today’s milk are still looking for tomorrow’s sound

I’m at Tocororo—a rum bar with a pinball room—in Detroit’s Eastern Market, drinking a painkiller to wash down the best chicken legs I’ve ever eaten in my entire life. I’m playing the new Pokémon machine when Jeff Mahannah (drums, art) of Kalamazoo’s Today’s Milk calls to tell me he and Joe (bass) have arrived at the venue: a semi-secret DIY space a couple blocks over known as the Field Office. I’m a little nervous—not because of the interview, but because I booked the show (a first for me) and I’m worried no one will show up. 

I practically accidentally catch a Magnezone before eventually succumbing to the terrorist acts of Team Rocket. The guys show up and I share the previous sentence with them almost verbatim. They're rightfully unimpressed. As we walk back to Field Office, I ask about Justin (guitar, vocals). I’m informed he’s made the drive with his wife and kids so they can hit the Tigers game tomorrow, but there was some trouble with their Airbnb and he had to book a hotel last second. The interview will have to be conducted a few hours—and a few drinks—later.

I end up running the door before the show starts and I’m both relieved and delighted by the familiar faces. My dad comes, Chris and Aleahia (Day Residue) show up, and a whole bunch of young people I’ve never seen are here to support their friend Lars (a young Detroit scene regular making his live debut). Josh (Quitters) takes over door duties as the show begins and Trucker Hat start the night out right, ripping through a killer set with two bass guitars and a hell of a lot of fuzz. 

Next is the maiden voyage of Dee Obscenity and the Stepsons, featuring Dee himself, Chuck (H8 Mile, The Stools), and the aforementioned Lars on bass. Lars starts a chant of his own name and his friends rowdily join in. During the first song, Dee is possessed by a punk rock demon and writhes around on the floor. The only problem is, he’s failed to remove his Jazzmaster, replacing guitar with a high-pitched squeal for the next ten minutes. You’ll just have to take my word for it - it’s fucking awesome.

Today’s Milk follow up the fuzz and the feedback with their unique brand of danceable punk rock. I’ve been looking forward to their set for months and they don’t disappoint in the slightest. Bathed in the projector light of the AVGN Metal Gear episode, they kick things off with “The Towel,” a standout track from their third EP. A few songs in, I realize they have something that people too often attribute to other bands that don’t have it: swagger. For not playing live often, they’re tight as hell. Finally Quitters—who have leveled up considerably from their already great, more indie rock sound—close the night out with some glorious, good old fashioned, loud-as-hell rock’n’roll. 

After the show, Jeff sells a few Today’s Milk tapes and some of his shirts. I buy a particularly classy one that says “Above the Rim” and features Michael Jordan dunking a basketball while Larry Bird eats his ass. A few minutes later, we head outside onto the patio for a very funny chat. 

I gotta ask about the band name, since nobody knows why any of the bands I interview have the names they have. 

Justin: Well, it’s Today’s Milk, I mean, you don’t want yesterday’s milk. We threw around band names and it just sounded like something we’d like to put on a flyer. 

Jeff: Yeah, I think we tried a lot of names, I can’t remember how we came up with that one. But we laughed about it for a while and thought if we put it on a flyer it would make people mad [laughs]. So it was like, let’s just stick with that one. Now it just makes us mad to say it out loud. 

When was this? When did you start this project?

Jeff: A couple years ago now, huh? 

Justin: Yeah. We’re all from Kalamazoo, but I know Jeff from coming through Austin when I was living in Austin. He was playing in Giorgio Murderer and Legendary Wings. I knew Joe from coming through Austin with Erik Nervous. Then I moved back to Kalamazoo, where I grew up, and I thought these guys might be cool dudes to start a band with. 

And you were right.

Justin: There’s kind of a funny story, we were sitting next to each other at a bar and I thought–Jeff has a twin brother—and I couldn’t tell if it was him or his twin brother. So I text messaged him whether or not it was him [everyone laughs].

Jeff: I remember my girlfriend being like, “Why the fuck is that weird guy looking at us?”

And then you got a text from him. 

Jeff: I actually got a text, yeah [laughs]. It said, “Are you at O’Duffy’s right now?”

“Wanna be in a band with me?”

