MP: It seems every musician has a story about a song that flows out of them like that and becomes one of their most successful. How did it go from lyrics on your phone to viral?
TM: I ran into the house and told Nova I just wrote the song that's literally going to change everything and we have to shoot a video for it. She's like, "You haven't even recorded the song yet." As I record the song, Nova sets up one $20 light that we had from Amazon, a paper backdrop and her camera. We shoot the video, edit it, and drop it the next day. I called my mom, my sister, my best friend Brandon, and another friend or two and borrowed $200 from everybody because I have nothing. I raised like $1,100 and put it on an ad for the video on Facebook and twenty-four hours later it's got over a million views and my page goes from 4,000 likes to 20,000 likes. I feel like I've just figured this whole thing out and found my place. I followed up with dozens of viral records and literally haven't stopped since 2017. And now here we are with three and a half million subs on YouTube, and a billion views.
MP: And it's done without any help other than you and Nova?
TM: It's all completely independent. I wrote and produced all the music. Nova has shot and edited every single video. There's no manager, no label, no marketing team, no PR, no publicist, nothing. We've designed every t-shirt, every album cover, distributed our music independently through TuneCore. It has not changed in the last five years. It's just the two of us. It still blows my mind.
MP: This is the story and the reality of what's possible in the music industry today. People say you don't need a record company behind you and can do things yourself, and you're the exact story that everybody talks about. Your latest, "Ghost," is a beautiful love song to Nova and the feeling between the two of you just oozes out of the video. It's a departure from your usual content in a song. Talk about writing it.
TM: It's the first love song I've written in 10 years. Like I said, we do everything ourselves and it