Mike McAbee sat down with Full Spectrum Cycling’s Sven Hammer on the Veggas Pub patio in Riverwest, Milwaukee, just as the neighborhood geared up for the 2024 Riverwest 24. It was a one-year reunion, Mike had been on the show in 2025, and since then he underwent triple bypass surgery and took a two-month hiatus from the road.

In this interview, Makabe talks about what it took to get back to playing out, why the experience was less painful than some breakups he has endured, and how he has managed 25 years as a working musician. He still plays mostly dive bars in Midwest towns of fewer than a thousand people, drives a semi in the fall for extra income, and lets the crowd request whatever they want from a set list hundreds of songs deep.

The conversation also covers McAbee’s life in Frankville, Iowa, an unincorporated town where he lives in a restored old bank building, runs the street-light and water committees, and throws the annual Keep Frankville Wet and Lit fundraiser. In the summer, he and his daughter Lula live on a 1971 Gibson houseboat on the Mississippi.

We touch on RAGBRAI, the growing scale of Riverwest 24’s bonus checkpoints, indoor training with a blood pressure cuff, and the physics of Midwest roundabouts. Recorded live as 2,000 cyclists were getting ready to roll.