Brooklyn-based singer-songwriter Kevin Devine has been one of the most consistent musicians of the past 15 years, and he isn’t afraid to mix it up a bit when it comes to how he releases his material. In 2013, he released two albums on the same day: the intimate, acoustic solo album Bulldozer, and the electrified, Nirvana-soaked power-pop LP Bubblegum that was recorded with his backing band, The Goddamn Band. This time around, Devine is pushing the envelope once again.
Since February, Devine has been doing a series called Devinyl Splits. The series has him doing split single releases with the likes of Matthew Caws from Nada Surf, New York indie rockers Cymbals Eat Guitars, Meredith Graves from Perfect Pussy, emo punk act Tigers Jaw, and others. Ahead a mini tour in celebration of the series starting tonight at The Bell House in Brooklyn, Saturday at The TLA in Philadelphia and Sunday at The Sinclair in Cambridge, a string of performances that brings along most of his collaborators, Vanyaland had a chat with Devine about the idea behind the Devinyl Splits series, current social issues, what Brooklyn is like these days and what 2016 has in store.
Rob Duguay: What gave you the idea to do a series like Devinyl Splits and what’s your reasoning for selecting these specific artists to collaborate with?
Kevin Devine: Why I did it and why I picked the people I picked is because I wanted to do something sort of between proper albums that would be a different kind of approach to staying present without being oversaturating. Also having a form to release some music that maybe isn’t a new record or EP but something a little more spread out. It allowed for a little bit more looseness, each single I wanted to have its own theme, so it would be like another artist and I covering each other or we would pick another band and play songs by that band or we’d write new songs or we’d do full band stuff, acoustic stuff or just kind of have room for it to breathe and have each one be its own thing.
I had this idea of doing split singles mostly from coming up from a hardcore punk scene in Staten Island and everybody did split singles and that was like a big thing growing up. With my old band, the first one we did was when I was 18 and we did it with a band from Edmonton or Winnipeg called Render Useless and it was exciting that we had a split single with another band, it was so cool. The built in community of it is exciting to me. I kind of thought to devote a year or so with doing one every couple of months would also give me specifically an opportunity to kind of show off a little bit.
The different styles and different corners of the independent music world with which I can communicate and with which I can make sense even if all of them look pretty different from one another. I get to be this hub for all of these different styles and I think that’s applicable to my career because I get to play with a lot of different kinds of bands because I’m not exactly one thing or another. So that was the spirit of Devinyl Splits and why that landed me with the people it landed me with was that each one kind of had its short little story. Matthew [Caws] was kind of the impetus for the whole thing in the sense that he’s become a close friend in the past five years but prior to that Nada Surf was a band I was an active fan of. Particularly Let Go, The Weight Is A Gift and Lucky, those records are great.
They’re awesome records, some of my favorite Nada Surf songs are on those.
Yeah, they’re fucking killer records. I’ve always liked power-pop music like Cheap Trick or Matthew Sweet when he does that kind of thing. Even aspects of The Replacements, Nevermind from Nirvana or the first two Weezer records. Records that are noisy and spirited but they’re basically just pop music played loudly. In my head, Nada Surf should have been bigger than R.E.M. or something. That band’s music is so accomplished, likable and smart to me that at a certain point they were almost like a blueprint for the level of quality I wanted to achieve but also the kind of career they’ve had. They basically have been really resilient with really devoted fans, have lasted through six or 10 different waves of trends in independent guitar rock music and they’ve still been around making really great stuff through all that which is a model for me.
Matthew was the first person I asked and he didn’t know this until afterwards because I didn’t want to put pressure on him but the future of the project kind of lived and died dependent on the way he reacted to it. If he’d been like “No dude, I don’t want anything to do with that” I would have just said to myself “This is stupid, let me put it away.” He wasn’t like that at all, he said “That would be great, we should cover each other. I’m going to learn one of your songs.” I’ve been covering “Inside Of Love” at shows so I figured I’d do that. Not only was he enthusiastic but he was very supportive and open. Him being as into it as I was kind of enabled me to go forward with it and ask other people.
