In fifth year competing, south-suburban Exit 122 takes home Bitter Jester title

Five years ago, Exit 122 submitted their first application to Bitter Jester Festival, a cover of Blink-182’s “Damn It” that they recorded in a bathroom. 

In June, they won the competition.

“It’s just surreal that we’ve come this far in five years, and it kind of all revolves around what this festival has given us,” Exit 122 lead vocalist Anthony Mravle said.

The Highland Park music festival for young musicians, which celebrated its 20th anniversary this summer, hosted 44 bands across five days in June. Artists ages 14-24 are invited to compete for the title of best band. 

The grand finale June 27 came down to Belle Vista and Exit 122, and each band was allowed one song to determine the winner of the competition. In a last minute decision, Exit 122 decided to play a song that Mravle had written just four days prior. 

“We were just like, ‘You know what, if we’re gonna go out, we’re gonna go out in a big way,’” Mravle said. “We thought it was a really good song, and obviously the judges did too.”

Since their first year playing Bitter Jester as 15-year-olds, the Minooka-based easycore group has played nearly 100 shows, gaining confidence and skill, Mravle said.

Bitter Jester, though, he said, is a different kind of experience.

“We would go play (other) shows, and we were obviously the youngest people there, and we kind of felt like … We were good, but we were always treated like we were our age,” Mravle said. “ … Bitter Jester treats everybody like they’re Grammy Award-winning musicians.”

A nonprofit organization, Bitter Jester Foundation for the Arts aims to serve and empower young musicians. To apply for the competition, at least half of the band members must be younger than 22, and nobody can be older than 24. 

Since 2006, the festival has welcomed hundreds of bands over the years. In 2026, it received more than 145 submissions from musicians in 28 states. While not every band accepted into the festival can compete, Bitter Jester welcomes bands to perform in between competition sets.  

Win or lose, the connections made at Bitter Jester are part of the experience. A couple of years ago, Exit 122 won studio recording time at Electrical Audio in Chicago, where bands like Nirvana and The Pixies once recorded.

“It’s so ridiculously hard to try to get in front of the right people at the right time to try to make something happen, but with Bitter Jester, it’s like you get the opportunity to, as a young musician who probably has little to no connections, get in front of all of these great people,” Mravle said.

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