Nashville based alt-rock powerhouse Manic. is back with an exceptional release, a brand new single “EVERYDAMNDAY.” The track takes listeners on a melancholic journey through a sleepy and dreary small-town. Members Nicholas Baños, Matthew Vero and Jacob Saint Patrick make a bold statement with this track, and they sure know how to tell a story. The guys were kind enough to take the time to chat with us about the new single, as well as share some exciting new things coming up. Read their interview with our writer Sara below!
Hey guys! Thanks so much for taking the time to answer my questions, I love your music! How’s life finding you these days?
Nicholas Baños: Thank you so much! First interview for this record cycle. I’ll do my best, haha. I’m pretty great at the moment. In the passenger seat heading out to Asheville, NC to do some hiking for the weekend. Enjoying my last bit of off time until the album is out.
Matthew Vero: Trying to define a very formative stage of the band. Trying to really connect with, and learn from, each other in a way that will shape our progress. I definitely sometimes am obsessive over the future and lose connection to the present, but I would say that at the moment life is a lot about looking forward.
Jacob Saint Patrick: Moving between learning and unlearning can be an exhausting process, but it’s how we handle it that ultimately makes us artists. The world is a confusing place right now, and making sense of it seems like an aside, but it determines whether or not artists have something to say. All together, ready for a nap.
How did you all first start making music together? Was there one person who sparked that conversation or was it more of a collaborative idea?
N: I had been doing Manic. solo for about a year and met Matt & Jake in 2020. I met Matt at a local goth/new wave night in East Nashville & met Jacob on the YEP page on Facebook (a group for “young entertainment professionals”).
I wrote with both of them a few times and connected with them very quickly. I think they actually met each other the first time on the set of the “Nothing With You” video. I asked them to be extras in the video and asked them to join the band that day.
M: Nicholas and I had been making music together for some time before I joined Manic.; I had him over for a session for one of my former bands in Nashville, with the intent of having him audition for the band, but the short version of the story and kind of the joke of it is that I ended up dissolving that project and joining Manic. shortly after.
Jacob Saint Patrick: Nicholas and I met through a friend, Joshua Parra. I had been working on my solo music and pining for what I had left to say after its release. Nicholas seems to have endless things to say, and we started making sense of each other’s chaoticisms.
I know you’re based in Nashville, which obviously has an incredible music scene. Do you feel that being submerged within that has influenced your artistry and the music that you make?
N: Absolutely. Most of our friends in our social circle are also creatives. We’re always collaborating just for fun & keep eachother inspired. The bar is pretty high here as well, and that definitely lights a fire under your ass. Am I allowed to say ass? Lol. There also isn’t really anyone writing music like us out here, which has made us kind of the “trailblazers”. & Since there isn’t a scene we’re trying to get into, we’ve generally keep our sights on building.
M: Nashville has definitely influenced my intuition as a producer and the way that I interface with music. There’s a certain way things are done here and a certain “gold standard” that’s long-standing. I think there are plenty of renegades here who can make a statement or an identity out of not meeting the standard; but I don’t think that in our self-ascribed identity as “trailblazers” we fall into that. We want to push the boundaries of what the container can look like, and what commercially viable music can be.
Jacob Saint Patrick: The industry is a bit oversaturated at the moment, trying to rise through the static and playing alongside artists who are just as relentless and gifted has highlighted how important it is to mean what you say, and say what you mean. We’re taking it to heart with our new releases.
Congratulations on your new single, “EVERYDAMNDAY,” it’s a really spectacular track! It’s a small-town-dull anthem that captures the hopelessness and mundane feeling that comes with being young and secluded within a place. Did the inspiration for the track come from your own experiences?
N: Yes. Although honestly I can’t say that I’m from a small town, being from New Orleans. & After hurricane Katrina, I lived in Denver for 10 years. That’s where I went to high school. But growing up in/near the city, I certainly know the feeling of being desensitized... & feeling stuck. We joke that our alternate band name is “The Disassociates.”
