The Menzingers (Tom May) Interview

November 5th, 2019 by WLOY Staff

On Halloween, General Manager Tara Howell, had the chance to sit down with Tom May, guitarist and singer in the Philly band, The Menzingers. The Menzingers were playing in St. Louis that night, where the CBI NSEMC college radio conference was held. Small world that a band from Philly and a person from Baltimore just happened to end up in St. Louis at the time!

You can listen to the interview down below – where Tara and Tom talk about her love of The Menzingers, the release of their album Hello Exile, references in their music, and much more. You can see The Menzingers locally on their Hello Exile Tour at the Black Cat in DC on Wednesday December 4th.

Tara takes up the story: I feel like at this point if you know anything about me, you know that my favorite band is The Menzingers. It seems like I am always wearing a Menzingers shirt, or talking about them for whatever reason. My story with The Menzingers is a long one, but I wouldn’t have discovered then without college radio.

I discovered The Menzingers during my first semester at Loyola and WLOY, and I slowly started loving them more and more. In October of 2015, I saw them on the tour they did with mewithoutYou, and the love was officially sealed. I had never seen a band with such raw energy – a sentiment that I still agree with today.

Many years, and 19 shows later, I accidentally ended up in the same city as the band. On Halloween, I was in St. Louis for a college radio conference, and The Menzingers were coming through as a part of their Hello Exile Tour. I’d like to call it the universe working in my favor because it really was a coincidence, but with how much I love the band, the people in my life tend to think otherwise. Not only did I get to see a Menzingers show for the 20th time, but I also had the chance to sit down with Tom for an interview before the show. You can check out the interview here. It was something I had been dreaming of for a very long time, and I am very grateful that it finally happened!

Tags: band interview, interview