Colorado Springs artist, producer, and promoter builds the Bust Out the Box residency while joining Witch Hound on stage October 24 as a vocalist for their “Second Summoning” show that may be its last for a while.
Before he was The Sarge, he was little Mike Ung — a toddler in Bangkok, Thailand, wearing a name tag that read “KENG PINMEE,” standing beside his foster mother in 1987. Decades later he is a U.S. Army Infantry veteran, a hip-hop and pop-punk-rock artist, a music producer and sound designer, the CEO of The Sarge LLC, and the founder of Bust Out the Box, the monthly multi-genre music residency at the Wagon Wheel Sports Bar & Concert Hall in Colorado Springs. The name wasn’t given. It was earned.
THE FULL ARC Bangkok, 1987.
The earliest known photograph of Michael K. Ung shows him as a toddler in Thailand with his foster mother — a striped shirt, a hand-lettered name tag, and a story that starts an ocean away from Colorado. That image anchors everything that follows.
Colorado Springs kid. Growing up in the Springs, Mike was the choir kid on Sundays and a tae kwon do green belt on Saturdays — nicknamed “the Unginator” for the way he carried himself even then. Discipline, performance, and heart were already the whole personality.
U.S. Army Infantry. He enlisted and served as an E-5 Sergeant — a non-commissioned officer, deployed to Afghanistan. “You only call officers sir — we worked for a living,” he says of his NCO years. The rank, the bearing, and the name all come from that service: The Sarge is who the Army made him.
The artist and producer. Out of uniform, the characters come out. The Sarge is a hip-hop and pop-punk-rock performing artist, a music producer and sound designer with a degree in audio production, published and featured on Billboard Hip Hop and featured on HipHopSince1987. From the studio board to the master, if it hits your speakers, he touched it.
The promoter. He doesn’t wait for a stage — he builds one. Bust Out the Box is his monthly multi-genre music residency at the Wagon Wheel Sports Bar & Concert Hall in Colorado Springs, co-run with AntiFamouz Ent: every month a different genre, one stage, and a night you can’t get anywhere else. Between 2016 and 2021, his former company Mountain High X Entertainment left its mark on the local scene; today that chapter is legacy, and The Sarge LLC carries the work forward.
The student. He’s currently a UCCS student — choir, voice, Pitch Peak a cappella, theater — still training, still leveling up, still in the classroom with his oldest daughter.
The dad, the grandpa. He’s a proud father of four daughters, all in college, and a grandpa. Family is the engine under all of it.
His creed, on every stage and every post: “Stay Different.” “I went from a name tag in Bangkok to stripes in the Army to a mic in Colorado Springs,” says The Sarge. “Every rank I ever held, I earned — E-5, artist, producer, promoter, dad. Nobody handed me this name. And I’m just getting started. Stay Different.” On October 24, 2026, he joins Witch Hound on stage as a vocalist for their “Second Summoning” show at Vultures in Colorado Springs. Word is it may be Witch Hound’s last performance for a while — don’t miss it.
