Title:
Rock & Roll Against Epilepsy: Mike Gomoll, Joey’s Song & the Power of Showing Up

Subtitle:
What can happen when one little boy’s love of music becomes a movement?

Alycia Anderson: Welcome to Pushing Forward with Alycia, a podcast that gives disability a voice. Each week, we will explore topics like confidence, ambition, resilience, and finding success against all odds. We are creating a collective community that believes that all things are possible for all people. Open hearts, clear paths, let’s go.

Welcome back to Pushing Forward with Alycia. I’m Alycia Anderson, your hostess with the mostest. And today, talk about the mostest with our next guest. What does it take to get members of Guns N’ Roses, Cheap Trick, The Go-Go’s, Tears for Fears, The Bangles, The Goo Goo Dolls, to show up in Wisconsin in the winter and play an event?

For Mike Gomoll, it starts with his son Joey. After losing Joey Mike turned his unimaginable grief into Joey’s Song, and a volunteer-run nonprofit that has raised more than $2 million for epilepsy research, through the power of music.

Amazing. Love that.

And what began with a small acoustic night has become a full-blown rock and roll movement that is built around one little boy who loved to dance. Love the acoustic part, too, by the way. Love a little acoustic jam. Mike, welcome to the show.

I’m so excited to share your beautiful story.

Mike Gomoll: Well, thank you for that great introduction. I appreciate it.

Alycia Anderson: Thank you for all the work you’re doing. When our paths crossed and we met your team, it was an absolute yes, we want you to come on the show, of course. And I started researching your lovely story, and you and your son and all the advocacy. And can we maybe start before Joey’s Song? Who is Mike? What did life, your career look like before all these probably unexpected journeys began?

Mike Gomoll: Sure. In college, back in the ’80s, not to date myself here or anything, but back in the ’80s, I did work in the music business a little bit. I was I went to school here in Madison at UW and worked my way through school as a disc jockey, as well as working in a thousand-seat music venue here in Madison.

So I had some, understanding of the music business, and there was a relationship I made back then that will be crucial to the rest of the story, so we’ll save that little surprise for later. But I did not go on to do that as a career. I actually, despite the long hair and everything that you see, I worked at IBM for most of my adult life, which is short hair, blue suits, and power ties and was in management there.

But a lot of that helped me do what I’m doing now too. It’s kind of that build-up. You don’t know it at the time, but you develop a lot of skills that help you with wherever the path is gonna lead you. And so my wife and I, we got married later in life. I somehow convinced her to leave her hometown of Chicago to come up to Madison, Wisconsin.

I’m still not sure if she really understood what she was getting herself into. We weren’t married at the time. But we came up here to raise a family. This is where I’m from, and this was my home. And so was working for IBM in the process of building our family. All three of our kids were adopted, so all three of our kids came to us through adoption. and Joe was the last of the three. And about 30 days into him being home, he had his first seizure, which led to this really long journey which unfortunately ended up with him leaving us just short of his fifth birthday. But even while Joe was still with us, I had thought about trying to do something to, do what we say here at Joey’s Song, help the next family, right?

Somebody somewhere is sitting in a neurologist office right now with their young child on their lap, and they are scared to death. They don’t understand what they’re being told. They don’t know what it’s gonna lead to. They don’t know what tomorrow’s gonna be like. They need to know that somebody’s out there fighting for them, and that’s what we’re trying to do at Joey’s Song.

We’re trying to raise money so that the really smart people in the lab coats, and I always show my age with this analogy, can mix the test tubes together. I know they don’t use test tubes anymore, and Bunsen burners. It’s all on the computer. But back when I was in school, we were doing test tubes. But somebody’s in there trying to mix that, and they’re gonna have that voila moment which are gonna make seizures a thing of the past and stop futures from being robbed and lives from being taken and all that.

Even when Joe was still with us, but when he was… His prognosis was not gonna be good. He had Epilepsy is a spectrum disorder, from different causes to different manifestations, and unfortunately, Joe was on the very red line end of all of it. So his prognosis was not good, but I thought maybe there’s something we can do to help the next family, and that kinda called back on my music business past, and that led into Joey’s Song. I retired from IBM, and now I’m able to do this full time, which has allowed it to grow into the event that you alluded to a bit earlier.

