Hot Mulligan talk merch, naming songs + the pros & cons of touring in exclusive interview

If you haven’t heard of a band called Hot Mulligan, you should start. These guys are the real deal, and put on a great show live. The post concert depression is real after seeing these guys two days in a row. Once in Philly, and Brooklyn.

Over the weekend, before their show in Brooklyn, my girlfriend and I had the pleasure to sit down with Hot Mulligan and ask them a few questions, ranging from music, to the tour, to their merch (which is so fresh).

Additionally, I have to give a huge shout out to her, as well as Hot Mulligan’s manager, Ben Champagne who helped me and her organize this whole thing leading up to it. It couldn’t have been possible without them.

We talked to lead singer Tades Sanville, drummer Brandon Blakeley, bassist Garrett Willig (who they call Sniff) , and guitarist Ryan Malicsi.

My first question to the band was “the titles to your songs seem to be ‘random’, why is that? Do they hold any significance to you guys?”

“Dumb stories.” Sanville replied.

“A lot of them are just dumb shit somebody will say out of context, and then we will be like ‘thats a song title.” Blakeley chimed in saying afterwards. “There is absolutely no significance to them.”

“I saw two semi’s hit each other on the highway and that was ‘I Saw A Semi Fight on I-69,” Sanville says. He made a point to say that we say things all the time that are random and out of context, so they use that to their advantage in creating the titles for all of their songs.

When asked about balancing being in the band and being a student, Ryan Malicsi says that it is tough, because he feels like he is never at home anymore, because he is always at school or on tour.

“But the two never go on at the same time. But both are always on my mind at the same time.”

Hot Mulligan also points out that they believe that this is the point in their careers that things are bigger than they’ve ever been, but they don’t believe that they have ‘made it’ and don’t believe that they ever will.

“It’s too hard to gauge,” drummer Brandon Blakeley says. “It’s too hard to put a metric on it and say ‘oh, this it the point where we’ve made it.'”

The next question we asked was what are the best parts, and the worst parts of touring and, there was a very long list for these.

“Public bathrooms. HATE EM.” Sanville says, which we probably can all agree with. Malicsi added that eating all the different foods around the country that you can’t always get at home.

Blakeley says that personal space is a big issue for him, and not having it when you want it. “Like, if you have a bad day or something, you still have to go out and perform and see people. But there’s a lot of good things about it too. You get to go out and see the world and perform.”

“If I had a cat, I would probably miss it.” Malicsi notes.

“Oh, I hope my cat made it home,” Tades added. “It’s either home or dead.”

After the wonderful talk about the band members and their cats, we got to talking about dogs, and all the dogs they see while touring.

“Put that on an upside; big dogs, think the movie Beethoven.” Sanville and Malicsi lit up with excitement while thinking about him.

Sanville specifically requested that I talk about the dogs, and put “big dogs as a complete non sequitur to the rest of the interview.” So Tades, here it is.

BIG. DOGS.

Anyways, back to the questions. This next one asked what was their favorite songs to perform, and why they are their favorites. Each band member had a different answer, so it was very interesting to hear about the different things they love about their music.

Blakeley said that he has a lot of fun performing “Something About A Bunch of Dead Dogs”, even though he was not a part of the band yet when they recorded it. Malicsi agreed, saying “I don’t really have any intricate parts in it, so I can just spin around and have fun.”

Bassist Garrett Willig said that “There Was a Semi-Fight on I-69 is a lot of fun for me. I have a lot of bouncy parts that I can just groove to.”

Sanville struggled at first to answer. “Maybe ‘Michelle Branch’? I have a lot of parts that I can just scream more and like, I pepper in that. And it’s not hard to perform.”

Following up, we asked how they decide the setlist for each of the tours. They weren’t entirely sure how they decide, but Blakeley gave us an answer that most of them agreed with.

“This one is a little different, because we have more set time than normal. Like, we play for an hour now when we usually play half of that, so we play pretty much every song on Pilot this tour, and as many of the old ones that we can fit in.”

“I think it’s pretty much common to end on one of our stronger songs and then play another one earlier on in the set to keep things moving.” Malicsi added.

“Have to keep it poppin’, keep it moving.” Sanville says.

Next up, was what made this tour different than the other ones Hot Mulligan has been on. My girlfriend and I had seen them two times prior, both as openers in different shows, and we were curious to know the difference between being an opener, versus headlining.

“Playing an hour” Malicsi says.

Blakeley added, “Having more work in general, we have to show up earlier, we have to set a bunch of stuff up, sound check, be back at the stage for our set, play for an hour, tear everything down, load out. It’s just a lot longer days.”

“It’s twice as much work, but like, everyone is really cool to us, because apparently were like ‘big dog’ on the tour or whatever, which is like stupid, but its really easy to make friends when everybody wants to figure out what your deal is, ya know?” Sanville said.

Our last question unfolds into two parts. We were curious about their merch, who designs it, and why the armadillo is so significant to them. If you don’t know Hot Mulligan, a lot of their merchandise has an armadillo on it, and we wanted to know why, and they also have a song called “How Do You Know It’s Not Armadillo Shells”, and we will get to the story of that song title in a minute.

Blakeley says that merch is designed by talented people, too many to name, and that they always approve it and tweak it to make it perfect.

Guitarist Ryan Malicsi gave us the story on armadillo, and the song title. He says, “We were at a party with Belmont, in Chicago, and a man shows up to the party, and nobody knows the man. He is just, a figure, no one knows who he is or how he got there, but he’s really, really high on drugs. At one point, he starts talking about conspiracy theories, and he goes, ‘how do you know paper is made out of trees? Have you ever seen it made?'”

Ryan answers him, saying, “‘Dude, it’s been going on for centuries. I think the Chinese started it or the Egyptians or something’ and then the guy says ‘How do you know they aren’t lying?'”

The members of the band went on to continue their dialogue with the man, when he suddenly blurts out, “HOW DO YOU KNOW IT’S NOT ARMADILLO SHELLS?’

“And then we kicked him out.” Tades notes.

Again, I would like to send a HUGE thank you from the bottom of my heart to Hot Mulligan for sitting down and giving us the time of day to talk to us, and their manager, for helping to make this all possible. If you have not listened to their debut full length record, Pilot, make sure you do so, they are the real deal and compete with the big dogs of the music scene.

Hot Mulligan also has a few more dates left on tour and I highly suggest you go see them. Their show was so good, we saw it twice.