Michaela Anne Has a Merch Sale Horror Story. She Knows Other Touring Artists Do Too
Singer-songwriter Michaela Anne just may be the quintessential indie artist, one for whom the hustle never stops. She’s a working mom, a podcast host with her husband and bandmate, Aaron Shafer-Haiss, and the one in charge of keeping her music coming.
Michaela Anne, the daughter of a military father who moved around for the bulk of her childhood, eventually settled in Brooklyn, then Nashville. Now she’s on the move again: She’ll perform this July 4th weekend at Rolling Stone’s Stateside Festival, headlined by Noah Kahan, in Kingston, New York.
The festival stop is just one of many live dates she’ll play this summer in support of her new album, These Are the Days. It’s a completely independent release — Michaela Anne crowd-funded the LP too — that she will, like so many touring artists, be selling at the merch table after her shows. But getting the album, T-shirts, and other swag to the venues can often be a struggle. In a new interview with Rolling Stone’s Nashville Now podcast, Michaela Anne recounts one merch “debacle” that left her in tears.
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While on a run with the band Fantastic Cat, Michaela Anne wowed the audience in the very first city she played and they bought up every copy of These Are the Days she had brought along — in a second suitcase that she paid to check with the airline, filled with 50 pounds of vinyl. She suddenly needed more to sell at the upcoming shows.
“I had my husband overnight a box of merch, $325, to Columbus [Ohio], the next morning. There were storms here in Tennessee, so it didn’t arrive. And if it’s a storm, it’s an ‘Act of God,’ so they won’t refund you. Then I don’t have any merch to sell,” Michaela Anne says. “I’m adding up all the potential dollars that I could have made, and now I’ve spent. It was so stressful.”
Eventually, the new merch was set to arrive, but the package store’s policy wouldn’t accept “Hold for Pickup” boxes. In other words, the songwriter had to be there as soon as the shipment arrived. She tried to plead her case to the manager.
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“He said, ‘Nope. I’m not going to do it. If I do it for you, I have to do it for everybody,’” she recalls. “I said, ‘Sir, can I please tell you my story? I’m a touring musician. The only way I make a living is from my merch sales, I have two young children at home’ …and I started to cry.”
The manager relented, not because of Michaela Anne’s tears, she says, but because he simply listened. “It’s a testament to the power of storytelling,” she says, “that it builds empathy and connects us to each other. He became invested… Later, I was getting coffee and that man called me: ‘Guess what I have waiting for you?’”
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According to Michaela Anne, her story is similar to that of countless other musicians who, for various reasons, are finding it increasingly difficult to tour. Watch her full interview on Nashville Now below.
Download and subscribe to Rolling Stone’s weekly country-music podcast, Nashville Now, hosted by Deputy Editor, Head of Country Joseph Hudak, on Apple Podcasts or Spotify (or wherever you get your podcasts). New episodes drop every Wednesday and feature interviews with artists and personalities like Vince Gill, Lainey Wilson, Shaboozey, Hardy, Charley Crockett, Tedeschi Trucks Band, Kings of Leon, Dan Auerbach of the Black Keys, the Black Crowes, Carly Pearce, Amy Grant, Luke Grimes, Brandon Lake, Breland, Bryan Andrews, Noeline Hofmann, Adam Mac, Devon Gilfillian, Gavin Adcock, Amanda Shires, Shooter Jennings, Margo Price, Ink, Ne-Yo, Rival Sons’ Jay Buchanan, Halestorm, Dusty Slay, Lukas Nelson, Ashley Monroe, Old Crow Medicine Show’s Ketch Secor, Clever, Love on the Spectrum‘s Tyler White, Willie Nelson scholar John Spong, and authors Marissa R. Moss, Josh Crutchmer, Mark Gray, and Jonathan Bernstein.
Don’t forget San Diego’s July 4 fiasco — then vote the bums out
Don't forget SD's July 4 fiasco — then vote the bums out- US News
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Skip to main content OpinionDon’t forget San Diego’s July 4 fiasco — then vote the bums out
By CA Post Editorial Board Published July 1, 2026, 9:57 p.m. ETSee more of our coverage in your search results.
Add The California Post on GoogleRipped from the headlines of the satirical Babylon Bee:
A DEI extravaganza to mark the 250th birthday of the USA!
Oh wait.
That’s not the Bee; it’s actually a thing: San Diego County plans an identity-politics spectacular this July 4.
Wanna go?
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The San Diego County Board of Supervisors voted this year to align the county’s Independence Day event with “equity and racial justice” goals.
Per a social media post from the mayor of El Cajon, the three-hour program will feature: a “tribal intimate blessing welcoming to land”; a tribal invocation; the American and black national anthems; local tribal community stories; Latino community stories; Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander community stories; LGBTQIA+ community stories; and black and African community stories.
Whew. It’s exhausting just to read about.
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But more to the point: all of this … on July 4 of America’s 250th year? What message does the county of San Diego mean to send?
Not one that elevates fun, family, unity, respect, gratitude and patriotism — traditional Independence Day fare.
Instead, the county stoops to woke pandering.
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Extolling favored groups on the nation’s birthday is e pluribus unum in reverse: ex uno, plura.
It’s divisive. It’s ill-timed. And it’s disrespectful to the nation, to its founding values and to the US Armed Forces who have fought and sometimes died to guard the rights the grievance crowd takes for granted.
In the very recent past, Americans of all stars and stripes could agree on some things, including the Fourth of July and its fun family patriotic fare.
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Remember the iconic jingle, “We love baseball, hot dogs, apple pie and Chevrolet?”
Those were days when Americans united around major holidays, around a shared heritage of freedom and around pride in a country that’s the freest in the world.
No longer.
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These days, the scolds can’t be satisfied, the socialists win elections from New York to Colorado (unthinkable not long ago) and divisive Fourth of July programs emerge in once-moderate places like San Diego County.
Increasingly, elected officials want to shove a thumb in the eye of the nation, its founding, its traditions and its glory.
Enough.
Note to the radicals who rush to tear America down on perhaps its most cherished holiday:
Stop being petulant about losing national elections.
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Love your country even if you don’t love its current leader.
Teach, respect and appreciate the values of 1776: liberty, individual rights, equality, limited government and the rule of law.
Ditch the woke bilge and restore the picnics, US flags and fireworks.
Restore e pluribus unum.
Skip the lecture series and let the people have fun.
And a bonus memo to San Diego County voters: Remember this farce next election.
Just maybe, in another grand American tradition, you’ll do this:
Throw the bums out.
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