Justin: That’s how it happened. 

Jeff: Basically, yeah. 

So the art is obviously attention-grabbing, with the bright pink and blue, but the art seems sort of dystopian. It seems to be saying technology and humanity aren’t good.

Jeff: I was trying to do a kind of sci-fi thing for Today’s Milk, just because it’s future related. Today’s milk can be related to tomorrow’s milk or something [laughs]? Honestly I just didn’t want to draw a cow or something stupid like that. It’s kind of a work in progress as far as the artwork goes. And I don’t want that to define the band, but I guess in a lot of ways it does. 

Justin: I think it’s funny to comment on it. Everything is evolving. 

Jeff: It’s weird, I haven’t picked out lyrics from songs to draw. That’d probably be the smart thing to do. 

There’s nothing about you guys on the internet. Did you guys just want to embrace the mystery, or how much do you actually want people to know? 

Jeff: That’s a good point, man. I feel like because we haven’t played a lot of shows yet, we’re still trying to figure it out. 

Justin: I don’t know about trying to be a mystery, but I think we’re in the spot where we don’t have a bunch of venues and we don’t play a ton of shows. We focus on writing songs and figuring out our favorite shit to sound like. We love punk rock but we also love how entertaining other genres are. 

Like funk.

Justin: There’s some funk for sure. 

Jeff: We definitely like to get funky. 

Justin: And I love the sound of gangster rap. It’s so cool. Punk rock’s what speaks to my soul, but I think what we’re doing as we progress is introducing as much weird, outsider stuff as we can to that sound. Adding some hip hop beats, techno, heavy metal. Dropping little things in there. 

“The Towel” definitely has that. It’s almost like Westside Connection or something at the beginning.

Jeff: I think we’re trying to get it to where we’re writing songs starting with that feeling. We’ve been playing in punk bands forever and everyone who plays in punk bands wants to sound like a punk band. And my natural instinct is to sound like that and to play drums like that, because I’ve been playing drums like that forever.

Justin: Which is good. 

Jeff: Which is good. 

Justin: That’s your soul. 

Jeff: It’s good. It’s fun, but it’s like, everybody does that, so we’re trying to not sound like everything we’ve always done. We wanna be different. We’re trying to stop ourselves from doing the same fucking shit. 

It makes sense, because so much of your stuff is punk in spirit. As an example, there’s two songs that you guys have—“Already Inside” is one—where it’s almost power pop, like Cheap Trick. 

Jeff: Yeah!

That, to me, is the best thing about the band. There’s hooks. I’m driving around singing along to this stuff. 

Justin: You gotta have the hooks. You can’t fuck with hooks. The secret with trying to find a sound is how to take the hooks and make them your own. When we first started out, people would be like, “What’s your sound?” And we were like, “we’re gonna be hardcore with breakbeats.” Everyone loved that idea, but I think we’re getting to the point where we actually need to do that, because our instinct is always punk rock. And we can write those style songs all day...

Jeff: And they’re great. We could slay as a band that’s just strictly a Buzzcocks cover band, basically. We could slay like that. But we’re better than that [everyone laughs].

More ambitious at least.

Justin: I don’t have a problem with any band that sounds like the Buzzcocks at all...

Jeff: I do.

Justin: Jeff’s a hater in that way. 

Jeff: Bands are lazy. Bands try to sound like everybody else. Including us, that’s why we had to stop ourselves and say, “This is the easy way out, to do this stupid shit that everybody does, let’s just try harder to do something different.” Which we’re still trying to do.

I think “The Towel” being the first song I heard definitely did some crazy heavy lifting, in terms of being so unique that I thought, “I need to hear everything this band has done.” I wonder if I heard another song first, if it would’ve had the same effect, because that song seems like such a good thesis statement for what you’re going for. 

Jeff: Yeah, definitely. 

Or “Barracudas” is another one.

Jeff: Funky shit! That’s what I was talking to Justin about. “We gotta just start with the drum beat and the bass and shit gettin’ all funky first and then layer on some other shit, instead of just doing like the Ramones punk beat first, everyone does that.”

Because it’s tried and true. 

Jeff: I know, because it’s awesome!

