Hot Mulligan just ‘boys doing boy stuff’

Lansing, Michigan’s Hot Mulligan sells a $1,200 gallon of milk on their online store.

The product is a reference to the band’s 2022 single “Drink Milk and Run,” a reference to frontman Tades Sanville’s efforts to get in shape before a post–COVID-19 tour.

“You know when you’re drunk, and you start running, and how it’s just better?” Sanville asked in an interview.

“So, I would pound these disgusting PBR coffee things that have quite a bit of dairy in it. And I would go for my jog, and I’d sit back down afterward and dry heave for a long time. So, I drank milk and ran. And we sell you a gallon so you can do it, too.

“It’s no good,” admitted the frontman. “It’s really bad.”

While Pabst Blue Ribbon has since discontinued its hard coffee, Hot Mulligan continues to prosper with its despondent emo/pop punk tunes, recently returning from its first UK/EU headlining tour to release its critically acclaimed 2023 LP “Why Would I Watch.”

On social media, the group describes itself as the “No. 1 Hot New Band.” They might just be right.

Hot Mulligan came together in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, circa 2014, when Sanville met guitarist and vocalist Chris Freeman. According to the frontman, the two found each other playing in separate, “tiny, shitty DIY bands.”

“There’s kind of nothing up there but trees and hicks, so coming across band people is pretty difficult. Hot Mulligan formed because there aren’t many musicians that want to do band stuff up there,” Sanville said.

“After that, we moved down to the Lower Peninsula and started forming up the rest of the band. When you’re in a place with a bunch more musicians, it goes a lot more smoothly.”

In those early days, Freeman and Sanville ironed their sound into a love child of their tastes: Freeman partial to pop punk and Sanville an emo enthusiast. The result was a new style, one that didn’t belong fully to either genre, but dipped its toes into both.

“Those two genres are full of gatekeeping around what the genre is. But we land somewhere in the middle, and I’m not exactly sure where, but we’re in there,” Sanville said.

“Chris is a Wonder Years, Simple Plan guy, that’s what he cut his teeth on. But even still, my favorite music is Midwest emo stuff. Free Throw, Brave Bird, You Blew It, Algernon Cadwallader, just the smorgasbord.”

“We put them together in a way that we thought was catchy, and it became Hot Mulligan.”

Songwriting is also a process of cooperation, in which each member is in charge of his area of expertise and brings his own sonic ideas to the table. Drummer Brandon Blakely handles percussion, while Freeman and Ryan “Spicy” Malicsi collaborate on the guitar parts.

“Everyone gets their thing. So, if ever I have a melody, I can bring it to them. For the most part, we’re a pretty well functioning, compartmentalized group. We’re each pretty good at what we do, so we put it together and make something a little bit better, I think.

“We’ve just been friends forever. A group of boys doing boy stuff. It’s what most good bands seem to be anyway. A bunch of people who get along relatively well enough.”

But Sanville takes the helm when it comes to lyrical content of the songs, in which the singer relives some of his most regrettable moments. The lyrics are deeply revealing, self-reflective, at times self-critical, always vulnerable.

“It used to be like 50-50 down the middle, me and Chris. But in the past couple of releases, Chris has taken a step back and written quite a few less lyrics. He still gets at least one, but for the most part it’s just me doing my thing.”

“On the new one he made ‘It’s a Family Movie She Hates Her Dad,’ that was his lyrical contribution, which works for me. Other than that, every now and then he’ll have a line, and that’s a prompt that I run off of, or he’ll suggest lyric changes.”

In the new record, “Why Would I Watch,” Sanville rolled with the theme of bad memories, the title a plucked lyric from the song “No Shoes in the Coffee Shop (or Socks),” that the band thought represented the “overall negative nostalgia” that the album radiates.

Over the 12 tracks, Sanville wonders about old friends, laments over familial trauma, reflects on his own failures, and mourns the loss of a beloved pet. On “Smahccked My Head Awf,” he muses on one of the more dismal aspects of memory, the loss thereof.

“It’s about my grandmother’s failing mental fortitude,” Sanville said.

“That song is a part of a series of songs that I’ve been writing for a long time about her and my worries about her. In almost every release I have at least one song where I’m commiserating about Nana, and hoping that she’ll be OK.”

“Smahccked My Head Awf,” is a gut-wrenching brooding on one of mankind’s most haunting thoughts, the thought of losing a loved one while they’re still around. The title, on the other hand, comes from a different place.

“One night Brandon, our drummer, was drunk, and he was getting back on the wagon, and he completely missed a step and railed his head off of the car next to us. And then for the next four hours he said that constantly. I was legitimately mad at him at the end of the night because he wouldn’t shut up about it. Then we named the song after it.”

Nearly every Hot Mulligan song takes this form, a disheartened, angst-ridden tune, accompanied by titles like “Christ Alive My Toe Dammit Hurts,” “Shhhh! Golf is On,” or “John ‘the Rock’ Cena, Can You Smell What the Undertaker.”

The art of the funny, unrelated song title is a long standing tradition in the emo scene. For the members of Hot Mulligan, who pull song titles from their own antics and inside jokes, it’s an opportunity to express who they are outside of the doom and gloom of their songs.

“I do like the tradition,” Sanville said. “I think it’s funny, and I think it stands because it’s eye catching, and it’s begging to be funny even when it’s not. Reading a title like that on Spotify will make you go, ‘That sucks, and maybe the song’s good.’

“But I think the reason we do it is just because it’s all bummers for the most part, the lyrical content. The song itself is an expression of the worst, and everything else around it is just a band of guys being guys and doing dude stuff.

“It’s not all trenches, that’s just the product that we put out, I guess.”