Meet Jake Bartolic from Morning In May

Meet Jake Bartolic from Morning In May

Morning In May is an up and coming post hardcore/emo rock band from Ohio ready to take their music to the world in this post pandemic age.  The band recently reissued their 2016 I Can’t Even EP under the title I Still Can’t Even via Manic Kat Records and plan on presenting an EP of all new material before the end of the year.  They’ve played the world famous Whisky a Go Go on the Sunset Strip and shot one of their videos at the reformatory where The Shawshank Redemption was filmed.   Highwire Daze recently caught up with Morning In May’s charismatic front man Jake Bartolic to find out more about their I Still Can’t Even EP, a brand new song A “You Up” Text from Death, a recent collaboration with Craig Mabbitt from Escape The Fate and more…

Where are you based out of and what was your local music scene like, prior to the pandemic?
So we are now based out of Cleveland, Ohio. That’s kind of – for the most part where we were playing prior to (the pandemic). So our band kind of got started in the Canton/Akron, Ohio region. We just played a lot of local shows, the circuit around there. Then we started moving up to Cleveland. Now we just mostly play Cleveland when we’re home.

There’s a new EP coming out. I Still Can’t Even, is there any story behind the title too? These are like older tracks, I think.
Yeah. So this is the five year anniversary of I Can’t Even. It’s an EP we released. Our first real one. Like the first time we went into a studio with a label and  recorded and put it out. So I thought it would be cool because we had to take everything down when we got signed to Tragic Hero, just like a rebranding almost.  So we started doing things a little heavier. I thought it’d be cool because I got a lot of messages and I’d see stuff on YouTube or Facebook, people asking like, “Hey, does anybody have these songs?  Does anybody know where to get them?”  I thought it would be cool to just just put it out five years later after our band grew and it’s I Still Can’t Even.

Well, let’s go back. Select a few songs from I Still Can’t Even and what inspired the lyrics for you at the time?
I definitely have the story for every one. Just to generalize it, we were in a rough spot. Everybody lived in one house, kind of band house, writing songs and just working for music. It was a hard time. None of us had any money. We really didn’t know if this was going to do anything or go anywhere. We were just kind of feeling it out.

We got enough and did enough to get a taste of what it would be like. That kind of kept us hooked, just to keep going. It was pretty much having “eyes wider than our stomachs” kind of the whole time. So we were just writing everything we possibly could to be genuine and tell our story, being from Ohio and just doing music.

The scenes are a little different here than it is a lot of other places. There’s little support. You really have to pay your dues and really put in for anybody to take notice.  You could be the best band around here. If you’re in your basement and you don’t have a big following or anything like that, nobody cares how good you are. So yeah, it’s weird.

Let’s talk about some of the new tracks. A “You Up” Text from Death, what was the inspiration behind that song?
So, pretty much we were shopping around for new labels and stuff and I got so sick of… like we got label hits. “Cool. We want to do this. We want to do that.” And a lot of the major labels we got a hold of and they’re like, “Yeah, this is awesome. This is cool. We just kind of want to see this. We want to see that or we just want to see growth.”

So I wanted to write a song that we could send to somebody – almost like an application or a resume that just I wanted to say “I’m the king!”  I wanted it to be really conceited and confident like I don’t really care what you think. Just  a big FU to anybody who listens to it, I guess. It was kind of the whole foundation of that song.

A recent song was called Orpheus In Retrospect which you did with Craig Mabbitt from Escape the Fate. What was it like working with Craig and how did he become involved with the song?
I was working with a producer, Lenny Morales, he’s out in L.A. The last song we put out was the first song we actually did together. After we did that song I started writing, and then he goes, “Hey, I think it would be really cool if you had Craig on your song, you kind of do things similar and you guys kind of have the same register in your voice,” and I said, “Yeah, that would be really cool.” He’s like, “I’ve worked with him before. I’m friends with them. We’ve hung out.” He’s like, “Why don’t you just message him?“

So I messaged them on one of the platforms, and he was like, “Hey, yeah. For sure. Absolutely.” I sent him over a track and he loved it. And then I said, “Hey, this is kind of what the songs are going to be. If you’re down, I’ll write a song with you in mine. Just tailor it a little more towards you,” and he said, “Yeah, absolutely.”

