After their show at The Colony in Sacramento, California on January 20, Mac & Cheese Music interviewed Max and Bailey of the band Mustn’ts. Mustn’ts is a band from Concord, Califonia and they just released a new self titled EP.
Mac & Cheese: So you guys were Kilroy and now you’re Mustn’ts. Why did you change your name and what is the meaning behind the new name?
Max: The reason for the name change had mostly to do with legal things. There’s a lot of other Kilroys.
Bailey: There’s like ten.
Max: Some of them were rappers. We just decided we didn’t want to have any problems down the line and we decided if we’re going to change it, now is the best time before we have to run into any legal problems. The new name is actually from a poem. I won’t say which poem, but that’s a hint and you can try and figure it out.
M&C: What drive you guys to start playing music?
Max: That’s probably a different answer for me than for Bailey. Do you want to go first?
Bailey: Yeah I’ll go first. Guitar Hero. I started playing Guitar Hero when I was really, really little and I started asking my mom for a guitar. I think I was like five or six years old and she’s like “Okay, you can play music, but you’re going to get lessons and you’re going to stay in lessons until you’re eighteen and you can’t quit.” I went “Okay!” as a little six year old and I just picked it up and I’ve never been able to do anything else. I love it more than anything. It’s my entire life and its introduced me to some of the best people like my good buddy here, Max. Music is perfect. It’s the best way to connect people and there’s nothing else I’d rather be doing.
Max: I started and the way that I did music first was rapping. I rapped for a while. I was just so infatuated with rappers, anything from Eminem to old school rappers to new stuff, and the way that people used words to convey different things was just always so interesting to me. Originally it was just all about the words for me and I think that’s translated a lot into the stuff we do now. But then I got into high school and I started listening to bands like The Front Bottoms and Modern Baseball. Those were two of the first bands I got into and from there it was like this whole other level because it was using words to convey these emotions and I found myself really needing an outlet for that and that’s what kind of drove me to play music. It originally started with the words and it was just kind of an outlet was needed and it happened to be music. One of the songs on our upcoming LP, the lyrics are actually from a rap song I wrote in sophomore or freshman year.
Bailey: It’s good! He showed me and I liked it.
M&C: How do you construct your songs? Does each person write their own part for their own instrument individually, or do you collaborate and bounce ideas off of each other through the whole process?
Bailey: Max writes most of the songs.
Max: Generally it starts with me on an acoustic guitar or something. I’ll kind of have the bones of the song. I’ll bring it to Shane [who plays drums, but couldn’t be here for this interview] and we’ll get drums sorted out and Bailey will be there too. I’ll bring it to these guys and we’ll kind of fill it out from there and see how it’s going to flow. One thing when I write with an acoustic guitar, there’s not that full band to have all these transitions, so we figure out how to make it go from one part of the song to the next smoothly. Then me and Bailey work together for leads and bass lines. That’s like a collaborative effort there.
M&C: You kind of already answered this, but you guys have really great lyrics. That’s one of our favorite parts of your music. What’s your songwriting process?
Max: That’s a good question. It really differs a lot from song to song. That’s a hard one because I’ve written lots of different songs lots of different ways, you know what I mean, and as far as lyrics go definitely there’s just something. I’ve said this to Bailey before and it seems like sometimes they write themselves, do you know what I mean?
Bailey: The songs that really matter, they come to you.
Max: Yeah, the songs that are really special, I found you don’t write. They write themselves. It’s really interesting how sometimes you can just sit down and the song is there. I think “Hero” I wrote in like a night. It’s one of the songs that just came and it hasn’t really changed much since I wrote it. But then some songs, are a much more drawn out process and have more evolutions as we play them. I’d say for that, it really does vary from song to song.
M&C: How do you think your music has progressed from your rapping days and Guitar Hero days, to your first album release to your latest EP, and then on to your new album?