M: A lot of the arrangement and instrumentation choices on “EVERYDAMNDAY” do come from my experience and recollection of growing up in rural north-east Ohio. Most of the rhythm guitar parts I put down for it–which ended up being pretty much the bedrock of the final version of the song–are direct tongue-in-cheek references to old Gary Allan or Eric Church rhythm parts. Nick and Jake don’t know that, so I guess they’ll find out when this interview comes out, haha. But that’s what I grew up with and I definitely associate that rural bubble, and then my high school experience in central Florida, with seclusion and hopelessness surrounded by monochrome eternity. That came out in the song and Nicholas nailed the hook, it’s become one of my favorites on the record. Can I talk about the record?...
Jacob Saint Patrick: Many of my formative experience happened in a small town just south of the Canadian border. The population is about 200, and it’s largely forgotten, and the youth there can’t seem to wait to forget about it further. I’ve always wondered, why? Being both lost and growing up with a sense of self reliance seems to make such brilliant people. Why did I feel just as lost in my 500 square foot downtown Boston apartment? What do we share that we can’t quite put into words?
What did the creative process look like for “EVERYDAMNDAY?” Did you sit down with the intention of writing a song, or did the idea come to you in a random moment of inspiration?
N: I had written the chorus first, which I haven’t done in a while…thinking about disassociating on the way to work & sameness. I was very depressed at the time and nothing was really phasing me. No songs were really exciting me. All the playlists out there didn’t really feel like they were showing me anything new and exciting or even captured how I was feeling. Sometimes, that’s why I listen to music, when I don’t know the words to my own heart yet….And I need someone to help me translate. It felt important, for some reason, for me to write a song with the name “EVERYDAMNDAY.” Matt Vero was playing the main guitar riff on my acoustic when we were in my studio working on something completely different and it got stuck in my head. & I’ve been on a bit of a nu-grunge kick. In verse one, I started out about the way missing someone can take over your brain, and days without them feel desaturated. “Trying to forget about the way it is, that’s the way it is” was both a call back to “It Starts With This;” & just about being unhappy about the way things were between myself and the person I was missing. In the end, it felt kinda irresponsible not to admit to my responsibility and part in the monotony in my life. I chose my job the same way I chose most of my choices. We broke the cycle in the studio for this one. We had produced most of the record ourselves & with Matt Bolton, but decided to go to Andrew Gomez for this one just cause it was on the list of things we thought it would be cool to do. & it was. It was very cool. He also connected us with Josh Manuel (Issues, Bilmuri) who I’ve been a fan of since his early YouTube days. He played drums on the song, which is one of the coolest things we’ve done in our career as a band so far. The teenager in me was losing his mind the whole time. At one point, I asked him to play a fill I had in my head that was inspired by his playing, and he played it perfectly, note for note, first try, and we all started laughing.
You’ve spoken about hoping to be the band that defines the 20’s and 30’s middle kids who are stuck between the death of the analog and the birth of the digital era. Your music invites people to be themselves unapologetically. Growing up, were there any artists that played this role for you?
N: Paramore & The 1975 probably both live up to that description the best. Some of the other ones probably came a little too early and are still considered pretty analog or the generation before us. My Chemical Romance is a big one. I bought my first MCR record in target. Target didn’t normally have music like that. When my mom noticed I liked them, she said Nirvana was better and showed me Nevermind. I also love Nine Inch Nails, Paper Route, Pvris, Muse, Queen, Bring Me The Horizon.
