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Transcript

Try the Secret Menu in the Lair on Max Ink Radio

Max Ink Radio · Sat Feb 17, 2024

It makes me smile and you have a piano, but if you play the penance theme song, oh my gosh, yes, I'm the devil's radio

Yes, I love it. Listen to Maxine Gradio Saturday night, 6 p.m. to midnight on the Civic Media Radio Network

Good evening everybody, welcome to Maxine on Civic Media,

original local music until midnight and welcome to live in the lair presented by the Aaron Weber Group,

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Jimmy, there's a restaurant in Watertown that's serving up a secret menu of four course alternative rock.

Life is too short for a brown bag lunch, always be asking yourself maybe there's a secret menu.

Ralph Andrew Matt and Evan, welcome to live in the lair on Maxine Gradio presented by the Aaron Weber Group.

Thanks for having us, thank you so much for having us.

I got one question, do you like the pond hockey break I set up for y'all?

We love it.

He's been so excited about this.

It's a little small, but we make it work.

You'll find out why Jimmy K asked that question in just a little bit here.

So you guys played Memorial Union last night, how was that show?

It was absolutely fantastic.

It was unreal, just the reception we got, the love for Madison, you know, being in the union is such a special environment.

And everyone is so nice there.

It was awesome.

One of my favorite places to play in the world.

It's the rap scanner.

The rap scanner.

The rap scanner, yeah, that place.

The Avniants in that place is so awesome.

Totally.

You might appear that strength there.

I bet you there's ghosts there.

Oh, that goes back to another guest tonight.

You guys drove from Watertown.

Obviously, we were talking about Watertown.

Are y'all from Watertown?

So we're kind of from around the area.

Evan is from Watertown, Evan the drummer.

I'm more in the Milwaukee area.

Matt's in the Piwaki area.

And then Andrew right now lives in Madison.

So we love it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I don't know how you do it.

Like how do you get together to rehearse or do you not have to rehearse anymore?

No.

No, we still rehearse often.

Yeah, we all get together at Evan's recording studio, which is in Watertown,

which we are super fortunate to be able to go in and then practice there.

And that's what we do, you know, twice a week getting in there.

Oh, twice a week.

Yes.

Nice.

That helps out.

Hey, for listeners who may not know about Secret Menu, tell us a little bit about the band.

What's the backstory?

Yeah, I mean, the backstory, I would say, is just, you know,

four individuals who absolutely have music at their core and love to play perform

and just be a part of the music scene wherever they are coming together.

And, you know, through their different musical backgrounds, we've been able to, you know, find our own sound.

And we try to write songs, you know, that are true to experience, true to like what we've lived and how we feel

and how we communicate, you know, those emotions and experiences to the world.

And being able to, you know, meet in a variety of different ways has just been such an awesome experience.

And, you know, that's how we kind of come together through so random stories, you know.

Did you expect or what was your reaction?

Because you guys caught on really fast.

Your fan base was behind you 100%.

Almost right from the beginning.

What was that like to know that?

Honestly, I mean, nothing but just so grateful.

I mean, I think that all of us have such an amazing, you know, support group and friend group in our own personal lives.

And, you know, when we get to share our experiences, you know, which is our music with them, you know, they've come out and supported us in such an amazing way.

And then that kind of echoes on to, you know, new people who might not have experienced us yet or, you know, the world's such a big place.

But it's also so small and, you know, you get to, oh, I know them from this, you know, this place, the other connection.

And, you know, just catching on has been nothing more than just, it makes us feel like what we're saying, you know, resonates with people in a certain type of way.

So now, I mean, but you guys are, you know, water town, Madison, Milwaukee, like, how did you all meet?

How did you all become friends and bandmates?

Yeah, so I mean, it's so random.

Like, I mean, Matt and I, we met, we met together when we were going to Madison, Wisconsin.

We went to school here and we met in a performance group, you know, called Wisconsin singers.

And he was in the band and I was a singer.

And, you know, we were just always jamming out, hanging out together.

And eventually I was like, do you want to like make some music of our own?

You know, that would be kind of fun.