Alycia Anderson: This is so beautiful. Did you, know is it Joe or Joey? I wanna make sure I’m…

Mike Gomoll: Either one.

Alycia Anderson: Okay. I’m gonna say Joey ’cause I love the, I love. but did you, how much did you know about his diagnosis when you adopted him? Uh, it’s so beautiful that all of your children are adopted, number one. What a beautiful lived experience and life path and so needed.

But did you know about the diagnosis? And how do you transition into that? ‘Cause I would assume, and this might be a bias, that a diagnosis with epilepsy that’s on the, spectrum or the pendulum that is, I’m gonna say more aggressive.

Mike Gomoll: Yep.

Alycia Anderson: Must be relatively scary as a parent to go through that over and over.

Can you talk through that for a minute?

Mike Gomoll: Sure. So we did an international adoption. All three of our kids are adopted from Guatemala, we did an international adoption, and Joe came home to us at about six months. So from the moment his birth mother gave up custody through him coming to us, he was with a foster family.

So if he had a seizure during that time, we didn’t know about it. I don’t think he did. He had something called Dravet syndrome, and that usually starts to manifest itself six, seven months. So we didn’t know anything. Everything was normal for the first month and a half or so. And then he had his first seizure. He was down with Grandma and Grandpa down in Chicago, and went to Illinois Masonic Hospital. It was right across the street from where they live fortunately, and it started this path of learning about epilepsy, and we didn’t know it was as serious as it was at first, because seizures in young children is not uncommon. They’re called febrile seizures. A lot of kids have seizures. It’s not epilepsy. They have seizures because your neurological system isn’t fully developed and formed, so sometimes a fever can just make your body go, “Ah, enough,” right, and shut down. So that’s what we were told at first, “Oh, this is probably just febrile seizures,” and as they kept coming and kept happening, it became pretty apparent that they weren’t.

But adoption is an amazing thing. I will say to anybody, there is no difference when they hand you that child at four months or four hours. I fell in love with all three of them within microseconds, andand they’re very blessed.

They don’t look like me at all. They’re very beautiful and handsome, so they’re very lucky that they did not get Dad’s Germanic genes, that they have that beautiful Latin look to them. But the minute you lay eyes on them it’s all over. It’s just all over.

And there might even be, more of an attachment with adoption, because you’ve worked so hard to make them a part of your family, right?

Alycia Anderson: Oh.

Mike Gomoll: And there are so many hoops that you jump through, and it’s, as we told the kids when they were young, and we were upfront from as soon as they were able to understand that they were adopted, and it might sound cliché, but it’s true.

We chose you. We picked you. You in particular were the one that we picked, and we’re very blessed with Julia and Sam, who are Joey’s older brother and sister are wonderful adults now, 26 and 24, and it’s just the best. But anyway, that the feeling, all you wanna do, your role as a parent is to protect that infant, that child.

And so from that first seizure and when we realized this wasn’t just febrile seizures, it’s a battle. It’s we are gonna figure this out. We are gonna figure this out. We’re gonna do everything that we need to do to figure it out. And that’s really what it was.

Alycia Anderson: And Joey, you say that this movement was built around this little boy that loved to dance. Will you talk a little bit about what music meant to him in his life.

Mike Gomoll: Yeah.

Alycia Anderson: How it lit him up, things like that. Can you just give us a little?

Mike Gomoll: Dravet syndrome, again the epilepsy that he had robbed him of his ability to speak. He was non-verbal, right? And and that was probably at that time, 15 years ago, even today while there have been some improvements is not uncommon. He would interact. Music was his connection to the world, right? When he would have a seizure and in the state that they call postictal, which is post-seizure, it took him a couple hours to recover, and we would lay in bed and watch Baby Einstein or Baby Mozart or Elmo and all of those things, right? And that was his connection to the world. And when there were people over, and we had the TV on, and Teletubbies came on or Elmo came on or whatever it was, and the music started, Joe would make sure that everybody in the room was not only paying attention, but dancing, right?

