We were lucky to catch up with Mike Jacobs recently and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Mike, thanks for joining us today. Can you open up about a risk you’ve taken – what it was like taking that risk, why you took the risk and how it turned out?

Risk is a necessary obstacle when it comes to both the creation of art and realizing the person you want to be in life. Our band On The Cinder came together in my senior year of college. I had already been accepted to the Masters program of Education at the University at Buffalo, I wanted to be a social studies teacher. I felt being in the realm of history was a great way for me to understand our country and to recognize what has influenced our society to develop as it has, while also delving into politics that my punk rock heart has always kept a keen interest in.

Growing up I witnessed parents struggle financially and student loans were a major obstacle for them. I applied to grad school, was accepted, but only then did I take a look at the costs for the 2 year program I was in. Thinking of how my parents’ marriage was destroyed with finances being a large influence had me wondering “what if I could take this time to focus on music, focus on touring, and live cheap, rather than accept this tract of financial difficulty with a degree that did not guarantee me a job.” I was 22, had been touring and playing music my whole college experience, and it was all I really wanted to do. So instead of taking on the security of a plan, I dove into a life of travel, partying, and performing.

Those years will definitely cost me later in life, but I made a huge decision to depart from what would have been a much more straight and narrow path, to go explore the world with my 2 best friends in the band and let me go find life. Life has changed a lot, but the skills I developed being a caution to the wind diy troubadour has given me life experience and insight I would never have found in a classroom, whether at the desk or behind the lectern.

Mike, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I write songs and play bass in a punk rock band. That is the fun part.

I also manage the social media, book our live performances and national/international tours, communicate and connect with artists who help provide work for our brand, and drive 3 hours to Buffalo from Rochester to practice once, and sometimes twice a week. My life is my family, but my passion is this band.

On The Cinder is three guys from western New York who play a fast, aggressive style of music, while also keeping a lot of tongue in cheek metaphors and socially conscious content in our songs. Jason plays guitar and records our music in the studio he built in his attic known as Flower House Studios. Tyler is our drummer and resident party man who oversees a lot of branding and designs. We built our lives around being in this band and creating our music as authentically and independently as we can. OTC is all about the friends we’ve made, the community that supports us, and doing what we can to express our genuine perspective of the world.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

Don’t copy people and groups you emulate. We’ve made life long friendships with bands we came up playing shows with and so often we’d want to do what they were doing. Someone buys a diesel van, we bought a diesel van. This guy who thinks he’s a rockstar buys a certain guitar, we’d buy that guitar. We’d see people pack groceries rather than get fast food every day on tour, we’d buy cans of soup and eat them cold…

Taking influence from something you identify with and making it your own is the best way to be unique and have something no one else has done exactly before. My wife has a book by Austin Kleon titled “Steal Like An Artist” and that title has always been a good reminder to be inspired by what you love, but make it yours.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

From my perspective, there have been two major travesties to happen to us on tour. Both were in California.

One year, we had converted a short school bus to be a tour van. We had so much room, slept in it every night, and it was always a fun hang after shows for people to come chill and make friends. But rusty old diesel engines from Western New York get really grody, and we broke down in Santa Cruz, CA needing a new fuel injector pump. This was a $3,500 job and to many other bands would have lead to fighting and possibly the end of a band all together. We considered renting a uHaul and driving all the way home, though the cost would have been nearly the same. We found a way with money from the tour and our own financials to get the work done and finish the tour. That bus did make it home, but it had it’s last run. Don’t buy a diesel van unless you can fix it yourself.

The other incident we were doing really well financially on a tour and all the money from our tour went missing. We had made the poor decision to keep the money in a microphone bag that someone could keep on their person at all times, though it was either dropped or stolen at some point. We were broke on tour, and had two weeks to go. We all smoked a cigarette, and to break the silence I said “everyone needs to say something”, and instead of it turning into a screaming match, we actually all opened up about how messed up the situation was, but by our own collective mistake or being ripped off by an outside party, that we would get through. We finished the tour with the support of our friends and family buying up merch or flat out sending us gas money. To show our appreciation we sent everyone a stitched patch that said “OTC friend. family” because that’s how much they meant to us. Don’t carry too much cash with you, it will walk away.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://linktr.ee/onthecinder
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/onthecinder/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/onthecinder
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@onthecinder9171
• Other: Bluesky https://bsky.app/profile/onthecinder.bsky.social

Image Credits

Max Badgely
Meredith Snow
Ryan Bahm