Kevin Devine (29/07/2011)
I recently spoke to Kevin Devine on behalf of The 59th Sound, fresh from rehearsing for his upcoming tour. We talked about the upcoming album, his influences, what it means to be a solo musician and his recording process.
Hey Kevin, how’s it going?
Well, how are you?
Not too bad man, thanks for your time.
No, thank you.
What have you been up to, recently?
Very recently, I was at rehearsal, I got home around 20 minutes ago. I think you might mean not quite as literal, right. I’ve been home, off touring for a while, just getting the new record ready, which is called Between The Concrete And Clouds. It comes out in the States on the thirteenth of September, and I think shortly thereafter in Australia. I’m kind of preparing for the fall. Fall is when I kick up a lot of work and a lot of travel, and getting ready for my brother’s wedding, which is in August too, so that’s what’s coming up.
With your new album, it’s the first one recorded entirely with a backing band, what brought about this change?
Well it’s the first one that’s fully with a band. All the records I’ve ever made under my name have had other instrumentation on them at some point, but they’ve all had two or three songs, or more, that have just been me and a guitar. This is the first record I’ve ever made that there’s been no solo song on. Why did I do that? I feel like my band has become more of a band, more solid. Over the course of time it’s gone from something that was a little more decentralised, to something that’s more of a collective, that’s more of the same dudes more or less, since 2007. After touring a ton for the Brother’s Blood record, it was a move towards this. That album had three acoustic songs on it, but the rest were not only full band, but the most ‘band’ like songs we’d had, like a lot of guitar solos, and psychedelic parts, and things that were more expansive than I’d had prior on an album. It just kind of felt when we were ready to go in, I had written a batch of around 15 songs, and all I wanted to do was start recording it. It’s just, none of them felt to me like it should just be me. They’re not all ragers, but there’s some heavy stuff, some mid-range, a little more orchestral in scope, and some stuff that’s got kind of a beat where we bounce to, and some stuff that’s more on the distortion pedal and away we go. The way we treated these songs, that’s how it felt right. I didn’t want to slow down; it’s 10 songs which is 38 minutes. The last record had 11 songs and it was 53 minutes, so it was a conscious choice to make it a little more concise and structured, but while still keeping musical breadth and lyrical depth that we have with those longer songs. I feel like we did it, but hopefully the people who hear it agree.
When you wrote this album, did you write all the parts yourself, or do you write as an entire band?
I definitely don’t write it all, it’s not like everything you hear on the record has been written by me. I write the structure, the backbone, I write the chords, the lyrics and the vocals, all the harmonies. I wrote the keyboard stuff, and sometimes I write some of the lead guitar, and on some songs I have a hand in constructing bass parts. I make suggestions about drums, but I don’t play drums well enough to write them. I guess I’m more in a sense like an orchestrator, I write a lot of what’s on there and kind of give direction to the parts that other people bring in. It’s not like Siamese Dream or something, where Billy Corgan wrote every note of music you hear on that record. I thought for a while that’s what it meant to be a solo artist, and that I was telling a lie or something, if I did give over some of that, but then I realised that Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Hank Williams, Johnny Cash, so many people who I love who’s music project is their name, they don’t do that at all. Some people like Elliot Smith did literally everything on their albums, but a lot of other people that I mentioned barely did anything more than play guitar and write the words and be like the creative force behind it. I’m somewhere in between, and I realise that that’s ok.
It seems like it’s the natural progression, seeing as how you’ve been playing with the same guys for the last couple of years.
Yeah, that’s exactly what it is, a progression. I feel like I also have the opportunity to you know, watch it grow, and become something that I felt a lot more comfortable with doing. You get used to doing it on your own, and you don’t really want to give that up. The results speak for themselves, and the last two records are the two most fully realised things I’ve ever made, and a lot of that has come from letting go, you know, so it’s definitely been a learning process for me, too.
You’ve been playing some new songs live, how have they been going down with the crowd?
They seem to connect really well. In particular, I’ve had a few videos circulating on the internet, of me doing some acoustic versions of some songs from the new record, with Morgan Kibby from M83, she’s got her own band called White Sea. I haven’t really heard anything negative yet; we’ve heard a lot of really positive stuff. We posted the album version of Between The Concrete And Clouds on the internet a few weeks ago, and the response has been overwhelmingly positive. That’s encouraging, you know, because I love it, and I believe in it, but that doesn’t mean that everyone else is going to. So far it seems like people are responding to it really strongly.
