radio Flyer wagon and got pulled across the Bay Hills golf course to a friend whose brother had a kit, for half an hour after school before the brother got home. Friends calling the house to make him play YYZ down the phone. An amp pointed out of an open window until a neighbour came and knocked.
Then his own two. Aidan makes his living playing music, drums with everybody, sings Joni Mitchell tunes, and has a band called The Candy Rocks that sounds like the Beach Boys meeting Queen. Julian has released seven albums in a month under three different names and has a couple more coming. When Julian was thirteen his dad told him to wait until he was off tour and they would set up a proper mic in the basement studio. Bryan came home and the record was finished. He had sung the whole thing into his phone.
The last stretch goes wide. What AI does to a room full of people who make things. Why there will never be another Beatles and why that is fine. Paul Reed Smith taking a pickup apart to make it one percent better. Paris for a seventh anniversary that broke even on the gig fee, followed by a firm understanding that next year would be Cracker Barrel. Red Rocks, still unplayed. And a plan for retirement that is really just a list of places he passed through on tour and never actually saw.
Josh Willis, EP 42: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1pPvZr_lIk0
Andrew Dorbin, EP 32: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fquWZC29yLg
What shift have you experienced in your life?
CHAPTERS
00:00 Wayfinders Testicular Health Fund
00:47 Welcome to Episode 43
01:14 “So you work at PRS?” Not exactly
02:09 Teaching at a music store at fifteen
03:37 George Thomas takes the blinders off
04:21 A job he never applied for
05:18 Less than a year in the finish hall
06:27 A guitar, no strings attached
07:01 “Do you want to make a video?”
08:25 Why the factory video became the benchmark
09:00 He writes and records the backing tracks himself
09:57 Two takes, live, no editing
10:53 The guitar is in his hands 40 minutes before filming
13:47 Joe subscribed ten years ago, hunting an SE
14:17 “Whatever the guitar looked like, that is how you played it”
17:40 The day he decided to just play like himself
19:06 Tom Walls and the private stock eight string
21:41 New pickups, and every old video is obsolete
22:59 Everybody tells him to start his own channel
24:49 Rhett Shull, and what that life actually costs
28:12 Tim Pierce does the math on courses
30:43 “It is a five person job”
32:50 Why he never moved to LA or Nashville
33:46 Five years later, the plateau
34:26 “Bring something that is not replaceable”
35:15 Free Fallin’ and the skill nobody credits
36:25 The hang is everything
37:26 Eight months on fifteen seconds of Allan Holdsworth
38:19 The first paying gig: a reggae band, two days’ notice
39:53 Too nervous to overplay, which was exactly right
41:16 “Songs are king”
43:26 Limitations make the coolest parts
45:52 The part he loved that did not make the record
47:42 Tuned to bejesus, quantized to the grid
50:54 “Do you have a band now?”
53:14 Starbelly
55:22 Jimi HaHa, and the record Island sat on
57:30 Joining Jimmie’s Chicken Shack
58:07 Take 6, and a Ray Charles show
1:00:56 A ten piece Steely Dan tribute
1:02:35 Sponsor – Wayfinders THF & Putts Fore! Nuts
1:04:32 The Quad Cortex solution
1:07:47 A piezo blend for the Fleetwood Mac gig
1:10:36 The gear gene, from his grandfather
1:13:07 A beat up Harmony for his ninth birthday
1:13:57 An amp with three knobs that would not distort
1:14:38 The broken tuner that became a distortion pedal
1:16:45 The amp in the Radio Flyer wagon
1:18:46 They never told him to have a fallback plan
1:21:26 Mike charged five dollars more, and sent the check
1:23:42 Work smarter, not harder
1:24:25 The phone rang more
1:25:48 “I do not walk into a restaurant and offer $17.99 for a steak”
1:27:48 A rate card priced at the top
1:30:57 Fewer calls, better calls
1:33:19 Mike’s dad and the pep talk
1:35:09 What a low rate tells people about you
1:38:01 Rachel Yamagata
1:39:13 A rock band karaoke gig at the Jetty
1:40:17 The email that came two days later
1:41:00 “No, I live in Arnold, Maryland”
1:43:01 Two cars totalled falling asleep at the wheel
1:45:15 The pandemic ends the gigs
1:46:20 Producing an EP for Josh Willis
1:49:19 The session drummers are his two sons
1:50:27 Julian has written thousands of songs
1:52:21 Meeting his wife at Middleton’s
1:55:16 “What was the secret?” There is not one
1:56:50 Aidan makes his living playing music
1:58:40 “You have a son who is a drummer, right?” Both of them
2:01:49 Calling out his own son
2:03:50 Drive against talent, and who actually wins
2:06:33 Why singing is the most personal thing
2:07:14 “All my friends say my music sounds the same”
2:08:17 He came home from tour and the album was finished
2:10:46 Recording 98 Rock onto a 120 minute cassette
2:11:48 “That solo could not be improved”
2:13:49 Singing into his parents’ answering machine
2:15:15 Twenty percent then, five percent now
2:15:58 “Most of it is my worst playing”
2:17:47 Where he is actually comfortable
2:20:38 Trusting Andrew to find the take
2:23:46 The hill he will die on: clean tones
2:26:18 “You have to get it in your hands”
2:28:30 Thirteen year old him would hate his guitars now
2:31:22 Pell.Leo, Brantt and Julian Ewald
2:32:31 Seven albums in a month
2:35:41 There will never be another Beatles
2:36:43 What AI does to all of this
2:39:34 “I am never going to retire”
2:42:16 Paul Reed Smith will stop when he has to
2:44:41 A lifetime of not taking vacations
2:45:42 Paris for their seventh anniversary
2:47:41 He has never played Red Rocks
2:48:28 “A room full of guitars I will start selling today”
2:49:32 Jimmie’s Chicken Shack at the State Theatre
2:51:17 The young players coming up
2:53:39 Morgan Gonts
2:54:53 Aidan in a Cars tribute
THIS EPISODE IS SPONSORED BY WAYFINDERS TESTICULAR HEALTH FUND
Be Bold. Be Brave. Be Aware.
