Mike Coll Is Trying to Make Something That Can’t Be Replaced

Mike Coll has never been especially interested in making music that disappears into the background. He describes his sound as stadium country-rock, leaning toward the newer side of the genre without crossing into what he considers pop country. But underneath the size and energy he wants from the production, Coll thinks of himself first as a storyteller.

“I like to tell a story from start to finish,” Coll says. “Whether that be in the span of one song or throughout ten songs, it’s all going to tell one big story.”

That philosophy has become increasingly important as he works on his first full-length project, an album designed to trace the journey from the beginning of his music career to where he stands now. For Coll, that story includes Pittsburgh, a failed attempt at making music work in Texas, years spent performing on Broadway, the loss of his father, a dog who found his way into some of the record’s most personal lyrics and the ongoing process of figuring out what his own voice actually sounds like.

From Pittsburgh to Broadway

Coll is originally from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, but his first serious attempt at pursuing music took him south to Texas. It did not exactly go according to plan.

“I moved to Texas to pursue music,” he says. “I lost all my money, so I moved to Nashville logically.”

The humor is very Mike Coll, but underneath the joke was another decision to keep pushing toward something he had begun realizing could become more than a hobby. One of the earliest moments that clicked came while playing with his first band back home. They had a particularly good night, made more money than expected in tips and Coll found himself wondering why they were only doing it every few months.

A close friend, Jared Jaskiewicz, pushed him further, encouraging him to learn guitar and begin playing more shows. Coll jokes that Jared taught him “this much” and he now knows “this much,” but that early encouragement helped put the career in motion.

Eventually Nashville became the next step, and Broadway became the education.

Coll once heard someone describe Broadway as boot camp for musicians, and after spending years in those rooms, he understands why. Playing downtown forced him to become more comfortable onstage, learn how to command constantly changing crowds and develop the confidence that only comes from doing the job night after night.

“Nashville, or more specifically Broadway, has changed me as a person,” Coll says. “It’s taught me how to be a much better performer and more confident onstage.”

The Stage on Broadway has become the venue he most closely associates with his Nashville story, while regular performances at places like Legends Corner continue to keep him connected to the downtown circuit. But the lessons go beyond simply learning how to entertain a room. Coll takes pride in how tight his band is and how intentionally their live show is constructed. When someone sees him perform for the first time, he wants them to recognize that preparation.

At the same time, Broadway has exposed another challenge: becoming good at performing other people’s songs does not automatically tell you who you are as an original artist.

Finding a Voice of His Own

Coll is unusually candid about the fact that discovering his own voice is still a work in progress. His influences are easy to hear. He points toward Luke Combs and Riley Green, particularly Green’s Don’t Mind If I Do, as major reference points for the way he approaches songwriting and sound.

The complication is that audiences sometimes tell him he sounds just like those artists.

He understands that it is meant as a compliment, but it is not necessarily the goal.

“I still struggle every show trying to not sound like the artist who I’m trying to cover and trying to sound like I’m the one singing the song,” Coll says. “It’s still an ongoing issue to find my own voice.”

That honesty is an important part of his story. Coll is not pretending he arrived in Nashville fully formed. He is documenting the process of becoming the artist he wants to be, and increasingly, the clearest evidence of that growth can be found in the songs he is building for his debut album.

Rather than releasing a collection of unrelated tracks, Coll wants the project to function as one larger narrative, beginning with his earliest experiences pursuing music and following that story into the present.

“The story behind my first and ongoing project is basically the story of when I started music to now and everything in between,” he says.

Once the full record arrives, Coll says “Slow” will likely be the best entry point for someone hearing him for the first time. It is the song he believes offers the clearest introduction to who he is becoming as an artist.

Much of the record has been solo written, something Coll is particularly proud of, although the project also includes contributions from writers and musicians including David Medlin, Jessica Rose, Austin Riley, Zander Jett and his producer, Taylor Allum, along with a large group of session players. The production can be intentionally dense, with some songs featuring a dozen instruments. One of the more unexpected sounds buried inside the record is cello, an instrument Coll admits is not exactly the first thing most listeners expect to hear on a country track.

Those layers are meant to reward another listen, but some of the album’s most meaningful details have nothing to do with production. They come directly from Coll’s life.

The Songs That Carry the Story

One of those songs is “Man’s Best Friend,” centered around the dog Coll describes as his “soul dog.”

One lyric he is especially proud of is simple:

“I watch him run and run and watch him strut home covered in mud.”