So even though he was, it was… His dance was a bop, and he would just make his own noises, but that was his connection to people and to the world, was music. And the reason we call it Joey’s Song is because Elmo’s Song. Da-da, Elmo’s Song. So that’s the nod to why music was important to him, and the fact that once a year we get a few thousand people together in Madison, and they sing and dance to help that fight just is kismet.

Alycia Anderson: It’s so beautiful. So let’s talk about that a little bit. The event started off in a small little venue, I’m assuming acoustic.

Mike Gomoll: Yep.

Alycia Anderson: I love that vibe too, by the way. Love it. Let’s talk about that coming together and how it’s turned into something much bigger.

Mike Gomoll: Yeah.

Alycia Anderson: And how many years has this been going on?

Mike Gomoll: So we started Joey’s Song months after Joe passed, ’cause I had been toying with it anyway in my head of trying to do something. But obviously, when you’ve got a severe special needs kids and two, a five-year-old and a seven-year, you’re just trying to make it to bedtime at night. You’re, you’re not trying to start a nonprofit or a charitable endeavor.

I was ready to go. had a lot of it already in my head. But the, the key to this, Alycia, is back when we started it, it wasn’t a concert. It was CDs. In 2010, the idea was to get… I had enough connections in the music business from both my past and just living a life back then when people were still paying for music, which is a whole nother issue, right?

Now everybody just streams it, and it’s a whole thing was to release CDs, and I will not turn this into a five-hour TED Talk on the business of creating CDs. It was a lot of work for not a lot of money ’cause people weren’t buying it. But we would always put on a CD release party every time we would put on a CD, ’cause that’s what you did back in the day, and that’s the start of all this.

So we had a couple of our artists in a small sports bar down in Chicago that brought their guitars, and we got a few friends together and started this path. And then over time it developed into this, and I guess I’ll do the big reveal of that person that I was talking about in college. So few years into this, an old college friend of mine called Butch Vig, who is produced Nirvana’s Nevermind and Smashing Pumpkins’ Siamese Dreams and Foo Fighters and Green Day and Sonic Youth and has his own band, Garbage, “Only Happy When It Rains,” he was kicking around Madison back when I was, and our paths crossed again. and they were doing a big headlining show here with Flaming Lips. And Butch and I reconnected, and he said, “What can I do to help?” And that’s really, that was about 2013, started what it is now, which is this all-star jam thing where Butch and some of his friends serve as a house band, and then we get John Rzeznik from the Goo Dolls and Max Collins from Eve 6 and Bangles and Go-Go’s and Tears for Fears, and all these people come to town, and this is where I need to make sure I say this, and they all come and play for free. None of them take a penny to do this. I just saw John Rzeznik a couple months ago in Milwaukee, and there were 10,000 people paid money to come and see him play, and he comes and does our thing for free. And I, Tears for Fears is about to open next year for Harry Styles at Wembley. So these are gigantor people, and they all leave their nice warm homes in California and come to Madison, Wisconsin, in January for a week. And all they get besides a good warm feeling is a ham sandwich and two beers from me, ’cause that’s what I pay them.

Alycia Anderson: I love it. And how do you get the buy-in? Like, I think this is such a beautiful story of community coming together. Also, you know, a lot of us doing this work are, I believe, it, that one moment away as well of meeting the right person, or having the right connection, or pulling from your Rolodex of connections that go, “Let me put you here, and let’s elevate this.”

So that’s such a cool story about how this has all kind of grown. But how do you get buy-in from people to just come and do for good? Like, I thought a great especially in 2026, like, coming together for humanity. Like, how do you, how do you do that?

Mike Gomoll: What I’d like to say, Alycia, to make it seem like an, “Oh, how difficult it is,” and, “Oh, my…”

Alycia Anderson: Oooh.

Mike Gomoll: It’s not anymore. The artists are my best recruiters. I built it because these people know of each other and have run into each other of a lifetime in music. And once they come and they see we, we run a, because of the background, we run a really nice event for them from the stage back.

We take good care of them, especially since they’re coming for free. And Butch likes to say, “This is like rock camp for rock stars,” right? They get to come and do what they’re good at, but play with people they don’t normally… ‘Cause I guess we should talk a little bit about the event itself, ’cause that will answer the question of how do I get them to come.

Alycia Anderson: Please.

