The title is correct, Taj Mihelich is in the Unclicked studio! And I couldn’t be more happy to type that out. Taj is a hero to the BMX community and a shining example of style, creativity, and doing things your own way. He’s always been authentic to himself, never letting trends or outside influence distract from his vision. Whether it’s riding, art, or making music, Taj has always stayed true to himself. I can keep saying nice things about Taj, but I won’t keep you much longer, hit play and enjoy an in depth conversation with the living legend Taj Mihelich. We also got special guest host Mike Escamilla to help us dig deeper into Taj’s history.
After the podcast, Taj followed up with us with some bonus insight, read below:
After being interviewed on the Our BMX podcast, I felt like a dope. All the things I should have said, the people I should have thanked, and the important details I forgot flooded my head. They tell me that is normal. “Everyone feels that way afterwards,” Fudger told me. A few days later, my anxiety calmed down a bit, but there was still one story that was stuck in my head that I hadn’t shared: Why.
Rooftop and Fudger were trying to pick out my story in the best way they could, but when I look back on my BMX riding, I don’t think about who gave me a t-shirt and called me sponsored 30+ years ago. Those details seem unimportant compared to the amount of creative energy and life force I gave to my riding. I’m sure I looked like a guy spinning around on a kid’s bike to some people, but to me it felt important… it was everything.
I cringe when I hear people call BMX “art”. I cringed when it slipped out of my mouth on the podcast. Maybe it is just me, but “art” just doesn’t feel right. Too art-gallery-douchey, or too highly-evolved, maybe. Sometimes when I was riding, I felt like an animal. Bleeding, pushing, forcing myself to overcome some fear… there was no art in those moments. I can certainly think of some riders who do look like artists on bikes (Dave Mirra gracefully drifting a 360 no-hander over a spine in Germany plays in my head), but “art” is not the word for my riding.
Mat Hoffman used to tell me my style was an expression of me. I took him far too literally and didn’t understand what he meant. I tried to figure out how my thoughts and feelings about politics, puppies, girls, and car payments could be expressed via a tabletop. I think I get what he meant now.
I’ve been torturing an analogy for BMX in my mind for years. I think of riding as something similar to music (which is an art, I know). Let’s say you play guitar. Your fingers can be trained to robotically hit all the right notes and chords at the right time. This is incidentally how playing bass in a band often was for me. I counted out the timing, and I hit the notes as close to the right time as I could. My technical proficiency was low, so there wasn’t much room left in my mind for expression. It was still fun to play, though! When you see really good musicians play, they can make the music mean more than just notes played at the right time. Slowing the pace, quieter, louder, harder, feeding off the rest of the band, energy syncing with the crowd, bending a note here, skipping some there. They seem to stop thinking and just let the music flow out of them. It’s hard to understand, but you can feel real emotion. The music becomes more than mechanics. It’s not just the masters who can do this. I’ve seen plenty of punk rock bands in dirty bars who screamed and sweated powerful emotions into their music, even when their technical skills lacked. Or, maybe they didn’t lack anything. Maybe the raw, unpolished messiness of their playing was exactly what it needed to be.
BMX is the same. You can learn the tricks and methodically play them out. A tailwhip is a tailwhip to some people. For me, that felt empty. I was giving my life to riding; it had to mean more. I found meaning in the expression without understanding what that meant. Pouring all of me into my riding was what made it feel important. Like meaningful music, it is hard to explain, but I felt it. We have so many examples of great riders who make riding special. The rare virtuosos like Garrett Reynolds, who can make your head spin with technical ability while still oozing feeling into their riding. The punk rock band of Dave Young riding in Nowhere Fast. The mastery of Chase Hawk and Mike Aitken… instead of playing lots of notes, they play choice ones so profoundly that time seems to slow down. The raw heart and drive of Mat Hoffman’s riding is a lot like his Fugazi soundtracks. Insert your own favourite riders and music here.
Riding felt the best to me when it seemed to flow out of me like those musicians who impressed me so much. I’d stop thinking about what I was doing and instead let what was inside of me come out. I’d stop planning what was coming next and give up control of my bike to whatever the hell magic it is that we all know is in BMX.
You can’t imagine how much time I spent second-guessing the meaning I felt within riding. I was giving all my time to it, risking my health, emptying my energy into it… was it really more than spinning around on a bicycle? Was it more than just adrenaline-laden fun? Countless times I soul-searched, and every single time I came back with a clear answer, yes, it was more. It did matter. Why it mattered I couldn’t say, but everything inside me was clear: Stop overthinking and let the music take over.
– Taj Mihelich
Taj has a new book out, Ban the Fan. It can be found here
Thanks to Dales, and Source BMX, for supporting the Unclicked Podcast!