And he knows so much more at the time about putting music together.

And Andrew and I, it's just by chance we happen to be at the same open mic and come back in the Madison.

And I mean, he was ripping on the guitar and vocals.

And I was like, please tell me you're not in a band.

Do you want to join a creative experience?

And he was like, yeah, what's happening here?

How many drinks did you buy him?

I think a couple, but I don't know.

At least one.

I really hope at least one.

You're so good.

It doesn't even matter if you have a car or not.

Funny.

Okay.

I got to go here.

You know, we talked about the ice, Jimmy K saying things about ice.

And I loved how I kind of tied this in as like what just happened with you guys.

You are no longer a secret to anybody else now.

You've got a bunch of music videos, but this one was very creatively staged and very challenging.

And I have to guess for those who haven't seen it, the band basically went out onto Lake Manona on the ice to do a video.

And of course, Channel 15 here in Madison picked up the video and told the story about how you did it.

So if people haven't seen this, tell us about the video getting covered by them.

And how did you pull this off?

I guess that's the biggest question.

Yeah, so Andrew here.

I had the idea after watching this band, Kaleo, they had that big song way down.

We go back a couple of years ago.

And they did this performance of some song on a glacier.

And I thought that was, that's amazing.

And obviously we don't have any glaciers in Wisconsin.

But we did, I was like, well, we could probably get out on the frozen lake.

Should the ice be thick enough?

And you know, not being from Wisconsin myself, I was like, no problem.

Right, we'll just go out.

It's got to be thick enough, right?

Sure.

The ice was a bit more apprehensive, right?

So we had to have them check in to make sure the ice was thick enough.

And that there were still ice fishermen out there.

How did you check to make sure that the ice was thick enough?

Yeah, we walked out there.

Oh, check for cracks.

We walked out there.

We saw a couple holes.

And then I think Matt sent a picture.

If he's like, this looks probably like five inches, right?

It's only five inches.

We've dealt the guy to see all right, five inches.

We can not drive a Jeep out here, but we can walk out here.

Yeah, we can walk out here.

And the band can be supported.

Are you scared?

Or worried at all?

No, I was blindly confident that we would be fine.

You just picked up a heavy amplifier and started walking across the lake.

Yeah, you know, it was nice.

We were able to slide all of the amps across the outside.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

It was a big question.

It was good.

Yeah.

There's a lot of logistics we didn't consider before we went out there.

One of which was that once we got out there, we would be sliding everywhere on our feet.

So we went out and bought some of these ice cleats from Walmart,

just so that we wouldn't fall over and break all of our instruments.

Yeah, and we were digging up the ice.

Maybe you had like two more takes before I put a hole.

Yeah, I was worried I was going to cut all the way through.

We got two or three inches deep after jumping around.

Well, it's funny.

If you look at some of the wider shots of your video,

you can see that there's some stuff gone underneath your feet.

Oh, yeah.

It's like, oh, boy, wow.

That's awesome.

And I mean, you guys had all that gear out there.

So yeah, I was like, we were like, where's the power?

It looked like you guys were jamming out there.

Yeah.

So we were able to power everything that we needed to just off of a little battery bank that we had.

We were feeding the song back into our ears.

And then out on the ice, you could hear Evan just smashing away at the drum.

Singing along, you could hear the acoustics of our instruments.

But it was, yeah.

Did you gather a crowd?

Did people actually come out by you?

Yeah, there was actually two people who started walking towards our camera.

People were like, oh, this is it.

We're going to be in trouble now, right?

Yeah.

That was my next question.

Yeah.

No, they were driving on John Nolan, apparently.

And they're like, yeah, we came back from getting groceries.

And we saw this thing.

So we came out to find you.

Wow.

But we were not in an easily accessible place either.

So we were like really floored that these people came to watch.

But yeah, it was really cool.

Anybody driving by?

Did they go Hong Kong?

Did you get any of that?

No.

We got any.

I didn't hear any hawks in the video.

Who shot the video?

Yeah.

Because the video is well done.

So we had a couple different photographers.

Shout out to our buddy Daniel.