Mike Gomoll: It is a, yes, of course, we can’t have John Rzeznik come and not play Iris. And we can’t have Curt Smith come and not play Everybody Wants to Rule the World. And, they have to play their hits. But the rest of the night is all-star jam. It’s Beatles, and Stones, and AC/DC, and Motown, and all this other stuff. And so you get these, they get to come and play songs they don’t normally get to play with their day job, right? ‘Cause, if you go see a Bangles show, they gotta play Bangles songs, right? But now they can do whatever they wanna do, or play with each other. The Bangles can come out and sing with Jane Wiedlin of Our Lips Are Sealed or whatever it is. So just have the best time doing it. That’s… And once they’ve come, then they’ll say, “You should call my friend so and so,” ’cause… And no offense to management, but it’s always getting past management and the agent that’s it. You call directly to the artist and they say, “Oh yeah, that sounds, yeah.

Alycia Anderson: Well, if Bill says it’s fun, I’m coming,” right? And so that’s how I do it. At first it was a lot of, blind emails to people going, dear info@artist.com. But then if you click… obviously having Butch as my musical director helps immensely. Amazing.

Mike Gomoll: You know, let’s look at the Grammy Awards on his shelf behind him, and then maybe…

So everybody knows if Butch is my musical director, then it’s not gonna be some shoddy little thing. So Alycia, while I’d really like to pretend and fall back on my fainting couch at how difficult it is, it’s gotten a lot easier as we’ve grown.

Alycia Anderson: Congratulations. Those are boss moves right there. What a big deal for just the disability culture advancing you know, the movement and just a coming together for good. I’m so inspired myself right now. This is amazing.

Mike Gomoll: Yeah.

Alycia Anderson: I want to come to the show. This… My God, really fun. You’re gonna see me in Wisconsin.

Mike Gomoll: There you go.

Alycia Anderson: During the dead of the winter.

I’m ready.

Mike Gomoll: That’s exactly right.

Alycia Anderson: That’s so cool. So tell me about The Next Family. You use this term a lot in your advocacy. Like, can we talk a little bit about the nonprofit, The Next Family.

Mike Gomoll: Yep.

Alycia Anderson: What that phrase means to you and what you also wish the people understood more about some of this advocacy that you’re doing?

Mike Gomoll: Yeah epilepsy is a very hidden disorder, because if you see somebody with other neuro disorders, MD, MS, there’s a physical manifestation of it normally. Even Parkinson’s and those types of stuff, there’s a physical man- There’s n- The only physical manifestation usually with epilepsy, unless there’s a comorbidity that goes with it, is a seizure.

So unless you see somebody with epilepsy having a seizure, which doesn’t happen, for most people, it happens once a week if they’re not under control. It’s a very hidden disorder. It’s also one that, until 100 years ago, we as a society were sure were demons or witches or evil spirits, right? We didn’t understand what that was.

And then the third thing on it is, when you’re having a seizure around people you don’t know, it can be very embarrassing. Embarrassing things can happen, because your body is basically shutting down because something’s going wrong. So all of those things make epilepsy something that people tend to deal with by themselves off in a corner.

Alycia Anderson: Just be really quick before you, I just, it could be embarrassing, but also can it be dangerous? Like, when you, when an epileptic scenario, I don’t even know the right words to use. When it comes on.

Mike Gomoll: I, a seizure, having a seizure.

Alycia Anderson: Seizure. When a seizure comes on. Thank you so much. Does the person have enough time to know “Okay, this is gonna happen.

I’m gonna go sit somewhere”?

Mike Gomoll: They can. But again, it’s a spectrum both in the causes and how it may … Some people say that they have an aura, that they can see something and make it safe. There’s also First of all, I’m a huge dog guy. I’ve got a couple of them around here. There are seizure dogs…

Alycia Anderson: So good.

Mike Gomoll: …that somehow can sense a seizure, that when they’re trained properly, they can go to their and have them sit down and protect themselves.

So yes, but…

Alycia Anderson: Amazing.

Mike Gomoll: …that’s not common, that people can … It’s usually just comes on. And it can manifest itself from what people think a seizure is, the falling down, shaking, to what they call absence seizures, which are staring, to lots of other stuff. But it can be dangerous depending on where it happens.