Wayfinders THF is a Maryland-based 501(c)(3) dedicated to impacting the lives and health of young men by combating testicular cancer through awareness, education, fundraising, and community support, with a focus on men aged 14 to 35. A component fund of Chesapeake Charities.
Website: https://www.wayfindersthf.org
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wayfindersthf
Donate: https://ccharities.fcsuite.com/erp/donate/create/fund?funit_id=2419
PUTTS FORE! NUTS – 2nd Annual Charity Mini-Golf Tournament
Saturday, October 17, 2026 · 11:30 AM – 6:00 PM
Embers Island Mini-Golf, 2305 Philadelphia Ave Suite #4, Ocean City, MD 21842
Event info: https://www.wayfindersthf.org/putts-fore-nuts
Register / donate: https://ccharities.fcsuite.com/erp/donate/list/event?event_date_id=2419
Sponsorships available at every level – team, tee box, prizes, t-shirts and more.
MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE
PRS Guitars · Custom 24 · McCarty · Silver Sky · S2 · SE · Private Stock · the Cleo · Paul Reed Smith · Jim Cullen · Mark Quigley · Tom Walls · Andrew Dorbin
Jimmie’s Chicken Shack · Starbelly · the Jarflys · Non-Fiction · Technicolor Motorhome · Take 6 · Jimi HaHa · Cliff Hillis · Meg Murray · Matt Jones
Pat DiNizio and the Smithereens · Warren Zanes and the Del Fuegos · Rachel Yamagata · John Alagia · Clint Holmes · Nnenna Freelon · Kirk Whalum
Rhett Shull · Pete Thorn · Tim Pierce · Jacob Collier · Steve Lukather · Allan Holdsworth · Julian Lage · Danny Gatton · Jamie West-Oram and the Fixx · Echo and the Bunnymen · Tears for Fears · Tom Petty · Bob Marley · Django Reinhardt · King Crimson · Paul Simon
Brandon Hardesty and Bumpin Uglies · J. Coursey Willis · Wrightway Studios · Daphne Eckman · Morgan Gonts · Noah Pierre · Dan Ryan and Super City · Nicholas Ray
Annapolis · Arnold · Eastport · Severna Park · Roanoke · Armadillo’s · Middleton Tavern · the Jetty · Rams Head · the Avalon Theatre · the State Theatre · Love Point Vineyards · Bay Hills Golf Course · Anne Arundel Community College
Harmony · Kramer · Ibanez Universe · ’68 Super Reverb · Neural DSP Quad Cortex · Mellotron · 98 Rock · DC101 · Record & Tape Traders · NAMM
CONNECT WITH BRYAN EWALD
Website and full gig calendar: https://bryanewald.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bryan_ewald
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bryanewaldmusic
Bandcamp: https://bryanewald.bandcamp.com
PRS Guitars: https://prsguitars.com
Jimmie’s Chicken Shack: https://jimmieschickenshack.bandcamp.com
Meg Murray: https://megmurray.com
Aidan Ewald: https://www.aidanewald.com
The Candy Rocks: https://www.facebook.com/p/The-Candy-Rocks-61573946916316
Julian Ewald releases under Julian Ewald, Pell.Leo and Brantt
SUPPORT THE SHIFT WITH MIKE & JOE
Website: https://www.theshiftwithmikeandjoe.com
Donate: https://www.theshiftwithmikeandjoe.com/giving-page-2-1
Email: [email protected]
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@TheShiftwithMikeandJoe-jf9ot
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theshiftwithmikeandjoe/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61574975860350
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@theshiftwithmikea
Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-shift-with-mike-joe/id1813198065
Podbean: https://joer7.podbean.com
CONNECT WITH MIKE & JOE
Michael Waskey Music
Website: https://www.michaelwaskey.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/michaelwaskeymusic
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/michaelwaskeymusic
Kent Island Academy of Music (Mike)
Website: https://kentislandacademyofmusic.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KentIslandAcademyOfMusic/
Image & Sound Media (Joe)
Website: https://www.imagesoundmedia.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100094021747690
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/imageandsoundmedia
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@imagesoundmedia
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@imagesoundmedia
Joe Bryan Music
Website: https://www.joebryanmusic.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61550810556745
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/joebryanmusic
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@joebryanmusic
PODCAST PRODUCTION GEAR (EPISODE 43)
Cameras: Sony A7 IV, Sony A7 V, Sony FX3, Sony A7C II
Main Audio: Shure SM7B (Joe, Mike & Bryan)
Interface: Focusrite Scarlett 18i18
Audio Software: Reaper
Video Editing: DaVinci Resolve Studio
Lighting: Amaran 100x & 200x softboxes + Amaran tube lights
The Shift with Mike & Joe is fully produced by Image & Sound Media.
https://www.imagesoundmedia.com
#TheShiftPodcast #Guitar #PRSGuitars #SessionMusician #WorkingMusician #Annapolis #EasternShore #MarylandPodcast #MusicBusiness #WayfindersTHF
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