Mikey Rukus Talks Brodie Lee Tribute Song, Reveals Musicians/Producers He Wants To Work With

AEW's music producer Mikey Rukus was recently interviewed by PWInsider.

Highlights are below:

On his recently released Brodie Lee tribute track:

“First of all, it’s an incredibly high honor. So when people experience loss, they act in a certain way, they process it a certain way. Even from an early age, I had always turned to music not just to talk to myself, but to speak to others who were mourning or hurting or wanting to celebrate and remember somebody. My first foray into that…I was in high school. My senior year of high school we had two very good friends of our group that were killed in a car accident right after school, they actually collided with a school bus. They lost their lives and the entire school was… it was a rough time. And all I knew to do was to play music. And we had actually had an assembly where it was like a Christmas assembly and you know, the bands were doing like the musical pieces and they gave me the floor to actually play. So I played a piece and it was… I want to say it was Thunder March from Marty Friedman. But it was a very stripped down version of that song and that was just kind of like a dedication for them and just feeling the way I felt after I played it. That’s something that I’ve always turned to because it’s kind of how I process my grief. I work from home, my home office so I don’t get to see the team a lot. The initial tribute that I wrote was sort of the same way, it was like, it was a spin off of the Exalted One theme, and this time around when we told the story of the Dark Order like how do you not put that in there but at the same time, you know, we’re a year and a half removed, going on two years removed from the passing of Brodie Lee. And we look back and we smile. We look back and you know it still hurts that he’s not here but you can take that and say listen, the impact that he made on the people that he was around, and I had only met him a couple of times, but the impact that he made on the people that knew him. It’s very important to immortalize that and really just and let people know like Hey, he is a staple within the lives of so many. So and I wanted to go above and beyond this time as opposed to just having a musical piece. So I got with my orchestration editor Laura Moore, and she rounded up the Cantata Academy Chorale in Detroit, Michigan and we had a 40 piece chamber choir actually record the finale for the end of that song. So very moving, very intense. It meant a lot to be able to get that out and just put something on the chapter in the story arc, the Dark Order.”

On other musicians and producers that he would like to work with:

“I have a few. I would love to work with Tom Holkenborg, Junkie XL, most notably for his score for the Mad Max Fury Road and he just recently scored Sonic Two. I love his orchestral and film, film interpretation, film score interpretation that he puts out. I had a chance to meet with some of his management team last year and they said that he very much took the same road that I did. He was a club DJ, very well known Club DJ, just kind of transitioned into film. He built it up on the side and transition fully and does all of his own stuff, matches all of his own music. I would love to be able to work with him on AEW music in the future. Corey Taylor is another one, not just for AEW, music but even, you know I’m actually in the throes of planning a second solo album, probably in 2023. I would love to work with him on something like that. And most notably AEW music, so those are my two. Dave Grohl would be another one. So those are my big influences in terms of songwriting. I would love to work with all three or one of the three, draw a number, draw a hat, pick three cups with the name underneath, whoever – I would love it.”

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