There’s something called SUDEP, which is sudden unexpected death in epilepsy. Basically, it’s people dying in their sleep, and the assumption is they have a seizure in their pillow, they can’t breathe. They have a seizure in the bathtub. So it can be dangerous as well, besides, people evacuate their bowels and stuff when they have a seizure.

They lose control of their body. Imagine you’re in a shop. Imagine you’re 17 years old when the whole world is embarrassing to you, and you’re out with your friends in Target and you have a seizure and all of these things happen.

You know 17-year olds can go in a hole with a pimple, let alone all this other stuff, right? So it is a very lonely disorder. And so one of the side benefits, and again, I wish I could say this was some grand plan that I have, one of the side benefits is most of the people that come to Joey’s Song don’t know about epilepsy. They’re just there ’cause they want to see The Bangles or The Goo Goo Dolls.

They know when they leave about epilepsy, ’cause we make sure that’s part of it. But then the people that are there because of epilepsy look and they see 2,000 other people there learning about it, knowing about it. They see famous musicians up on the stage talking about it, not cowering away, not being ashamed, all of those other things.

So again, Alycia, I’d love to pretend that I mapped all this out 15 years ago on a whiteboard, and “This is how it’s gonna be, and we’re g-“, but it has happened because of serendipity, and so we are able to do all those things. And so with the next family, we’re out there talking about it. We’re again, especially the newly diagnosed, which is where my mind tends to go, because I was in that chair. And we can them see that there’s a community of people out there that’s is saying, “You take care of your kid.” You do the stuff, you be their advocate, you fight for them, you do this, you do that. We’ll work on raising the money and the awareness. ‘Cause all of our money goes to research. There’s plenty of other organizations that take care of patient services and awareness. Our goal, because we’re all volunteer, I don’t take a salary here at wonderful Joey’s Song International Headquarters, my basement, so we can turn every penny we can over to that cure. ‘Cause you never know which test tube, which spin in the centrifuge, which computer program is gonna be the one that makes the confetti fly.

And so that’s what we’re focused on, is finding ways to get rid of these seizures, and that’s the message we send to the community and to the next family is, “If you’re getting the diagnosis today, you take care of that, we’ll take care of the other stuff.”

Alycia Anderson: You’re finding ways to make the con- confetti fly in research. I love that. I love that you are using a stage in front of people, to educate and give an experience. Like, that’s… I’m a full-time motivational speaker. It’s what I do too, and getting in front of people and allowing them to feel it with you is so powerful.

So I think that is absolutely incredible that you’re doing that. And this research piece of it, I think in all aspects of disability and, and diagnosises, we need so much more.

Mike Gomoll: Yes.

Alycia Anderson: You’re right, there’s a lot of advocacy and education, but putting your money where the test tubes are, and I like that you’re using test tubes and all those things.

Like, I grew up in the ’80s and ’90s myself, so, that’s absolutely powerful. So you’ve raised more than $2 million with Joey’s Song,

Mike Gomoll: Yep.

Alycia Anderson: No paid staff, sounds like out of your basement.

Mike Gomoll: Yep.

Alycia Anderson: And you’ve learned about generosity, community, and why people show up. And why should we believe in that as a community?

Like, that’s so powerful what you’re doing.

Mike Gomoll: Thank you. Yeah, it’s you need to give everybody the chance to be good, right?

Alycia Anderson: Oooh!

Mike Gomoll: You need to give them the freedom to do the right thing, and today that’s, we’re lacking that in our divided society. asking people to be tribal. We’re asking people to be anti-that guy, and what we’re saying is just the opposite.

Let’s all get together. Let’s all unify around this thing that’s music. If you’re fortunate enough that epilepsy hasn’t touched you, God bless, come and listen to The Bangles sing Manic Monday, or, Chris Collingwood from Fountains of Wayne sing Stacy’s Mom, and have a good time. And then buy a raffle ticket or a T-shirt, and just know that somebody’s gonna be a little bit better off.

Someday even if all we do with all this work we do is move that timeline up 10 days from what it would’ve been if we hadn’t existed, that’s 10 days of seizures that 50 million people, and that’s the number of people with active epilepsy in the world, that 50 million people won’t have seizures. It’s the old how do you eat an elephant, right? One bite at a time. And, that’s how you do it.

