Musician Ian Abel recently spoke with Wrestlezone’s Kevin Kellam about having his music featured on-air by All Elite Wrestling. His band, the Ian Abel Band, had their song “Shoes” featured in the promotional video for the Dustin Rhodes versus Cody feud leading into AEW’s Double Or Nothing event. Abel explained how he got involved with the company, saying it started with a crazy idea about pitching one of his other songs before the collaborative effort was finalized with “Shoes.”
“You hear the rumblings about AEW and I followed it with All In last year, so I just had a wild hair about me one day and said I’m actually going to send a song I wrote and recorded called “Walk Out” and I was going to send that to Brandi via email. Within 45 minutes she listened to it and sent it to Cody, who said he had a match coming up, and I had no idea it was going to be against Dustin. They were asking for other songs and luckily I had just recorded an album, so I was like ‘here’s something that’s a little slow and sad’ [laughs]. They were like ‘do you have something sadder?’ and I’m like ‘uhh, yeah, I think so!‘
I had no clue beforehand who the match was going to be against, I didn’t get any info like that unfortunately, but they just wanted a song that was a bit sadder. I was like ‘here’s this [Shoes], and he wrote back immediately and said ‘I love it. Let’s talk.’”
Abel noted that his original pitch email said he wanted them to use the song “Walk Out” because he’d seen all of the talent trying to leave WWE for greener pastures, and it could be perceived as a subtle dig in the video. He went on to explain he is a fan of wrestling and what AEW is doing, and said finally seeing the end result was a definite ‘mark out moment.’ He noted that things came together very quickly and the promo video went out the day after agreeing on the final track, but it’s still something that doesn’t happen very often.
“100%. The best part is right up until the wire, we hadn’t come to a full agreement and I hadn’t gotten them the final master, I’m talking the day before I finally got word that they’re going to, like ‘we’re going to drop the promo on YouTube tomorrow’ so we need this and I’m like ‘OK, cool.’
I was in the Starbucks parking lot, not really prepared for the drop and then I get a text from Michael Marshall (Cuellari)—great guy, he’s always in all of their videos eating an apple—he sent me a text with the video, a link to it, and I was like ‘this is so cool!’ My Dad is a big wrestling fan as well. He comes from the era that loved Dusty Rhodes—who doesn’t—and my uncles as well, they’re all texting me ‘oh my God, it’s the Rhodes brothers fighting, and it’s your song in the promo?’ It was cool. I’m smiling now thinking about it. It was one of those once in a lifetime things that you get to do music for a company and a brand that you like.”