Meredith [Graves] in a sense embodies the whole spirit of the project to me because we didn’t know each other personally. I was a fan of Say Yes To Love and even more so a fan of a lot of the stuff I read of what she would write online, things I heard her say about social justice. She seemed like a smart, fearless person and it reminded me of people like Kathleen Hanna and Sinead O’Connor. People who were not afraid to not play the role assigned to them and kind of speak truth to power. I played a club in Manchester, England, the night after Perfect Pussy had played it and I sent her a picture of their set list through Instagram. I introduced myself and she was like, “Oh I know who you are and I’m a fan, we should totally meet.”
We’re both on tour sending each other these emails as postcards of where we were on the tour. We kind of got to know each other that way, we meet up for coffee and I asked her about doing a split and she was 100% into it. Right away I knew it was going to be great because even if I just put out those two with Matthew and Meredith, everything about them is different. Everything about their approach to music, where they’re both at in their careers, the way people perceive their careers, everything about how I relate to each of them is also different so I already felt that the series had already done what I wanted it to do. Tigers Jaw and Cymbals Eat Guitars are great, younger bands that I thought would add a generational balance to it all.
I grew up with Matthew’s music and I suspect that a band like Tigers Jaw kind of grew up with mine to some extent and there’s a balance in that. Cymbals Eat Guitars are a bunch of Staten Island kids, I came to age playing music there and I didn’t think there were still great bands playing there these days. Asking them came naturally, they both were on a list of bands that I’ve been into or turned on to. Mike Kinsella is a smart, kind, irascible bastard who I’ve known since like 2006. We did some touring together, we’ve kept in touch ever since and have played a stray show here and there. He was one of the first people on my list too because he’s such an interesting world unto himself. That’s how the series came to fruition and that’s why I chose all those people. Fortunately they all chose me back which is awesome.
It’s cool how each split release in the series has its own story behind it. How did the process of recording each split happen? Has it all been done at one studio? Has it been done at numerous places? Have there been numerous producers involved?
All of my stuff from the first through the fourth splits was recorded at Sunset Park in Brooklyn at a studio called Sunset 7 run by a guy named Dave Hollinghurst. I did “Inside Of Love” there for the first one, a song of mine called “Geißen” for number two, we covered The Cure’s “Lovesong” on number three and a new song called “Magic Magnets” on number four. That was all with Dave, number three was with Mike Fatum and Mike Stramburg from The Goddamn Band playing drums and guitar and number four was with Damon Cox and Jay Russo also from The Goddamn Band playing drums and bass. On one and two I just played everything myself. Working with Dave at Studio 7 was great, a very fun and affordable studio space and he’s an excellent guy.
We’ve done some projects together on my Kickstarter records where I had some people basically buy a studio session as one of the incentives and we would write a song together. We did those with Dave back in 2013 so that was how I got to know him. All of the other musicians on the splits did stuff in a bunch of different places. I think Matthew recorded his at home in Cambridge, England, Meredith did hers in Brooklyn with Shaun Sutkus who is also a member of Perfect Pussy, Tigers Jaw did theirs with Will Yip, I believe, and Cymbals Eat Guitars did theirs with Jesse Lacey from Brand New in a studio out on Long Island and Jesse Cannon mastered one, two and my side of four while Will masted number 3. Numbers five and six I just recorded at home, I’ve gotten a little better at acoustic recording on Pro Tools and the songs were good experiments for me to try to get better at it.
You must have had constant communication between yourself and everybody else involved with the project and sending each other tracks.
Absolutely.
Back in 2013 you wrote two songs that struck a chord with a good amount of people along with them both still being relevant to the events of this current decade. “Fiscal Cliff” is about the mounting of debt that the establishment puts on people and “Private First Class” is your reaction to the trial of whistleblower Bradley Manning (now known as Chelsea Manning). This year has been prevalent with wide spread police brutality and the Black Lives Matter movement coming out of it. What’s your stance on the whole thing?