M: Yeah absolutely. Finding music was a weird process for me growing up because, like you said, we were right on the cusp of the digital era and I had to either listen to the radio, or buy a song on iTunes, or buy an album at Target or WalMart. Part of that was growing up in the country where we were 10 years behind the curve. But the album that changed my life and really was the first to let me know it was okay to be myself, and that I wasn’t alone in the way I felt because there was someone else writing about it, was Appetite for Destruction by Guns N’ Roses. That was my first exposure to rock music and is still kind of sacred to me, because I wouldn’t be a musician without it. After that I fell into Black Veil Brides, and then Pierce The Veil (who are still one of my favorite bands)... I mean from there the whole world of music opened up to me through hardcore, post-grunge, punk, rap, RnB, indie folk, singer-songwriter, all of it! Now here I am, trying to recreate that first experience I had, for someone else. We’re trying to let someone know they’re not alone.
Jacob Saint Patrick: There’s too many to count. Growing up in middle Illinois I was bombarded by bands like Avenged Sevenfold, Slipknot, Korn (lol), etc… But mainly my growing up happened around books, and the thematic materials that I read in writers like Stephen King, Shakespeare, Percy Shelley. There is a rebelliousness to them and the way they were unapologetic about truths. As my tastes changed and developed that sense of anti-conformity never left and I fell easily into artists like Bon Iver, Kanye, The 1975, etc.
Are there any artists that you find yourself drawing inspiration from?
N: All of those I just said for sure. Nirvana. We’re pretty big fans of Boston Manor, Nothing But Thieves, Nothing, Nowhere. & Sleep Token as well. Crosses…Waterparks. COIN. Stop me or I’ll go on forever. I love music, lol.
M: What Nicholas said, yup.
Jacob Saint Patrick: Tides of Man, Kids See Ghosts, Bon Iver, Rival Consoles, Radiohead, Moses Sumney. I like the deep cuts that rise to the top.
If you had the chance to collaborate with anyone, past or present, who would it be?
N: probably either The 1975 or…Jason Aalon Butler.
M: Machine Gun Kelly, Blackbear, Travis Barker, or The Weeknd, not in any order.
Jacob Saint Patrick: John Coltrane, Gorillaz, maybe COIN.
You’ve just officially announced that your debut album, The Butterfly Effect (The Bedhead Cut) is releasing in May, which is super exciting so congratulations! What can we expect from the project?
N: 17 songs that definitely cover a lot of different styles, some of the first songs we ever wrote together, & a lot of passion and energy.
M: It’s a mixtape, not unlike some of the ones I grew up with and fell in love with, like Between The Pines (Sam Hunt), or Trilogy (The Weeknd). This one’s supposed to have 17 songs on it and really spans a formative era of the band that encompasses its time as a solo project, through songs written with various collaborators, up to a few that really reflect all three of our creative influences from the ground up. The Bedhead Cut (The Butterfly Effect) feels like finishing what was started, and setting the stage for what’s next.
Jacob Saint Patrick: Expect to hear every growing pain that has made this band such a blessing to be in. It’s all in there, all of our tinkering and obsessively laboring. We reached well beyond what we thought was possible for a band just starting out. It’s ambitious, and it sounds like it.
Thank you guys so much for your time, I can’t wait for the album and to see what you accomplish in the future! What’s in store next for Manic.?
N: Our album release show at Exit/In! And then… We’ve already written a good majority of the next three records. I think we’re going to take a minute to focus on touring & playing this record. There’s a lot of possibilities. But I think we may step back for a second to see what it feels most important to say next. We threw ourselves into this record because it was itching me to go back and wrap up the last few years and make the record I wanted to when we made the EP. But we’re just getting started.
M: We’re writing the best music we’ve ever made, quicker than we’ve ever made it. We’re also flat broke. As an independent band, you’re just not supposed to do 17 song albums, or mixtapes or whatever. But, as we like to remind each other, the more you fuck around the more you find out. So we’re hoping to find out a lot haha, and we’re hoping to play some great shows supporting this album and explore uncharted territory together, and see where this road takes us.
Jacob Saint Patrick: God only knows, and I think we’re going to find out. After a very long nap, preferably.
Keep up with Manic. !
Listen to "EVERYDAMNDAY" here
