Pabst Theater Group’s new venue Vivarium on Milwaukee’s East Side hosted a sold-out show featuring Ladybird, Motel Breakfast and Diet Lite on Friday evening. All the bands ripped and it was a blast!
Motel Breakfast consists of vocalist-rhythm guitarist Jimmy Drenovsky, lead guitarist Mick O’Donnell, bassist Drue DeVente, keyboardist Conor Brennan and drummer-vocalist Jesse Nasadowski (with “Skeet” joining them on organ for Friday’s show).
The band formed in 2017. 4 of the 5 members grew up in the same general area in the south suburbs of Chicago. Drenovsky explains, “We all met through different people and formed as we were literally splitting into three different cities (Chicago, Milwaukee and Madison). Drue is from Ohio but he went to UW-Madison.”
Notably, Drenovsky started Marquette University’s Battle of the Bands while working at the school’s radio station. Nasadowski elaborates on the band’s name, “We were sitting around drinking at Mick’s parents’ house and throwing names at the wall, and somebody threw out “Motel Breakfast” so we Googled it, and the only thing that came up was people complaining about their Motel 6 breakfast. We thought it was funny so we settled on it. Now when you Google it, we come up (laughs).”
Motel Breakfast’s eclectic indie rock sound does not stick to one lane; the band’s members are all influenced by different styles ranging from singer-songwriter to Midwest emo to pop punk to art rock. “All 5 of us write music, and a lot of the songs on this new album we all wrote together,” Nasadowski notes. “The first record was mostly written by Jimmy and Mick, but over the last few years we’ve all gotten on our chops.”
“That’s what I like most about our creative process,” Drenovsky adds. “We’re not afraid to wear all our influences on our sleeves. We can sound like all kinds of things.”
Songwriting in general is a very collaborative operation for Motel Breakfast. Nasadowski continues, “Since I’m a drummer, I don’t know chords, so when I write songs I’ll send voice memos to Drue of me singing a melody and then he’ll put chords to it. Mick doesn’t write lyrics so he’ll come to Jimmy or me or Conor. It’s very rare that someone writes the whole entire song by themselves. And when someone writes a song, we don’t change it to someone else’s style or anything.”
Back in 2020, Motel Breakfast put out a record of Irish folk songs titled “Left on Deming” complete with accompanying music videos. “Part of that stemmed from the fact that it was the heart of COVID and we needed a project to work on,” Drenovsky recalls. “Mick wanted to work on some home recording, and playing Irish folk songs has been something we’ve done regularly for a couple different holidays for friends and family in the area of Chicago we’re from.”
The band donated Bandcamp proceeds from the record to local charities.
Since then, Motel Breakfast have been cranking out new tunes in anticipation of their forthcoming sophomore album. “So Long” is their first song where DeVente sings lead, and “MB (as in Modern Baseball)” the members describe as their most collaboratively-written song yet. “The entire arc we’ve gone on with this album started with us not knowing what album two should be or what kind of statement we wanted to make,” Drenvosky says. “We had too many songs to work with and we were kind of in analysis paralysis. Rather than just going in to record all of them, we just started going song by song and deciding what feels right to record. We started that process in 2022 with “Modern Baseball” and now we’ve got a whole album ready.”
Nasadowski assures, “We’re already ready for album three.”
“I Promise I’m Having Fun” is out April 5th. Motel Breakfast have their album release show at Metro Chicago on April 20th and then return to Vivarium supporting Social Cig on April 27th. They embark on a Midwest tour this summer.