I wrote a song that’s going to be on the next record that I had put out online called “Talking Freddie Gray Blues”. Freddie Gray was a 25-year-old unarmed black man in Baltimore who was killed in police custody last year. When the autopsy was done on his body his spinal column had been severed, his neck had been broken and it was pretty grizzly. His death seemed to had happened while he was being transported in the police van from the point of arrest to where he was supposed to be detained. In short, my stance on it is that I come from a police family. My dad was a cop, my uncles, grandfather, cousins, I love them. I’m almost quoting lyrics from the second verse of this song.
I’m very literally partly here because of cops. I grew up in a household where what I ate was partly paid for by police from my dad’s job. The first musical equipment I ever owned was probably purchased partly by the NYPD in an indirect way. I am not an anti-cop activist but I’m also a sane, reasonable person who is striving to achieve some sort of empathy in the course of his life. I don’t think militarized police is good for anybody and I think the Black Lives Matter movement is right. I say that with great love for my family but this is an issue that’s bigger than your family. It’s an issue of civility and equality.
These are violent times and that is not an acceptable path forward. That’s how I feel about it, it’s something that people like me have the option of clucking our tongue, shaking our head, saying how awful it is and disconnecting from it. It’s something that people who are like me in every other way except for the color of their skin don’t have that option. They basically have to be looking over their shoulder at all times to make sure that they’re not going to be the next victim. I don’t know the correct answer on how to fix that, there are economic causes. Probably a starting point would be accepting the fact that our country is literally built on the backs of a racist system that enslaved and then employed, underpaid and overworked black labor.
It’s not as simple as saying “Oh well a black guy ran for President and he won so racism is over.” These are issues in the blood and foundation of our country, it’s a painful way for it to come to the floor but at the very least I think the conversation about it has moved forward in a pretty dynamic way in the last year since Ferguson, Freddie Gray, Eric Garner on Staten Island and I could just go on and on. I’m hopeful that we can evolve as a people and be in a different place about this in a few years but it’ll take some doing.
It’ll take a lot of conversation between people who probably wouldn’t talk to each other in the first place.
Yep.
Imagine if you have a pot of rice on your stove top, you put more water in the pot, the level keeps on getting higher and higher to the point to where it’s boiling over. In an analogical sense, it’s gotten to that point.
I think you’re right.
Now you still live in Brooklyn right?
I do.
It’s been happening for quite a while with the constant changing of major cities and gentrification. For example, people in San Francisco have told me that it’s been literally unlivable to make a home there as an artist due to the tech industry taking over the city and the cost of living becoming less affordable. There’s always been a thing about Brooklyn where you have a lot of gentrification happening all over New York City and there’s a flow of change with places closing down and new places opening up. Has it become more difficult for you to sustain yourself as an artist with all of these other things happening around you in Brooklyn?
Yeah, I think so. I think both sides of this in terms of how it affects my reality. I’m married and my wife works at a non-profit healthcare services provider, she works with the HIV and AIDS population in the city. We live in a two-income household and that certainly helps both of us, but we don’t own a house, we rent an apartment. I don’t think it’s realistic to even conceive the thought of owning a house in New York City on what we both make. That being said, we’re in a more comfortable situation than a lot of other people because we have the two of us. I live in a neighborhood in Brooklyn called Bay Ridge, it’s not like Williamsburg or Bushwick or Greenpoint or Bed-Stuy or Park Slope.
It’s not like “cool” Brooklyn yet, it’s pretty far away from the city. It’s basically across the Verrazano Bridge from Staten Island, right at the end of that part of Brooklyn. It’s more neighborhoody, it’s a bit more like middle class with a long standing Irish and Italian community but a little more Asian and Middle Eastern now. It’s not like an artist’s neighborhood and as a result the feeding frenzy to try to make it a “cooler” space and build condos and high rises and put in a J. Crew or whatever hasn’t come to Bay Ridge in force but it’s starting to a little bit. There’s the cool coffee shop, the hipster fish market and there are things coming here that I take with an open mind because I like going to get a cup of coffee…
Wait a sec, there’s actually a thing called a hipster fish market? This actually exists?