That’s all you can hope for, man
Exactly. I don’t have control over that, so it’s really nice to feel like that’s where they are with it, you know.
What songs get the biggest reactions from the crowd? Are they the older songs, with the fans that have been with you for years, or are they more songs off Brother’s Blood and the more recent releases?
It really depends. If I had to pick a top five, not hit songs in a commercial sense or whatever, but the ones that are most liked and the ones that are fan favourites, the ones that a casual fan of mine would know. If someone said ‘oh I have five of his songs on my iPod,’ they would probably be Brother’s Blood, I Could Be With Anyone, Cotton Crush, Ballgame, and a song called Just Stay. Probably, if I could pick six or seven, it would be Another Bag Of Bones, and a song called No Time Flat, or People Are So Fickle. Out of six records and 80 something songs, those seem to be the ones that are the most known. What I think is interesting is that people who like my stuff seem to be attached to each record, they kind of camp around each record. There are the Make The Clocks Move kids, and the Split The Country kids, and the people who think Put Your Ghost To Rest is the best, and then a lot of people who feel strongly about Brother’s Blood. I think that’s really cool. I have tended to like each record more than I liked the one prior, for personal reasons, and in terms of melodic growth and song structure, and the quality of the recording. I like each one more than the one before, but I fully understand that’s not how most people listen to them. They’re going to have their own emotional connection to it; because that’s the record they heard first. Some people had something going on in their life and they’ve connected it to an album. I’m lucky though, because people seem to respect the fact that the quality keeps growing, even if it’s not their favourite bunch of songs or their favourite record, perse, but they agree that there’s development.
That shows your progression as a songwriter. I mean, if you listen to your first album, and then listen to Brother’s Blood, you can hear that progression.
I hope so. That’s how I feel as the guy in it, but it’s so much more incremental and lived in, to me, than it is for listeners.
When you play live, do you try and keep an even spread throughout your catalogue or do you focus more on your last few releases?
I think as a band, and particularly when we’re doing support stuff, I think we do probably end up playing more off Brother’s Blood. We just had a rehearsal actually for the shows we have coming up in august, we have two with Manchester Orchestra and one headlining show, and I think the bulk of it will be stuff off Brother’s Blood, and the four new songs. We do go back; at this rehearsal we played two songs from Make The Clocks Move, and a couple of songs from Split The Country. I am conscious that there are going to be people who are there who will want to hear some old stuff, and a lot of those songs I still really love. When I play solo it’s a lot easier to play songs from wherever, because it’s just me, and I know most of them. It also depends on the kind of show. A support slot, you’re just going to get up and play the eight best sounding songs you can do.
Speaking of Manchester Orchestra, the Bad Books album was excellent. Do you incorporate any of those songs into your sets, or do you keep them for when you’re playing with Andy?
We did Holding Down The Laughter when we played South By South West, and that was great. When I’m playing acoustically I’ll play four or five of those songs, I mean, I’ll play pretty much all the songs I’ve written on that record, but you know, I don’t just leave them for when I’m with Andy, because then we’d only play them like a dozen times a year or something.
After you bring out the new album, are there plans to work with Andy and the rest of Manchester Orchestra again?
There is a plan for after the new record is done, after our touring for the new album is done and after they finish there’s, to do another Bad Books album. I wrote a song yesterday that I think is going to be my first contribution to it, I wrote the structure but I haven’t written the words yet. It’s definitely a thing that we want to do, you know, when we’re not working on our day jobs, and we want to see where it goes.
I think a lot of fans are hoping for a new Bad Books album, because you and Manchester Orchestra have a similar fan base and tour together often, so collaboration seemed inevitable.
I think so too. I’m looking forward to it; I think we’re going to come out with something hopefully next year.
You recently released a split with River City Extension, how did that come about?
They were added to our tour, we actually share the same booking agent. They’re nice kids, nice people. We were trying to think of something to do for the tour, and their manager suggested we do a split 7”, and the rest is history.
We’re just about out of time, Kevin, any last words?
Not really, no. Thank you, it was a pleasure to talk to you.
We’ll see you in September for Soundwave Revolution. Have a good day.
Yes sir, I’ll be there.
Make sure to check out Kevin Devine and his band at Soundwave Revolution, and any sideshows he might be playing. Between The Concrete And Clouds is due out on the thirteenth of September, just in time for you to learn all the words before his Soundwave appearance.