He was the guy who shot all the drone shots.

Amazing videographers.

Oh, yeah.

We had our lighting guy, Kale, who's been playing with us.

I guess doing lighting with us recently.

And he just took our camera and did a bunch of shots.

And then we also had a couple extraneous people with just iPhones,

just walking around, trying to get as many angles as we could.

And as quickly as we could, because it was so cold.

And we were so ready to get off that.

Did you all find like a drone?

Yeah.

And that was pretty cool.

Yeah.

And what was your, how did you guys get hooked up with Channel 15 for the story?

I shouldn't have a raft answer that one, because I don't know.

Yeah.

Hey, it's rough.

Yeah.

Tim just reached out on an email.

Tim Elliott.

Yeah.

Tim Elliott.

Yeah.

And he was just, he was super nice.

The email was really professional.

And he was like, I'd love to cover the story.

I'd love to talk to you about it.

Can we get on a Zoom meeting or an in-person meeting?

And we were like, you know, we're from a little bit far away.

A little bit scattered.

So we're like, we can definitely do Zoom.

He's like, tomorrow.

And I was like, OK, we're there.

So it was just happened really fast.

And it was, it was such a pleasure.

He's a really sweet guy.

Really nice interviewer.

Yeah.

That's great.

Congratulations.

Oh, man.

Yeah.

Thank you.

It has taken off.

844-967-2789-844-964 part.

If you want to call or text and ask the band a question, I'm sure they'll be happy to answer you.

Oh, yeah.

And Evan, the drummer, he came in here.

You must have something to say.

What's up, man?

I don't know.

The band called me in and said I should be a part of this interviewer.

Hello.

Did you ever thought in your musical career you would have to load in on a sheet of ice?

No, definitely not.

And I was scared for my drum's life rolling that road case out there.

Yeah, that would have to be a unique experience as a drummer.

I don't think we don't experience that kind of stuff often.

I love it.

Yeah, the minute I saw that.

And I was so glad 15 did a story about it to just really take everybody there.

It's so good.

We actually also recorded a behind-the-scenes video for it.

That's on our YouTube channel now.

Oh, nice.

You can see for yourself us lugging all this stuff out there.

I'm going to share it.

Awesome.

Yeah.

Well, let's get to live music in the lair with Secret Menu and Wisconsin presented by the Aaron Weber group.

The first song you have for us tonight is called Bleed.

Tell me this about this song before you play.

Yeah, absolutely.

Bleed, you know, kind of came out of a little bit of a reflection after a relationship,

ended, and I was thinking about what does it mean to love someone?

And what does it mean when maybe something doesn't quite work out?

And I had this chorus idea in my head almost immediately.

And it centers around the idea that, you know, to love is to dare the heart to fall apart.

And that idea is that there's some risk involved when you, you know, you choose to love someone.

And it can feel scary.

It can feel nonsensical at times.

And if it doesn't work out, that's okay because that's a part of, you know, the journey that's part of learning about who you are.

And it kind of ends the chorus with to love is to dare the heart to bleed.

And I think in bleeding, you know, there's also a lot of healing that can happen.

So we wrote this song and Matt, you know, really brought it out in the thick chords and Andrew and the riffs he puts together.

It just feels like it's this push and pull with the instruments and the lyrics and like how we're all talking about, you know, the song together.

Awesome.

I get all right now.

Secret Menu live in the layer presented by the Aaron Weber group on Max and Concevic Media. We are local music.

We're never gonna find another time that I let myself wreck myself.

I remember you when you loved and you was energy.

You scared to try this again.

I'm a overcomplicating conversation.

I don't have an answer.

It's amazing.

There was so little hesitation moving states and moving on a day ahead.

Now I know that hearts can change.

But is it that so strange?

This control, when I turn up the radio, the part of me believes that I'll be alone.

And explain it all over the telephone.

To love is today.

To fight.

To love is today.

To mine.

To me.

I'm in a place.

To mine.

To love is today.

To mine.

To me.

Feelings are a place where the only thing that is safe is feeling nothing at all.

I wish that I could change.

But I just stayed the same.

