Phoenix indie band Kinch has an ambitious plan to promote their new record: residencies in three cities.
Starting in January the band will play Monday nights at the Silverlake Lounge in Los Angeles, Tuesday nights
at the Soda Bar in San Diego, and Saturday nights at the Rogue Bar in
Scottsdale.
"We just finished recording a new record, and as we're finishing up
everything else that goes along with a record besides the music, we thought it would be fun to debut the new material and play with a bunch of old friends and some new ones," said guitarist Brian Coughlin.
Some bands confirmed for Phoenix so far are Black Carl, Gospel Claws, Holy Rolling Empire, The Californian (featuring members of Phantom Planet, Henry Clay People and the Bird and the Bee) and Mergence.
Phoenix artist Ben Braman
The full lineups for each show will be released on Kinch's site in the coming days.
Here's what Couglin had to say in response to a slew of questions about the project and his band's new record.
Up On The Sun: What have you been up to the past six months or so?
Brian Coughlin: 2010 has been our busiest year. We've toured the country three or four times, mostly by ourselves, but also opening and backing Local H. We also released a collection of remixes and rarities in the spring and spent the summer recording 10 personal songs and then another full length worth of material for our second LP. We recorded bass and drums with Chris Testa at Flying Blanket Studio's B Room. Then, we recorded the rest at my house with gear on loan from Chris Walla (a true sage of Rock & Roll) and other friends. We also rented a Steinway grand piano for the record.
UOTS: When are you going to have a new record out?
BC: We're not sure exactly. I've developed pretty severe acid reflux in the last couple weeks just thinking about it. The music is done, but we have to put together the artwork and that other stuff. We don't want to put this one out completely by ourselves like we have in the past. So we're currently feeling out the right relationships for its release. In the meantime, DJ DLG is putting out a remix record for our song Tie Me Lightly. And we also have an albums worth of personal songs that we might self-release in the spring. So it's still a bit before LP2 is officially released but there's plenty of Kinch material to tide people over.
UOTS: What does your new material sound like?
BC: The new record sounds caffeinated and slightly schizophrenic to me. It's an extremely upbeat rock record. It could be hard to stay motivated when working at home on the record, so Andrew and I would take daily trips to Lux when we needed an afternoon refresher. It was my first time drinking coffee regularly and it rubbed off on the sound of the record. In a weird way I felt more confident when I had a caffeine buzz going so there were definitely more experimentations with sounds than there has been in the past.
UOTS: Why a residency? Where did the idea come from? Is this a 'thing' with
indie bands now or is it an old thing that's coming back?
BC: When I was going to college in LA, it seemed like all the up and coming bands played residencies. It's something I've wanted to do for a while but we haven't been able to with our touring/recording schedule. I always thought it'd be cool to do one in Phoenix. We started talking about it more seriously as we were finishing up the record and realizing how difficult some of the songs were going to be to pull off live. There's some complex sounds and music happening on the record that we're proud of and we want to be able to accurately represent it.
The residencies will make us a better band. They're also fun to plan. It almost feels like curating a mini festival.
UOTS: How did you pick the cities/venues?
BC: We picked the Rogue Bar in town because we like Manny and Lindsay. They were just as into trying something different as we were.
LA gives us an opportunity to meet some people in person and San Diego is one of my favorite cities in the country.
We played one of our first shows ever at the Silverlake Lounge and it was one of our top choices when we were planning this out.
UOTS: What are you most looking forward to with the residencies?
BC: Playing with bands we haven't played with before. We're playing with some of our old friends but over 3/4 of the bands on the residencies we've never played with before. It's also fun working with Ben Braman on the artwork. We're planning to release a video that incorporates the poster art and sound clips from the new record in the next couple weeks.
UOTS: What will be the biggest challenge?
BC: Getting people excited enough to check it out, tell friends, and hopefully come back. We're relying heavily on word of mouth to promote these residencies so the pressure is on us to put on a show that's worth talking about. But if people come out, maybe hear a few bands that are actually good, have a decent drink, see some friends, and forget about death for a few hours then that's all I can ask for.