Josh Mitrou
Hey Kevin, how’s it going?
Well, how are you?
Not too bad man, thanks for your time.
No, thank you.
What have you been up to, recently?
Very recently, I was at rehearsal, I got home around 20 minutes ago. I think you might mean not quite as literal, right. I’ve been home, off touring for a while, just getting the new record ready, which is called Between The Concrete And Clouds. It comes out in the States on the thirteenth of September, and I think shortly thereafter in Australia. I’m kind of preparing for the fall. Fall is when I kick up a lot of work and a lot of travel, and getting ready for my brother’s wedding, which is in August too, so that’s what’s coming up.
With your new album, it’s the first one recorded entirely with a backing band, what brought about this change?
Well it’s the first one that’s fully with a band. All the records I’ve ever made under my name have had other instrumentation on them at some point, but they’ve all had two or three songs, or more, that have just been me and a guitar. This is the first record I’ve ever made that there’s been no solo song on. Why did I do that? I feel like my band has become more of a band, more solid. Over the course of time it’s gone from something that was a little more decentralised, to something that’s more of a collective, that’s more of the same dudes more or less, since 2007. After touring a ton for the Brother’s Blood record, it was a move towards this. That album had three acoustic songs on it, but the rest were not only full band, but the most ‘band’ like songs we’d had, like a lot of guitar solos, and psychedelic parts, and things that were more expansive than I’d had prior on an album. It just kind of felt when we were ready to go in, I had written a batch of around 15 songs, and all I wanted to do was start recording it. It’s just, none of them felt to me like it should just be me. They’re not all ragers, but there’s some heavy stuff, some mid-range, a little more orchestral in scope, and some stuff that’s got kind of a beat where we bounce to, and some stuff that’s more on the distortion pedal and away we go. The way we treated these songs, that’s how it felt right. I didn’t want to slow down; it’s 10 songs which is 38 minutes. The last record had 11 songs and it was 53 minutes, so it was a conscious choice to make it a little more concise and structured, but while still keeping musical breadth and lyrical depth that we have with those longer songs. I feel like we did it, but hopefully the people who hear it agree.
When you wrote this album, did you write all the parts yourself, or do you write as an entire band?
I definitely don’t write it all, it’s not like everything you hear on the record has been written by me. I write the structure, the backbone, I write the chords, the lyrics and the vocals, all the harmonies. I wrote the keyboard stuff, and sometimes I write some of the lead guitar, and on some songs I have a hand in constructing bass parts. I make suggestions about drums, but I don’t play drums well enough to write them. I guess I’m more in a sense like an orchestrator, I write a lot of what’s on there and kind of give direction to the parts that other people bring in. It’s not like Siamese Dream or something, where Billy Corgan wrote every note of music you hear on that record. I thought for a while that’s what it meant to be a solo artist, and that I was telling a lie or something, if I did give over some of that, but then I realised that Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Hank Williams, Johnny Cash, so many people who I love who’s music project is their name, they don’t do that at all. Some people like Elliot Smith did literally everything on their albums, but a lot of other people that I mentioned barely did anything more than play guitar and write the words and be like the creative force behind it. I’m somewhere in between, and I realise that that’s ok.
It seems like it’s the natural progression, seeing as how you’ve been playing with the same guys for the last couple of years.
Yeah, that’s exactly what it is, a progression. I feel like I also have the opportunity to you know, watch it grow, and become something that I felt a lot more comfortable with doing. You get used to doing it on your own, and you don’t really want to give that up. The results speak for themselves, and the last two records are the two most fully realised things I’ve ever made, and a lot of that has come from letting go, you know, so it’s definitely been a learning process for me, too.
You’ve been playing some new songs live, how have they been going down with the crowd?
They seem to connect really well. In particular, I’ve had a few videos circulating on the internet, of me doing some acoustic versions of some songs from the new record, with Morgan Kibby from M83, she’s got her own band called White Sea. I haven’t really heard anything negative yet; we’ve heard a lot of really positive stuff. We posted the album version of Between The Concrete And Clouds on the internet a few weeks ago, and the response has been overwhelmingly positive. That’s encouraging, you know, because I love it, and I believe in it, but that doesn’t mean that everyone else is going to. So far it seems like people are responding to it really strongly.