Alycia Anderson: So to get involved with your nonprofit, I wanna make sure for our community and for all the corporations, a lot of my clients, they are subscribed to this, so we’re talking corporate exposure here, too. Pitch yourself. Like, where can we send you money? How do we get involved? How do we get tickets to the show?

How do we show up in Wisconsin? Tell us a little bit. Plug. Give me a pitch and a plug.

Mike Gomoll: So the first thing you can do, there’s one thing everybody can do that doesn’t cost you a penny and costs you about a minute and a half. You need to go on the socials and follow us, not just like us, but follow. And we are Joey’s Song on everything. Just remember the two S’s in the middle, Joey’s Song. So on Instagram and Facebook.

Our website is joeyssong.org. But if you go and follow us, that juices the algorithm, which means the messa- you know this very well, Alycia, which gets the message to it. We also have a podcast where I have all the artists come on, and we talk about it. It’s the Joey’s Song Podcast. Same thing, if you can follow us, even if you don’t listen, follow us because it, the magic algorithm in the sky.

So that’s the first thing that everybody can do that doesn’t cost you a penny. The next thing you can do that doesn’t cost you a penny is we do live stream the show for free.

Alycia Anderson: Oh.

Mike Gomoll: So if you don’t want to come to Madison in January, I don’t know why you wouldn’t want to, it’s basically God’s country here in Madison. But if that’s not something you wanna do or you can’t do, it’ll be streamed on YouTube. Find us on YouTube. Just go subscribe to the channel, and you’ll get all the notifications. So you can watch the event that way and see all these amazing people. Then the last thing you can do, which does take time and money, is you can either buy tickets for the event.

It’s on the website. You can be a sponsor for the event for all your corporate folks, and we do things like client entertainment, so meet and greets with the artists, and all the things that companies like to do if they sponsor. You bring the clients in, and they can bangle, and they can go-go, and they can do all those other cool things. That would work. And then we take donations. And remember, when you make a donation, we are 100% volunteer. So other than paying for the cost of the event and the professional services. We do need to pay for, accounting and all that other stuff, we turn every other penny into research. And one of those pennies is gonna be by that test tube that turns the liquid from blue to green and makes the person go running out of the lab screaming.

So.

Alycia Anderson: I love it. And we’re gonna leave all those links in the show notes so it’s very easy for people to go click and engage. So that’s an easy ask. I like how you have easy asks. These don’t cost you any money. They cost you a couple seconds, and here’s how you get involved. Beautiful. So because you’re you, I have a couple, like, rapid-fire questions to have a little fun.

Do you mind? Sure.

Mike Gomoll: All right, let’s go. Hang on, let me put my seatbelt on.

Alycia Anderson: Okay.

Mike Gomoll: Okay.

Alycia Anderson: Get ready. Get your seatbelt on.

Mike Gomoll: Okay.

Alycia Anderson: Best guitarist you’ve ever watched from the side of the stage?

Mike Gomoll: John Mayer Yeah.

Alycia Anderson: Good one. That’s a good start right there, I think.

Mike Gomoll: All though I’ll give you a surprise one. So I’m not a country guy, but I watched Brad Paisley from the side of the stage. That dude can shred. I’m not a country guy. I’m an old Willie and Waylon kind of guy. But I gotta tell you, I watched Brad Paisley from the side of the stage at the Opry a couple years ago and was amazed.

Amazed.

Alycia Anderson: Okay. Wildest backstage moment that you can share on the show.

Mike Gomoll: Well, first define wild.

Alycia Anderson: Oooh!

Mike Gomoll: Let’s do the most impressive thing I ever saw.

Alycia Anderson: OK.

Mike Gomoll: We were rehearsing, which we hadn’t done the first few years of Joey’s Song, and everybody… We… been a long day. We had all the guests come in. The band was closing things up, and Alex, our keyboardist from the Know It Boyfriends, the Butch’s backup band, started playing the riff from Drive, the car song.