I’m saying that sort of with my tongue in my cheek. It’s like a place where they serve lobster rolls, fish sandwiches and they got a clever name. A certain kind of person owns it and there’s a certain kind of person that’s being marketed to by it. That’s what I mean, lifestyle changes are starting to happen slowly in this neighborhood and I think it starts first with food and drink so that’s kind of starting here. If the rents continue to rise the way they have been, it’s entirely possible that inside of five years this neighborhood will be the next place that New Yorkers will try to go to because it’s still somewhat affordable.
Now what do I think about that? The place where we recorded Split The Country, Split The Street, the place we made Brother’s Blood was in Williamsburg at a place called Headgear Studios. That place is now a J. Crew, bars that I grew up playing at and going to shows at are now luxury boutiques on Ludlow Street, Essex Street, Houston Street and Bedford Avenue. A bunch of people like LCD Soundsystem, The Yeah Yeah Yeahs, TV On The Radio, The Strokes and in a smaller sense people like me helped make this town a destination and a cool place for a certain kind of person to want to be at. The irony is that in that happening and those people coming, the culture they were pursuing is being priced out of existence and I think it sucks.
There are a million reasons for it and it’s not all black and white or good or bad, I think it does some good things for the community and it probably makes things safer but it also makes it harder to live there if you’re not an independently wealthy person, someone with a trust fund or someone with a job I don’t have. It’s sad but it is what’s happening so the choice you have is to either live in reality and see what you can do inside that construct and what you can change and what you need to accept or you can be pissed off in your room for the rest of your life or move to Lawrence, Kansas, or something. I don’t think the latter is happening anytime soon, I’m here and I like being here but it’s changed pretty radically. Especially in lower Manhattan with places I grew up playing music at that are no longer there, it feels sometimes like I’m chasing a city that’s no longer here anymore or not mine if it is. There are other things about it that don’t feel that way, in ways it does feel very much like mine if that makes sense.
It’s seems like there are a lot of things have been changing in multiple cities over the past few years. I know the landscape of things in New England cities like Boston and Providence have completely changed over the past 10 years and with the progression of things there’s always the threat of the cost of living becoming more expensive.
It’s fucking crazy, basically in short. I know Providence a bit because my brother was a student there and then lived there for five years afterwards. He actually worked at Brown, he worked at what used to be a Borders in the mall over there and then he worked for a newspaper in Massachusetts and lived in Providence while commuting there. I’ve played The Met, Lupo’s and Fete a few times there as well. I like it up there and I hope it maintains some of what makes it cool.
Me, too. 2015 is about to end, so what are your plans for next year? You’ve mentioned earlier how you’re working on a new album. I also know you’ve played a few shows with Manchester Orchestra recently so is there a new Bad Books record in the works?
Next year is a big life year for me personally. I’m having a kid in March of next year.
Congratulations!
Thank you, sir. I have the record about 95 percent recorded, I got back into the studio next month just to clean it up, mix and master it. I think the short story is that I’m going to be more or less home from March to probably sometime around September and October. There will be a couple little short things here and there but I’m going to make an effort to be home with my wife and the kid. I think the record will probably come out sometime late 2016 and I’ll get out there for that.
In terms of Bad Books, we’re talkin’. We wrote a song, we’re trying to figure it all out because both Manchester Orchestra and I are going to do another record separately before the next Bad Books record. I think Bad Books might even be a 2017 thing as crazy as that sounds but it’s definitely going to happen, we’re going to do more Bad Books stuff. Next year will be fairly quiet for me until the end of the year and then I think it’ll be louder.
KEVIN DEVINE: “Devinyl Splits, Series One: A Performance, with Brianna Collins and Ben Walsh of Tigers Jaw, Matthew Caws of Nada Surf, Meredith Graves of Perfect Pussy, Mike Kinsella of Owen and American Football, Cymbals Eat Guitars, Brian Sella of The Front Bottoms :: Sunday December 13 at the Sinclair, 52 Church St. in Cambridge, MA :: 7 p.m., all ages, sold out :: Bowery Boston event page :: Facebook event page