Want to put my fist through the wall.

But I'm sad that it wasn't with all the pressure.

But I'm sure ideas are coming from getting better.

But if I will ever go, will I forget her?

No, she forget I'm sure she would forgive me.

This control, when I turn up the radio, the part of me believes that I'll be alone.

And explain it all over the telephone.

To love is today.

To fight.

To love is today.

To mine.

Feelings are a place where the only thing that is safe is feeling nothing at all.

I wish that I could change.

To love is today.

To me.

Feelings are a place where the only thing that is safe is feeling nothing at all.

Come on, man.

I wish that I could change.

To love is today.

To mine.

Feelings are a place where the only thing that is safe is feeling nothing at all.

I wish that I could change.

To love is today.

For a secret question, let's get to know the band a little bit.

Let's start with the keyboards, guitar and vocalists.

Matt, tell us a little bit about yourself.

The keyboard player is out of breath from playing keyboard.

Come on now.

That's crazy.

That's energy.

Let's see.

I think I started playing music when I was pretty young.

All of my older siblings, I have two older brothers and an older sister.

And they all played some guitar and piano.

So I always wanted to play music to be just like them and just stuck with it.

And here we are.

So now what role did your parents play in your musical upbringing?

We ask everybody that.

Oh, yeah.

I mean, definitely a huge role.

They were always my biggest supporters.

You know, when I was in Wisconsin singers, which I was in with Raff,

they were following us around all over the state of Wisconsin

to almost every single show.

Nice.

They were just down here at a rascal or gig last night.

Oh, nice.

So super special.

And yeah, they're just amazing.

As a keyboard player, do you have somebody that inspires you?

Yeah, I think my biggest inspiration on the keys is an artist called Anomaly.

That's also where I get my interesting Tilted keyboards.

Yes.

Love it.

But he's just a fantastic jazz pianist.

But he also makes basically this incredible low-fi kind of electronic jazz-infused music.

It's very virtuosic, but just super fun to listen to.

I thought the Tilted keyboard was for the ladies.

It's got so many purposes.

Well, for listeners who can't see, you know, we have a live band right here in the studio.

And Matt has his keyboards slanted so you can really see his hands playing the keys.

He's a very tall guy.

So, you know, any standing playing, you know, so it's very ergonomic.

But it's very unique because you don't really get it right on the head.

I'm quoting him, okay?

Okay.

You know, it's just really great to see a keyboardist's fingers actually playing all these crazy notes.

Because most of the time, that's kind of...

Yeah, you can't.

...you're blind to that as a viewer.

And why not show it off when you're jamming like he is.

That's what I'm saying.

Yeah.

Well, let's get back to live music in the Lair with Secret Menus.

The next song you have for us today, it's called Undeveloped.

What finally developed out of this song?

You know, I think that's very cunning.

It's developed.

That's what you did there.

I laughed and no one else did it.

I thought it was funny.

Yeah, you know, really the impetus for this song was finding some undeveloped Polaroid photos

in a glove box of a car.

And the thing about that is it just jared up such a specific emotion.

And we kind of relate it to this feeling of, you know, these photos being undeveloped.

And what happens if you leave an undeveloped, you know, when you shoot an undeveloped photo,

like the key is to not let it get exposed to sunlight or it's going to be completely ruined.

And that was such an interesting concept for us.

We wanted to like revolve the idea of this relationship and love and an undeveloped photo

and leaving it out in the sun.

And what does that mean?

And finding, you know, we didn't want it to feel like a sad song though.

We wanted to actually feel like a song of, you know, hope or, you know,

you're going to find love again.

And, you know, you want to go back out there and talk and, you know, go up on that journey.

I love the story behind it.

Thank you.

What were the pictures?

Oh, that keeps saving.

Save it.

That'd be a surprise.

Yeah.

Secret menu is live in the layer.

You're on Maxi and Critio's civic media.

Music

I didn't know from the words until they're drawn.

The time has gone, the face we're now always done.

The memories that feel so far gone, the words you left us that that was once.

Happiness like a lonely gun in a photo, but the love's in the sun.

Music