Mickey Cake comes from a long line of bands: Jonny & Graham met when they were eleven years old, but it was nearly a year before their first band. Hot Moccasins lasted through high school, taking feverish notes from The Strokes and Bob Dylan. Then Jonny got a drum machine in college, and Graham borrowed his aunt’s electric bass. The band’s name changed to Bully Club, and Jonny started writing music for the kids in his classrooms.
But seasons changed. Movers arrived. And the band morphed: Jonny and Brian began playing duets around Philly, eventually convincing Brian’s brother Brett to join on drums. Graham brought his bass down from New York to join in, and a live set began to take shape. They changed their name to Mickey Cake, a nod to Jonny’s early days as a beatmaker, and knocked out an album of live takes over the course of one weekend. Those recordings became their debut album, So That You Know. Sadly, Brett passed away just a month after those sessions. Jonny moved to New Zealand, Graham to Los Angeles. But the music continued: “Tame,” Ante,” and “Forever” were the first songs to be recorded remotely, and their second album, The Mickey Tape, has been coalescing, slowly but surely, over the last three years.