Mikey Rukus talks about his biggest race against time when creating a theme song.
Sometimes Mikey Rukus is given a heads up and a fair amount of time when creating a new theme song for an AEW star. Other times, it is a complete race against the clock.
Speaking to Sean Ross Sapp, Mikey revealed his biggest time crunch thus far was the Elite Ghostbusters theme song he created for a Halloween special. But, Rukus had a similar occurrence happen when Erick Redbeard recently resurfaced in the promotion.
“It would have to be the Elite Ghostbusters theme. We actually had an incident Friday night with Rampage,” Rukus said. “I was actually at the venue and I was leaving to go and change and grab some food. Everybody started texting me about Erick Redbeard. So I had happened to have my gear in the hotel, so I came back to the hotel and I was like, ‘I don’t have my guitar. It’s on the truck because we’re performing.’ So I put something together that didn’t have guitar in it, but it was kind of in the style that Redbeard would like. As I sent it up, Tony was like, ‘What about this one?’ I was like, ‘Okay.’ It is what it is. He was like, ‘We’ll use this one down the line.’ He’s like, ‘I promise. Erick’s such a great guy.’ I was like, ‘As long as it’s cleared.’ So we had the race against time to find out who it was that produced the track and then we got it cleared and had it for TV. That’s what happens sometimes. It’s like a cross-training thing. Sometimes you’ll have time, a day or two or maybe a week or so and there’s times where the call happens. I specifically bring my gear down and set it up in the hotel just in case.”
Overall, Mikey says everything song is handled on a case-by-case basis and can present a unique number of changes
“It all depends on what their idea is for their entrance theme and what Tony has in mind. We all have a quick conversation. Tony’s a big proponent of having me involved in it from the jump and then we just kind of go from there. If we think it’s something that’s a little more envisioned for bringing some stuff from the outside, just take the steps necessary to make sure the tracks are cleared and doesn’t lock up YouTube and we don’t have issues with playing it on TV and stuff,” he said.
Speaking about the Elite Ghostbusters theme, Mikey says the elite originally planned to do a squid games parody for Halloween but when they switched ideas, the race against time was on.
“Originally, I had worked with Kenny the week prior and we were doing the Squid Games. I had taken what was the Squid Game theme and I changed that,” he said. "Instead of using that, I used samples of their names and actually worked it into the song. He was really excited. We were all set to go. My truck was at the mechanic’s shop, 5:30 in the afternoon, I was picking up my truck from the shop, and Kenny texts me. He’s like, ‘How fast can you work?’ I was like, ‘Uh-oh.’ I’ve heard this before. I said, ‘What’s going on?’ He says, ‘They just axed the whole Squid Games thing, I’m so depressed. We gotta figure out something. We’re gonna do Ghostbusters.’ Immediately I was like, ‘I got it. I got you.’ I actually got stuck in traffic on the way home.”
“I was in traffic until about a quarter to 7:00—somewhere in there, 6:30, 7:00 o’clock—got upstairs and immediately just started making decisions on what I wanted to do," he continued. “About twenty minutes after 7:00, I went to go mix down, my computer froze up. I had updated one of my plug-ins earlier in the day for whatever reason. Everything just froze on me. So it’s 7:20 before Dynamite and I had to reboot. I went back, lost about thirty minutes of progress. I had to go back and do it again, re-mix it. I delivered it to the truck at 8:03. Kenny had the track at 8:01, the truck had the track at 8:03. Kenny’s like, ‘I love you. I don’t know how you do it, but I love you.’ It was really cool. I love moments like that. Some people just freak out, but it allows me to have this hyperfocus. Everything else around me’s just blurred out. It’s like, decision, decision, decision, let’s finish.”
One superstar that recently debuted is Keith Lee. Mikey explained why Keith Lee is not rapping in his own theme song and that also had to do with timing. Learn more here.
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