Jeff, I notice you’ve been cradling that bottle of Corazon like it’s your newborn child. 

Jeff: Take a sip!

Can’t do that. I’m too paranoid about driving. 

Jeff, through a mischievous grin: Justin drinks and drives every day. 

Justin: No I don’t. 

Jeff: Almost every day. With his kids in the car [laughs].

Justin: Well I got a lot of practice when I was younger, but I don’t do it anymore. 

You’d think you’d be pro at it now. 

Jeff: He’s such a pro. At drinking and driving with his kids in the car [laughs].

Justin, how was your disastrous Airbnb experience?

Justin: Well, that was a really funny and intense moment, ‘cause I knew you were trying to interview me. But I don’t know what’s up with Detroit. I’m not a Detroiter. We rolled in and it was a tough lock box. I battled the lock box for a while and I realized if I battled it any longer I was gonna fuck up my hands, when I’m about to play guitar. 

Jeff: So you insisted that your wife do it. 

Justin: No, I went back time and time again. And we got it eventually, then there was no key in the lock box. It speaks to Detroit… Well, I don’t know if it speaks to Detroit, does it speak to Detroit? 

I don’t know, I don’t Airbnb, I live here. 

Jeff: Say something bad about Detroit, go ahead. What were you gonna say? 

Justin: No, I like it so much, I don’t wanna speak bad about it, it was just that Airbnb experience. 

You think someone tried all ten thousand combinations just to get a key and then not go into the house? 

Justin: Well I’m wondering, because it was kind of in the most gentrified part of Detroit, if perhaps someone does just go through and try to take the keys. But we won’t speak ill of Detroit, I love it here. Spiritually, Detroit is one of my favorite music cities ever. 

So far there are three EPs and a single. Are you working on a full record?

Justin: So far we’re kind of EP-minded. I would love to do a full-length record, but it feels like, right now, one song at a time. Move forward and progress the sound. 

Jeff: Yeah, just cancel out the bad songs and have ten of the best songs ever that’ll eventually be a full-length record. Always weed out the weakest one. 

So when you have ten EPs you’re going to take the best song off of each EP.

Jeff: Yeah! Basically. 

It’ll be like one of those SNL greatest hits DVDs, like the best of Tracy Morgan.

Jeff: The best of Chris Farley was sick. I had that on VHS and it was so funny. 

Chris Kattan, an underrated one. 

Jeff: You know what I hate about Chris Kattan? The monkey guy. 

No! Mr. Peepers?!

Jeff: That guy. Stupid shit, so dumb man. 

Joe: Night at the Roxbury I think is really funny. 

[We talk about Chris Kattan movies for three straight minutes]

Justin: Alright we should get some good stuff in here, though. [They laugh] What are the best band interviews? 

Fuck if I know. TY, Mod Lang, Dana...

Justin: [excitedly] We know Dana!

Jeff: Nobody cares about any of those bands. Nobody!

Justin: Should we beef Dana? 

Jeff: Let’s beef Dana. They suck! [everyone laughs]

You said earlier you guys were thinking about doing more shows. 

Jeff: We want to branch out, we’re just trying to strategize which way to go, as far as going on tour and who to play for. The biggest thing, I think, is to write the best songs and put ‘em on the internet, because that’s just how it is these days. We’re not gonna be a tour dog band. We’re just not that band. As much as I’d love for Justin to just kill his whole family and go on tour for five months [everyone laughs].

Justin: Jeff only knows one way, Jeff’s a road dog. But we’re gonna tour, we’re gonna have a good time. Great bands, it’s all about the songs. You just wanna hear great songs. 

Jeff: That’s what I was thinking about Quitters. I bet they could make some really good recordings out of some of those songs. [Ed.: They did.]

[What appears to be a fist fight breaks out a block over and we think it’s just what the interview needs]

Jeff: Justin, will you go over there and start fighting someone please.

[Two of the would-be brawlers dap up.]

Jeff: Awwww, they’re friends. It's fake. 

Joe: I was actually ready for a gunshot. 

Really? 

Jeff: Joe has a gun on him at all times. If there’s one thing people should know, it’s that Today’s Milk is strapped. [everyone laughs]

Justin: Can you translate this to be a sober interview? 

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