Probably a week later, I had a song formed; we demoed it out; we sent it to him and he thought it was awesome and we just kind of texted back and forth.  He was great. I had notes for him and  took it from there.  It was kind of funny. He messaged me at 3 o’clock in the morning here, he’s from Arizona. He sent a video of them kind of doing this song. And he’s like, “Hey, is this what you want? I hope I did well for you.” It sounded awesome. He’s a really good guy.

Let’s talk about, Everyone is Innocent Here, Don’t You Know That? The video was shot at the Ohio State Reformatory where The Shawshank Redemption was filmed. What was that experience like shooting the video there and are you a fan of the movie?
Yeah, that is my favorite movie, I think, as far. Growing up, if you live in Ohio, you just have to go to the Mansfield Reformatory. It’s a haunted, very October-y thing to do. We were kind of getting ready for the song and we were trying to figure out what we wanted to do for a music video.  I just made a call, and they were like, “Yeah, absolutely.”  They were like “Come on down.”  I named this song after a line in the movie. It was so weird how that I just called them and they said, “Yeah, come on down.”  We got down there and they showed us around. They said, “If you guys want to come back for any tours, anything it’s all on the house.” They were super nice to us. It was like being at Universal Studios for a second.

How did you wind up being signed to Manic Kat Records?
So in the midst of trying to look for the right label or trying to see what was probably good for us at the moment. My girlfriend, she writes for Alternative Press. She wrote for All Punked Up for a long time, and she’s like, “Hey, one of our press Outlets, I get stuff from these labels all the time. I think you’d be a good fit on this label.”  She actually sent our band in and said, “Hey, what do you think of this? What do you think of these guys?” And I guess it went really well over with the label and then she actually ended up getting a job there because they liked our band and said, “Hey, you got a pretty good ear for music.” So they gave her a job and now she’s an AR rep there, and she kind of runs our account.

What has it been like to write and record and release new music in the middle of a pandemic, and all this crazy social unrest in the world?
It kind of gives you all the time in the world to actually do that. It’s really hard to write on the road, especially when you wake up. You got to be somewhere at this time and you got to pack up, you got to make sure all this is good. So it gave everybody an extra real look. You got to step back and see what you want to do in the future and how you really want to put yourself out there. For me, it was great.  I absolutely don’t like being home, but it really helped my band, more than anything, kind of shed some dead weight and it guided us pretty much. It really showed us what we should be doing. Instead of guessing all the time, it gave us time to think – some clarity.

If Morning In May could open for any band, either now or from the past, who would it be and why?
Definitely All Time Low, for sure. I got a whole list but All Time Low, probably.

Have you ever played out here in the west coast and if so, how did the shows go?
Yeah. We go to California all the time. We actually co-headlined the Whisky A Go Go.

What was that like playing The Whisky?
That was one of the best. It just… the feeling was cool. Definitely seeing our name on the Marquee outside was pretty cool. There’s a couple things you can do that everybody kind of knows about, and that was kind of one of them. I took a picture, I sent it to my dad, I was like, “Is good enough for you yet?” and he’s like, “Wow, damn. Okay, cool!”  But it was great. We were in the green room that all these – anybody who’s ever been anybody who played there was in and it was really cool.

Who did you play with?
We were co-headlining with Chin Up, Kid, a pop punk band from Indianapolis, they’re no longer together. They asked us if we wanted to go on tour, it was like a month prior to, because some stuff happened. But yeah, I mean we said yes, we got on it, and it was like a three and a half weeks tour.  We were all over the West Coast. Seattle, Oregon, California, Vegas…

What do you hope the rest of 2021 brings for you, for Morning In May, and just for the music scene in general?
I’m actually pretty excited. I obviously, as do a lot of people, would like tours back. That would be nice. But I just wrote a whole new EP that I really want out. II’m just going to be pumping out songs. I’m ready to see everybody kind of come back. All the festivals that are coming back. Just live music again. I think everybody will appreciate everything that goes on a little more now. So I’m pretty excited to see.

And last question, do you have any messages for people who are reading about your band right now in Highwire Daze?
Yeah, absolutely. Come out to shows. iTunes Spotify, Google play, Pandora, Facebook, Instagram, just check us out. You won’t be disappointed. It’s kind of cool. We’re bringing emo back in a new way.

(Interview by Ken Morton)

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