That’s all you can hope for, man
Exactly. I don’t have control over that, so it’s really nice to feel like that’s where they are with it, you know.
What songs get the biggest reactions from the crowd? Are they the older songs, with the fans that have been with you for years, or are they more songs off Brother’s Blood and the more recent releases?
It really depends. If I had to pick a top five, not hit songs in a commercial sense or whatever, but the ones that are most liked and the ones that are fan favourites, the ones that a casual fan of mine would know. If someone said ‘oh I have five of his songs on my iPod,’ they would probably be Brother’s Blood, I Could Be With Anyone, Cotton Crush, Ballgame, and a song called Just Stay. Probably, if I could pick six or seven, it would be Another Bag Of Bones, and a song called No Time Flat, or People Are So Fickle. Out of six records and 80 something songs, those seem to be the ones that are the most known. What I think is interesting is that people who like my stuff seem to be attached to each record, they kind of camp around each record. There are the Make The Clocks Move kids, and the Split The Country kids, and the people who think Put Your Ghost To Rest is the best, and then a lot of people who feel strongly about Brother’s Blood. I think that’s really cool. I have tended to like each record more than I liked the one prior, for personal reasons, and in terms of melodic growth and song structure, and the quality of the recording. I like each one more than the one before, but I fully understand that’s not how most people listen to them. They’re going to have their own emotional connection to it; because that’s the record they heard first. Some people had something going on in their life and they’ve connected it to an album. I’m lucky though, because people seem to respect the fact that the quality keeps growing, even if it’s not their favourite bunch of songs or their favourite record, perse, but they agree that there’s development.
That shows your progression as a songwriter. I mean, if you listen to your first album, and then listen to Brother’s Blood, you can hear that progression.
I hope so. That’s how I feel as the guy in it, but it’s so much more incremental and lived in, to me, than it is for listeners.
When you play live, do you try and keep an even spread throughout your catalogue or do you focus more on your last few releases?
I think as a band, and particularly when we’re doing support stuff, I think we do probably end up playing more off Brother’s Blood. We just had a rehearsal actually for the shows we have coming up in august, we have two with Manchester Orchestra and one headlining show, and I think the bulk of it will be stuff off Brother’s Blood, and the four new songs. We do go back; at this rehearsal we played two songs from Make The Clocks Move, and a couple of songs from Split The Country. I am conscious that there are going to be people who are there who will want to hear some old stuff, and a lot of those songs I still really love. When I play solo it’s a lot easier to play songs from wherever, because it’s just me, and I know most of them. It also depends on the kind of show. A support slot, you’re just going to get up and play the eight best sounding songs you can do.
Speaking of Manchester Orchestra, the Bad Books album was excellent. Do you incorporate any of those songs into your sets, or do you keep them for when you’re playing with Andy?
We did Holding Down The Laughter when we played South By South West, and that was great. When I’m playing acoustically I’ll play four or five of those songs, I mean, I’ll play pretty much all the songs I’ve written on that record, but you know, I don’t just leave them for when I’m with Andy, because then we’d only play them like a dozen times a year or something.
After you bring out the new album, are there plans to work with Andy and the rest of Manchester Orchestra again?
There is a plan for after the new record is done, after our touring for the new album is done and after they finish there’s, to do another Bad Books album. I wrote a song yesterday that I think is going to be my first contribution to it, I wrote the structure but I haven’t written the words yet. It’s definitely a thing that we want to do, you know, when we’re not working on our day jobs, and we want to see where it goes.
I think a lot of fans are hoping for a new Bad Books album, because you and Manchester Orchestra have a similar fan base and tour together often, so collaboration seemed inevitable.
I think so too. I’m looking forward to it; I think we’re going to come out with something hopefully next year.
You recently released a split with River City Extension, how did that come about?
They were added to our tour, we actually share the same booking agent. They’re nice kids, nice people. We were trying to think of something to do for the tour, and their manager suggested we do a split 7”, and the rest is history.
We’re just about out of time, Kevin, any last words?
Not really, no. Thank you, it was a pleasure to talk to you.
We’ll see you in September for Soundwave Revolution. Have a good day.
Yes sir, I’ll be there.
Make sure to check out Kevin Devine and his band at Soundwave Revolution, and any sideshows he might be playing. Between The Concrete And Clouds is due out on the thirteenth of September, just in time for you to learn all the words before his Soundwave appearance.
Josh Mitrou