Max: Our first album, we recorded, this was before Bailey was in the band actually, we recorded in my garage. We did the whole thing ourselves and we didn’t really know what we were doing. We were just like “We want to make an album and we can’t afford to go to a studio, so let’s do this”. I don’t think the intent has changed a whole lot. I think we’ve definitely gotten better at a lot of things and I think something that’s really important about the EP and the reason we wanted to redo some of those specific songs from the album was because we felt that some of the original versions didn’t really back up our live show. I felt like when we did the EP with the quality of the recording and everything and some of the things we added in, it sounds a lot more like it does live than on the album. I remember people would comment on how different the album sounds from us live and it just really did. I think that was one of the most important things was bridging that gap between the live show and the recordings.
Bailey: I think the recordings have really done it justice.
M&C: What bands have inspired you guys?
Bailey: We have really different music tastes.
Max: We have crazy, very different music tastes. As far as me, I guess lyrically, some of my really big influences are bands like The Front Bottoms and Modern Baseball. I’m still influenced by the hip hop I used to listen to a lot. I still listen to some hip hop, but not nearly as much. As far as vocally, you’ll hear it a lot on the next record, it has really inspired the way I sing. I don’t know, there’s a lot of them.
Bailey: My favorite artist in the world, his name is Anthony Green, he’s been in a bunch of cool bands like Circa Survive, The Sound of Animals Fighting, and Saosin. Anything that he’s been a part of, I love. There’s a band called Dance Gavin Dance, they’re actually from Sacramento. It’s very different from what we’re playing now, but it’s helped me bring a new element to this and a different perspective at least.
Max: If you want to talk about something, answering a different question you already asked, something that has changed since the beginning is that Bailey has definitely brought a new element with his musical ability and his own influences definitely shape our sound in a good way.
Bailey: That’s very nice of you, buddy.
M&C: When did you [Bailey] join the band?
Bailey: September 2016?
Max: That’s about right. Fall of 2016, so a little over a year now. Our first performance was January 2017 I think, right?
Bailey: No we played The Phoenix Theater!
M&C: We live right by there and we missed you?
Bailey: I’m glad you missed that show.
Max: That was not a good show.
Bailey: I did something very dumb. I have this tendency to panic when I’m on stage.
Max: You’ve been to The Phoenix Theater, right?
M&C: Yeah.
Max: It’s this huge auditorium.
Bailey: Huge venue!
Max: Obviously we were not going to nearly fill it up. We were opening for already not that big of a show and we’re from out of town. Maybe ten people.
Bailey: I counted, there was like seven or eight.
Max: It’s this huge auditorium, so it’s already a little awkward, but we’re doing our thing. We’ve always had the mentality that we’re gonna put on the same show whether its ten people or ten thousand. Not that we’ve played for ten thousand people. As much as it’s for the audience, we get into it because we’re feeling what we’re playing and that’s what we want to do. It would feel like this hollow shell of a performance if we weren’t doing that. But Bailey had this bright idea to invite the audience onto the stage.
Bailey: And I didn’t tell him any of this. So to everyone, all seven or eight–
Max: “Hey, you guys should come on stage for this one!” and I was like, “What?” So they come up, sit behind us on the stage, I’m now playing to an empty auditorium.
Bailey: I could turn around, but he had the mic.
Max: The sound guy left and went to the bathroom, so literally it was an empty auditorium and this was like halfway through our set. We played our last four songs to no one. They stayed up on the stage for the remainder of the set.
Bailey: I thought they’d just come up for one song and go back down.
Max: Well, that’s what you get for thinking.
Bailey: Thanks, Max. Well that happens and he storms off stage, not storms off–
Max: No, I was not that mad. I was like “Why’d you do that?”
Bailey: Either way, I was like “I’m never playing with them again.”
Max: That was his first show with us and he was like “I’m done”, but he’s still here.
Bailey: And I’ve done more things like that lately.
M&C: This has been the most wholesome show we’ve ever been too. There was so much love, everybody was dancing. Both of you, obviously, but especially Bailey, was just smiling the whole time and looked so happy to play.
Bailey: I’ve never been happier in my entire life. That was the coolest thing I’ve ever done. I mean that. Holy shit.
Max: It’s been insane. We’re going some places where people know the words to our songs.
Bailey: We’re not some major band! We’re just some kids from Concord!
