Relentless Consistency and the Scarcity Premium with Mike Schulte from The Pork Tornadoes
Gig Gab - The Working Musician's PodcastShow Notes
Guest co-host Mike Schulte joins Dave with 15 years of Pork Tornadoes social media wisdom, and the message is blunt: relentless consistency wins. You literally can’t post too much in 2026—nobody sees everything anymore, so repost that same flyer as a fresh post (not a share) and keep going. Give it 45 days before you judge results. Why invest? More fans mean more bodies at the gig, plus the social proof that signals to newcomers that other people already love you. And remember—you’re not competing with other bands, you’re competing with people’s couches.
From there, Dave and Mike dig into the live-show craft. Build a sound check formula so it stops being a nightmare, then cook up a Suno-generated theme song to walk on to—Always Be Performing means the show starts before the first chord lands. Treat your setlist like art: the opener’s a throwaway, but song three is the most important slot of the night. Then think about your saturation—the Pork Tornadoes cap themselves at two ticketed gigs per year inside a 30-mile radius, and the minute they got scarce, their pay jumped tenfold. Simple, not easy.
00:00:00 Gig Gab 533 – Monday, May 11th, 2026
May 11th: National Eat What You Want Day (also Hostess CupCake Day!)
Guest co-host: Mike Schulte
00:01:10 Did you ever watch Night Court
Dave reminds Mike of Harry
Confused Breakfast
Shows that were so far ahead of their time:
All In The Family
Roseanne
00:05:06 Managing your band’s social media
Relentless Consistency is the key (right now).
“You can never post too much” – Mike Schulte, May 11, 2026
Mike has been running social media for Pork Tornadoes for 15 years
Everyone doesn’t see every post (anymore)
It’s money-driven
Repost the same thing, the same flyer, the same idea (as a new post, not a “share”)
00:09:49 Getting “started” on social media in 2026
I tried to follow your model and nothing changed. In two weeks.
You’ve gotta spend a month or more (Dave says 45 days)
00:14:05 What’s the benefit of investing in social media
The more fans you have, there WILL be more people who come to your events
Also: social proof. Showing people that other people like you.
00:18:55 Social Proof + Bullheaded Persistence = Success.
00:22:00 People don’t go out like they used to
You’re not competing with other bands, you’re competing with people’s couches
00:24:39 A band retreat!
If 2020 hadn’t happened, Pork Tornadoes would’ve probably gone full time
00:26:04 SPONSOR: Claude.ai – Ready to tackle bigger problems? Sign up for Claude today, which includes access to Claude Cowork, too, when you visit https://Claude.ai/giggab
00:27:42 Recent Gig(s) Gab
Boston Cream Band at Seacoast Repertory Theater
Pork Tornadoes is a 2-hours straight-thru band
00:34:19 Orchestrate your sound check
Sound check used to be a nightmare, until we created a formula
00:38:27 Create a musical lead-in for your show
For the wranglers in the Gig Gab audience
Use Suno to create a theme song for your band
00:42:57 Writing a setlist is an art
Your first song is a throwaway
The third song is the FIRST most important song in the set (according to Dave)
Develop business-like rituals for your band
00:48:32 What’s Your Band’s Saturation?
Self-imposed proximity clauses
Pork Tornadoes Proximity Clause: No more than 2 ticketed events in a 30-mile radius per year
Plus one free-to-the-public festival gig to pull people in
To the venues who don’t have proximity clauses: why do you not?
The minute we started getting scarce, was the minute our pay increased 10-fold
01:00:12 The Pork Tornadoes formula: simple, not easy.
Gig Gab 532 Outtro
Follow Mike Schulte
Confused Breakfast
The Pork Tornadoes
Contact Gig Gab!
@GigGabPodcast on Instagram
Sign Up for the Gig Gab Mailing List
The post Relentless Consistency and the Scarcity Premium with Mike Schulte from The Pork Tornadoes – Gig Gab 533 appeared first on Gig Gab.
More from Gig Gab - The Working Musician's Podcast
Your fellow working musicians just handed you a year’s worth of gig hacks, and this week Gig Gab pulls the best listener tips from Instagram and Facebook into one episode. You’ll get a hand-raise monitor check that knocks out soundcheck in minutes, a dedicated soundcheck song for when the room’s already full, and the mixing moves pros swear by: high-pass the bass at 80 Hz, sidechain it to the kick, and carve 2.5 kHz out of everything else so the vocals cut through. Then you’ll build a smarter set list. Space out the songs that wreck your singer, keep a back-pocket list of crowd-grabbers, mark who sings lead for the sound person, and track song lengths so you never blow past curfew.
Megan Ihnen and Alan Theisen of Neonautica went from contemporary classical recitals to headlining dubstep parties in New Orleans, and they brought a theater kid’s discipline with them. You’ll hear how they split band duties so nobody has to wonder who’s handling what, why the only correct response to a note is thank you, and why there’s no such thing as a good or bad sound, only the sound you meant to make and the one you didn’t. They also explain why they wrote an hour-long set the way a composer writes a symphony, and what it means to control the room instead of just reading it.
Chris Cron posted what he thought was a one-off video about how to sound like the Beach Boys, set his phone down, and came back to 10,000 views. A few days later it was near a million. A few years later, he’s a touring member of the actual Beach Boys. Chris joins Dave to show you what was underneath that “overnight” success: a full-time session vocalist gig since 2018, years of throwing content at the wall, and the social media lessons that made one video stick: Frame your post as a question, reply to every comment, and treat the haters as fodder for a lesson or a laugh. From there, the path runs through a John Stamos follow, a coffee with the band’s musical director, a one-off Post Malone fill-in, and a phone call you don’t say no to. When the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity shows up, you throw the door open wide.
Every club at SXSW sounds good, every night, all week, and we’ve often wondered how they maintain that consistency. This week Dave finally gets the answer from Nate Cross, SXSW’s Director of Production, who went from intern to Assistant Production Manager to running the whole show. You’ll hear how his team builds out 55 to 60 venues (down from 100+ before the pandemic), why they mic everything even when it looks like overkill, and how 20-minute changeovers actually run on time with bands who’ve never met. Then there’s the backline story: trading the free band beer for a drum kit and amps at every venue, which enhanced everything.
Skylar Hamilton is back by popular demand for round two of your questions, recorded across an Airbnb kitchen table in New York City where a roll of paper towels doubles as a mic stand, because it’s the right height and it kills table rumble.