And everybody just kinda stopped. It’d been a long day, really long day. Everybody just wanted to get out of there, go have a beer, and settle. But everybody unpacked their instruments, started playing. Corey Chisel, who’s another one of our singers, Corey started singing it, pulled it up on his phone. The next night it was in the set, and it killed. And these people with all this amazing talent, andAlycia, I’m not a musician, and I’ve seen so many people just before they’re about to go on, they’ll go, “Now, are we coming in on the third break or the second break?” And they’ll go, “No, right after…” And they all know exactly what to…

And it’s like they’re not speaking English. They’re speaking music. So I have seen the inherent talent in those people is mind-boggling. That’s all I can say.

Alycia Anderson: Freaking amazing. It’s so cool.

Mike Gomoll: I’m so jealous because If you wanted me to clear all three dogs out of the office right now, just get me singing, and they will head up and be out in the yard so fast.

Alycia Anderson: Okay, two more questions. Dream artists that you have not gotten on your stage yet that you’re dreaming of.

Mike Gomoll: Paul McCartney.

Alycia Anderson: Oh, that’s a good one. That’s.

Mike Gomoll: But I had, we’ve had Brian Ray, who’s Paul McCartney’s guitarist on his, been in the band for the last 25 years, did come and do a Joey’s Song. So Macca’s the topper-most of the popper-most. He’s their… He’s our generation’s Mozart, right? I don’t think I’ll ever make that happen. On the list of people that could, with everything going the right way, would be Bruce Springsteen. So.

Alycia Anderson: Ooh, there’s another good one. Okay, I’m gonna bring it back to Joey for this last question. What song instantly makes you think of Joey?

Mike Gomoll: Besides El- besides Elmo’s song, obviously, because that one makes me think of Joey. Beautiful Boy by John Lennon, and I’ll tell you why.

Alycia Anderson: Ya.

Mike Gomoll: My son Sam, Joey’s brother, is a musician. He got his music degree. Sam’s first public appearance as a singer was in front of 1,000 people at a Joey’s Song, singing Beautiful Boy acoustic solo. And he dedicated it to his little brother. So that, that one always reminds me of Joey.

Alycia Anderson: That is so beautiful. I, before I throw a Pushing Forward moment out at you, I just wanna tell you you’re incredible. I am so happy to have had this conversation with you. Congratulations on what a beautiful movement that you’ve created, and thank you so much for gracing this show with your amazing story and Joey’s amazing story, honestly.

So cool.

Mike Gomoll: Thank you.

Alycia Anderson: Did we miss anything that we- is imperative, or do you think we covered it all?

Mike Gomoll: people help any way you can. I will say to any of the corporate folks on here, what makes a difference are the sponsorships, right? ‘Cause it’s still a business even if it’s not a profitable business, and the sponsorships are what really move the needle. I sell tickets for 50 bucks. I sell sponsorships with a few more zeros on the end of that.

So if it’s something that a company really can get behind, we’ve got lots of ways to make it, beneficial for them as well. But that, it’s it’s all about the money. I because the money’s what moves the needle.

Alycia Anderson: Yeah. I love that. That’s a good touch. Um, okay, pushing for a moment, this is a moment that’s gonna motivate our community of listeners as we sign off and say goodbye to you. Is there anything that you live by?

Mike Gomoll: Yep.

Alycia Anderson: A quote, something… oh, you already know. Great.

Mike Gomoll: Something I live by, quoting McCartney, is the love you take is equal to the love you make, which means you give what you give out. But I think the phrase that works for me in Joey’s Song is, “We all do better when we all do better,” right? that means that a community, we, those of us that are fortunate enough to not have epilepsy or any of those other things, do better when we all do better, and that means lifting those people up.

So I I really like that one, ’cause that makes it better for us. Us, there’s no us and them in that, only in the sense of some people are doing the fundraising, some people are doing the receiving. But it depends on the situation, ’cause the very next day, those roles are gonna be reversed.

Alycia Anderson: Um, I love that, and I don’t just like it, I love it. That is such a beautiful, a beautiful quote to live by, and I agree 100%. Thank you so much for your time. It was an absolute pleasure. I’m so glad our paths have crossed.

Mike Gomoll: Absolutely, me too.

Alycia Anderson: Thank you to our community for showing up again. This has been a fantastic episode of the show, if I do say so myself.

This has been Pushing Forward with Alycia and Mike, and that is how we roll on this podcast. We will see you next week.