INTERVIEW: MILKK // Columbus, OH

On Thursday Melodic had the opportunity to interview the up-and-coming band, MILKK where we talked about tour, inspirations, upcoming plans, and more!

Melodic (Dena): Can you guys introduce yourselves and your role in the band?
Jack: Yeah! I’m Jack and I play guitar.
Pat: Yeah and he also does all of the mixing, engineering, and stuff. I’m Pat and I write songs, sing, play some keys, play some guitar.
John: Drums, branding–
Pat: What’s your name?
John: My name is drums.
Pat: Oh hey drums!
John: No, my name is John!
Pat: Yeah, John overheads our visual direction. I tend to do social media stuff as well and I’m pretty active on there. Like I said before, Jack does a lot of our engineering in the studio and mixing. We all work together with our different parts as a unit to get it all done.

Melodic (Dena): Can you tell me how the band got together?
Pat: I’ve known Jack for about twelve years or so and about a little over a year ago, it was like “Hey, let’s start a cool project–something fun, not too fancy.” Jack had just left the band he was in and I was doing a solo thing. We were like “Let’s start a thing,” and got the idea of it started. I knew John from just playing shows together and without thinking of it, I was like “Hey man, I don’t know if you care about this but if you want to do this band with us, we’re starting it. It’s fresh, whatever, but it seems like people are liking it.” People were interested on Twitter and Instagram before we had a song out which I thought was really random. John was like “Hey yeah, let’s do it!”

I mean, that’s kinda the start of it. It kind of started as a joke almost, or like something fun on the side! It wasn’t meant to be a serious thing, but all of the sudden a lot of people started caring about it and we signed a record deal. We realized this was a real thing and we were like, “oh okay this is a real thing, let’s do it!”

Melodic (Dena): Where did MILKK come from? Is there a story behind it?
Jack: We were going to call it “Milk,” but the name was taken on social media. Pat called me and was like “What should we do?” He then just hit an extra “k” and that wasn’t taken.
Pat: We were like “That’s fine, this will work!” And that was it–literally zero thought.

Melodic (Dena): What inspired the latest EP (If You’re Reading This, I Love You)
Pat: Like I said, since we started in a not serious way, this EP was when we realized that this was going to be a real thing. We wanted to really throw ourselves into this as artists and we wanted to represent ourselves well. Not that we don’t love the first EP as well, but we wanted to hone into what MILKK will be moving forward. It’s kind of an EP about relationships as a whole and about feelings and about every facet of that and every which way. I mean, its only four songs but I feel like anyone can take it and make it their own based on what they’re going through. If they’re having a hard time, they might take the songs in a much more serious way, but if they’re feeling good they might jam a little more and feel alright. It’s kinda meant to resonate to whoever listens to it in their own realm. It’s just about being a person and going through stuff.

Melodic (Dena): What songs are you excited to play on this tour?
John: For me, it’s been Leaving.
Pat: Yeah, we were talking about this in the car.
Jack: Yeah we all agreed.
Pat: Leaving is great. I have a good time with Pacific Kiss. I don’t know if we will on the whole tour but we’ve been starting every set with that, so that’s where I get all of my nerves out and try not to puke. Also, I Hate This Song is really fun because I just get to whip around and be obnoxious. I mean, I have a good time playing all of them, honestly, but Leaving is kinda the jam.

Melodic (Dena): Do you have a favorite city yet (Besides Columbus!)?
Pat: Yeah, Columbus! Columbus! We’ve only played three so far, and this is the fourth, so I guess we can’t really say. We really enjoyed the last two shows and the St. Paul show was really cool; it was an acoustic/stripped-down set and it was a good experience. Chicago last night was really cool. We had a bunch of stupid technical difficulties, but everyone had a really good time it seemed like. We had a lot of fun too. It’s been great–I don’t want to give an answer too soon. Columbus for today! Columbus is my favorite.

Melodic (Dena): What is something people don’t really know about you guys/the band?
John: I don’t know. Maybe that it all just started from hanging out and having mutual interests. We just get along well and to bring it into a band was really special.
Pat: Yeah, it really was not a forced thing. Jack and I have been really tight friends for years, since high school, and maybe even before. I met John only a couple years ago and kind of hit it off, we had mutual interests. These guys (John and Jack) didn’t even meet until after MIKK started. Jack lived in St. Paul and John and I lived in Nashville.
John: Yeah, I don’t think everyone knows that.
Pat: Yeah, all of our stuff in our first EP was all “I’d build a track in my bedroom, and I would send it to Jack and he does some stuff and then we would send it around.” It wasn’t like we went to a studio to record or anything.
Jack: We were never all in one place.
Pat: Not for that EP anyway. For the new one, we were. Maybe people don’t know that, but it definitely started where we were not all in the same place, but maybe someday we will be. Right now, technology is a powerful thing. We can all stay connected, we can send tracks and songs around; it’s so easy and totally doable in 2018.

Melodic (Dena): Since you guys are a fairly new band, What are your plans for the next few months?
John: Madison Square Garden!
Pat: Yeah, Madison Square Garden. No, Columbus, Ohio! We just recorded a new song the past week in the studio. We’re hoping to put that out this fall. We’ve got a couple of behind the scenes things happening as a follow up to this summer. We have been talking and I’ve been writing a lot and throwing around the idea of a full length for next year. It’s just a matter of getting the right songs. I’ve just been writing a lot of new stuff that I think we’re all kinda excited about and we’ve been throwing ideas around about. There’s also talks about doing Fall tour stuff, some of it is still up in the air–we’re still talking to the booking agent, but we hope we get out at least another time before the year is out to try to hit a couple more places we weren’t able to hit this tour. That’s kind of all for now, obviously a lot of behind the scenes stuff that I can’t really talk about. But as far as where we are, we are planning to put new music out. Even more music–as two EPs isn’t enough. But yeah, more music coming out and more writing for an album.

Melodic (Dena): Awesome! Thank you so much for talking with me!

Stay up to date with MILKK:
Website: http://wearemilkk.com
Twitter: http://twitter.com/wearemilkk
Instagram: http://instagram.com/wearemilkk
Facebook: http://facebook.com/wearemilkk