By Kate Goetz
For over thirty years, Newport native Mike O’Donnell—known everywhere as Mr. Mike, or by the brighter, stranger voltage of his alter-ego Mikey Millionaire—has been an unquiet force on stages across the world.
His timeline reads like controlled detonation:
- The early-2000s mayhem of No Means Yes, complete with fire-breathing, duct-tape wardrobe choices, and stage dives into drum sets
- The violin-laced, folk-punk grit of The Skinny Millionaires in the 2010s
- The local punk-rock bonfire All Hail (co-founded with Spencer from Flogging Molly)
- And the relentless, high-octane surf-punk machine of The Turbo A.C.’s, with whom he recently blasted through 32 shows in 33 days across eight countries
Reinvention isn’t a phase for him—it’s muscle memory.
A One-Man Creative Factory
As a solo artist, he operates like a one-man creative factory: writing, arranging, recording, designing, screen-printing, painting, filming—constructing entire artistic worlds entirely on his own.
No committee.
No assistants.
No net.
If it exists, he built it.
And amazingly, he’s done almost all of it without his hometown’s support. Newport has been slow to understand him—sometimes even standing directly in his way. There was the night an entire fleet of police officers—every available one in the city—rushed his show. And the night an opening band hurled beers and cornered him behind a venue with a gun.
Adversity is exactly where Mikey grows sharper. He raises the volume, hones the words, and meets every threat with the certainty of someone who has already survived worse storms.
Creation as Survival
People often get one thing wrong about him: rebellion itself isn’t the engine.
He creates because he must.
Art is his coping mechanism—his ritual, his way of navigating the darker chambers of his own mind. Depression and PTSD have carved deep places in him, but those places have also refined his art, sharpened his eye, and given him the unmistakable look of someone who carries knowledge most people never want to learn.
He has always been fascinated by how the mind works. More than one therapist has broken professional composure with him—some bending rules on his behalf, others ending sessions early and permanently—because he thinks too quickly, digs too deeply, and refuses to sit in the shallow end. He doesn’t follow the script; he rewrites it mid-session.
A Stage Is a Stage
Beneath the mythology sits the purest piece of him: he simply loves the craft.
He’ll happily play for one person in a living room for a couple beers. After grueling tours, he still attends small open mics just to shake the ghosts off. Even playing to five old ladies staring into tater tots feels sacred to him.
A stage is a stage.
And then there are the stories—thousands of them. Years of touring every corner of the country. Shows with punk-rock institutions like The Dwarves, Dropkick Murphys, Flogging Molly, Agent Orange, DOA, Nashville Pussy, Turbonegro, Stiff Little Fingers, The Buzzcocks, Elle King, and more names than he can recall.
Tour after tour.
Night after night.
Country after country.
He doesn’t hide from pain—he uses it. Make it hurt often enough and the callus eventually makes him harder to break than most men ever become.
Chaos, Welcomed
When he formed The Skinny Millionaires, their dark, swaggering folk-rock caught the attention of local giants. John McCauley of Deer Tick became an early advocate and even lent his voice to the band’s debut record.
When he joined The Turbo A.C.’s?
He didn’t know the band.
He didn’t know the songs.
He said he did anyway.
He got on a plane to Sioux City less than 24 hours later, met the band in a hotel room, and played his first show that same night—a Halloween gig.
Chaos, welcomed.
Two decades of road stories could fill volumes: a love triangle with a pop star; ghost-hunting aboard the Queen Mary with members of the Danzig camp; nearly getting kicked out for attempting to drop through a ceiling into a rumored secret pool.
Obviously.
There are also the unglamorous moments time has made hilarious:
- Trying to walk through a German drive-through on foot, starving and soaked, only to watch a bandmate pass with hot food and a raised middle finger
- Touring with Dropkick Murphys and discovering his own “green room”—a closet with a loveseat occupied by a sleeping stranger
- Being wheeled through a venue mid-bite of maraschino cherries while seated on a toilet mounted inside a shopping cart
Then there was the hyper-religious German town with locals marching wooden crosses—only for his drummer to drink holy water “to cleanse his insides.” He was violently ill moments later.
Naturally.
And yes—there was the time he was accidentally sent to federal prison and forgotten there for days. When released, he didn’t go home. He stole the prison uniform, took a cab to the venue, and walked onstage in genuine federal-issue orange.
Because the night demanded it.
Survival Isn’t the End
The physical toll has been immense. He was brutally stabbed nearly to death in Seattle. Burned badly from fire-breathing. Crushed, battered, bled out more than once. Crawled through an ER parking lot to survive.
Most people don’t live through that once.
Mikey did—and kept going.
Newport Buzz knew him before most. We first met by accident in a random NYC club, later booked him for our original launch party. Today, the artists whose posters hung above his childhood bed are names in his phone.
Because everything matters.
One truth often slips under the radar: Mikey will almost certainly be the most talented, consistent, and interesting person in whatever room he enters—but he won’t announce it.
He listens. He observes. He learns.
He’s not here to sell himself.
He’s here to make art.
His résumé borders on impossible: award-winning photographer, radio host, master glassblower, self-taught graphic designer, magazine writer, painter, screen-printer, father.
He doesn’t perform.
He detonates.
He will never be Newport’s hometown hero.
He will always be Newport’s most valuable Anti-Hero.
Interview
After all those years in the music business, do you still get stage fright? If so, what’s your remedy?
Absolutely. Smaller crowds can actually be scarier. People often tell me I look confident, but they don’t believe that I’m really a frightened introvert who’s sometimes too shy to leave the house.
The remedy is the act of wanting.
Picture a scale. On one side is how badly you want this. On the other side is the frustration—the million roadblocks. You just have to make sure the WANT side always weighs more than the FRUSTRATION side.
You have to want it more than you fear it.
Every show is a journey inside your own head. You have to transform—from Bob the carpenter into Bobby the superhero. You have to find that mental space where there is no crowd judging you.
You’re allowing your id to spill out. This isn’t sunshine and unicorns. You have to make them feel something—the pain, the reason you were given a platform to scream into a microphone that you’re not okay.
Can you hear me now?
Can you see my anger?
Can you feel my desperation?Like a musical terrorist: I’m not invisible. Who’s afraid now? Here I come.
That need to explode is what keeps me coming back. Learning how to release that explosion is a lifelong skill. It’s not just about building the bomb—you have to deliver it. And you have to find the courage to deliver it at all.
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