On paper, it may not look like the heaviest line on the record. For Coll, it carries considerably more weight.

Another lyric brings his late father into the story:

“I got a new dog, you’d love his spirit / He’s so wild, yet so tame.”

The line imagines introducing the dog to a father who never had the chance to meet him. In one song, Coll connects two of the most important relationships in his life.

The loss of his father ultimately shaped much more than a lyric. It changed the way Coll thought about work, purpose and the kind of life he wanted to build.

His father had spent roughly three decades working for the same company. After his death, Coll watched how quickly that workplace continued moving. It forced him to confront an uncomfortable idea: no matter how many years someone gives to a job, the job itself can replace them almost immediately.

“The experience that shaped me the most with my music had to be losing my dad a few years ago,” Coll says. “It kind of showed me how replaceable everybody is in an office setting.”

He did not want to spend his own life feeling the same way.

“I didn’t want to go my whole life feeling as if I’m not doing something of meaning,” he says. “I don’t want to be replaceable.”

That may be the clearest explanation for why he continues pursuing music even when the career becomes exhausting. The goal is not simply recognition. It is ownership over what he spends his life building.

Asked what success means beyond streams, followers and industry approval, Coll reduces the answer to something almost comically straightforward: he does not want a job. He wants to make something for himself.

That freedom comes with its own cost.

Building Without Burning Out

One of the biggest lessons Coll is learning at this stage of his career is that constantly pushing forward is not always productive. Between regular downtown performances, managing a band and building an album that could reach roughly twenty songs, burnout can arrive quickly.

“I’m learning how easily I can be burned out and how important it is to take breaks and how important it is to take care of your mental health and your mental well-being,” he says.

Ignoring that exhaustion, Coll has realized, eventually affects more than the artist. Frustration gets carried into rehearsals, relationships and interactions with the people around him. That has forced him to become more conscious of when he needs to step away instead of treating exhaustion as proof that he is working hard enough.

The debut album remains his priority over the next six to twelve months, although Coll is deliberately avoiding promising a release date before the project is ready. One thing he wishes outsiders understood about making music in Nashville is that there is rarely a one-day turnaround between writing a song and putting it into the world.

His less diplomatic version is simpler:

Please stop asking him when the new music is coming out.

For all the specificity of the album, Coll keeps his definition of its audience deliberately broad.

“My music is for whoever needs it in that moment,” he says.

He does not necessarily care what emotion someone walks away with. He simply wants there to be one.

“If I can make you feel any emotion, I’ve done my job.”

He has already watched that happen in ways he never could have planned. During one Broadway performance, a man approached after spending several days walking into Nashville bars searching for the right singer to soundtrack his proposal. He had not found anyone until he heard Coll.

Coll played the song, the man proposed and she said yes.

On another night, Coll performed his original “Slow” downtown and watched two grown men begin crying. The unexpected part was that “Slow” is not even a sad song. Those moments remind him that artists do not always control what a song becomes once it reaches somebody else.

Sometimes the right song simply finds the right person at the right time.

The Rooms He’s Saving for Himself

For all the time Coll has spent playing Nashville, there are two famous rooms he has intentionally avoided.

The Ryman Auditorium and the Grand Ole Opry.

Not because they do not matter to him, but because they matter enough that he wants his first time inside to mean something.

“I have made it a point to not step foot inside the Ryman or the Opry until I’m there to play it,” Coll says.

Whether that happens next year or much farther down the road, the rule says something about the way he views milestones. He does not simply want to visit them. He wants to earn his own reason for being there.

For now, the work remains the album, the live show and continuing to discover the voice that separates Mike Coll from the records he grew up admiring.

Asked what he would tell the younger version of himself who was about to begin the journey, his answer is short:

There is always more to learn.

And when asked what he wants people to know right now, Coll expands that advice beyond music.

“You can just go do whatever you’re trying to do,” he says. “You might not be good at it. You might not make money at it. But you can go do it.”

That may be the simplest way to understand Mike Coll’s story.

He went to Texas and it did not work. He went to Nashville anyway. Broadway taught him how to perform. Writing forced him to confront who he actually wanted to be. Losing his father changed what success meant. Now he is putting all of those chapters into the first record that will fully introduce Mike Coll as an artist.

The album is still being built.

In a way, so is he.

And somewhere inside both processes, Coll is trying to create something meaningful enough that it cannot simply be replaced.

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