Max: Yeah, people just know these lyrics and we’re like–
Bailey: “well this is weird–”
Max: “and this is cool”. We’re on that stage like, “My dreams are coming true right now” and it’s weird. It’s still a very new feeling for us, to have that reaction.
Bailey: This is the best show we’ve ever played [in reference to the January 20, 2018 show at The Colony in Sacramento].
Max: Yeah, that was definitely one for the books.
M&C: When did you first notice that people were singing along to your songs?
Max: Well, in the early days, our friends would sing along because they’d be, fucking, at our practices, so they’d know the words. People that we were close to would sing along and it was fun and there’d be a bunch of people, but the first time we actually saw that was at that Gilman show.
Bailey: Oh yeah, was that with Mt. Eddy?
Max: Yeah!
M&C: We were at that one! You smashed a guitar!
Bailey: Oh you want to hear a story about that? So that was really fucking stupid of me! It was not my bass. It was their old bassist, Michael’s. I literally felt so fucking bad. We were supposed to end the set and I get hella pumped up with a lot of adrenaline and I just think, “Okay, they’re not ending the set, they’re not ending the set, they missed the crashes” so I’m like, “I’m going to take it upon myself” and I start smashing the bass and the headstock broke off. I had to call Michael and be like, “Oh dude, I broke your bass, I’m so sorry” and I had to pay him $600. I mean, understandably, but I was like “Oh my God, that was a bad choice.”
Max: We cannot afford to smash our own instruments.
Bailey: We’ve had enough instrumental damage. I messed up my ribs tonight [in reference to how he jumped on top of the drum set at the end of their set that night]. I need to be careful.
Max: The first time that we saw people singing along, to answer your question, people that we didn’t know, was at that one show at Gilman. We heard people singing along and we just thought, “This is really cool” and it was dope because it was kind of our hometown. On this tour, we went down to San Jose and we weren’t expecting much, but people were singing along and we were thinking, “That’s awesome.” Then we played at this donut shop down in SLO [San Luis Obispo] and we had never been there before. That was a pretty chill show. Then last night, we were in Oakland.
Bailey: We had all our friends there too. Marigold, they played tonight, I love those dudes to death. They’re the best. Check them out if you don’t know them.
Max: Then tonight was just insane. It was by far, the best response we’ve had. That was just killer. We had more people yelling along tonight than at our show last night in Oakland. Sac is insane. It’s been pretty recently that we’ve been getting that reaction and it’s really awesome. It’s definitely validating. Like, holy shit, we can actually do this. We put a lot into it, but if some people like this enough to listen to it and sing along, maybe other people do too. It’s validating, for sure
M&C: This is the last question: what can you guys tell us about your upcoming album?
Bailey: It’s different.
Max: When I first got the mix back from Pat, the guy we recorded it with–
Bailey: Pat Hill. He’s rad.
Max: Oh yeah, Pat Hill at Earthtone Studios in Sacramento. If you want to record a record, the dude does great work. Besides that, parts of it are definitely pretty different from what we’ve put out so far, but I think it definitely still embodies what we’ve been about from the beginning. I think the intention has always just been to build a community around things that are hard to talk about and songs that you can sing along to and feel a part of something. I still think regardless of how our sound changes, the goal will always be to have that remain. There’s a good amount more of guitar work on it and we’re super stoked for everyone to hear it.
M&C: We’re excited. When is the release?
Max: We don’t have a release date slotted, but it should be some time this summer
Bailey: Also, I just want to say one more thing. Check out Cup of Joe Records. Joey Miller is our dude.
Max: Joey does so much for us, he’s very helpful, he’s our best friend, and he started a record label that we just put our EP out on. Check out Cup of Joe Records, because there’s going to be a lot of good stuff coming from them.
Max and Bailey were so great to talk to and we look forward to hearing more music from Mustn’ts. Be sure to check out their music!!!!
Interview conducted by Emma Fong (Instagram: @emmafong_) and Brigid Ahern (Intsagram: @brigid.ahern)
Mustn’ts:
Instagram: @_mustnts