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For the leader of Richmond, Va.-based dance rock trio Kid is Qual, the Asbury Lanes feel like home.
“We like the venue, it kind of reminds us of Richmond if it was on the water; it’s kind of grimy, kind of urban, it’s cool,” said singer and lead bassist Jonathan Sullivan. “It’s a cool punk rock venue and all the ladies there are really cool.
“Early on, I think we played our first show there with the Gay Blades where we kind of came in with them and then after that everything was pretty easy. But yeah, good town, good music scene, a lot of history, so we really like playing Asbury Park. It’s a cool city.”
Kid is Qual returns to the Lanes for a show with Ruby the Hatchet, Plus Plus Minus and Future of the Party Friday (Jan. 27). The band released its debut EP, “Damn Son,” in December.
Consisting of two bass players and a drummer, the band brings a healthy dose of rock and roll grit to the world of dance music. It’s a sound that Sullivan, formerly of pop rock outfit Jack’s Mannequin, said he has been working toward for a while now.
Jon, where did you first get the inspiration for this sound? You're experimenting with dance music but in a grimy rock setting.
It's kind of been a long time coming, I've been messing around with the lead bass kind of sound, I've probably been doing that for about 10 years, just messing with tones and such. I've always had a thing for Roger Troutman (of Zapp), his vocoder style, and they just kind of came together, years and years of messing around with it. And then I started doing some with Jack's Mannequin when I was playing with them and it just came together, honestly, a few years ago I just started demoing out stuff and doing it under the pretext of not having any guitars and not using any keyboards, just plugging into a bunch of pedals and messing around, just trying to do something a little bit different and keeping it grimy.
Limiting yourselves to just two basses and drums, no guitars or synth, there's something to be said for creativity coming through restrictions, finding ways to express sounds and do that with the limited means you've given yourselves.
Yeah, you know, I think you put that really well, because obviously we have our bass guitars and if we just plug those in directly it wouldn't sound how we're doing it. By the time you go through all those pedals and everything, certain things work and certain things don't work so I agree, I mean it's kind of like the limitation is almost like, "Oh, we can't do that," so you've gotta figure something out to fill that void.
If I'm doing a talk box then there really isn't like a second part being played for me, so it's something where it's almost like roadblocks you've got to work around, so we really just try to write decent melodies and decent song-structures. I never know when the next one is going to come, so it's like every time a song comes out I'm pretty excited about it.
Can you tell me about the decision you made to commit to Kid is Qual full time, to leave Jack's and just do this? That seems like a natural progression for you.
Yeah, you know, I did Jack's for about six years and all of the guys in the band are like brothers, I think it's kind of rare for a band like that to have as much history for everybody as far as like a brand-new band, so I had a great time and loved it, pretty much did everything I wanted to do with the band, and it got to the point where I was thinking, "Well, if I want to do something like this, when's a better time than now? I have a good network now, I've asked a lot of questions, seen how it's done," just checking out my man Andrew (McMahon) every night, how he was handling the crowds and stuff, and it just gave me confidence to think that I could actually do something like that.
A lot of people thought I was stupid, I guess that remains to be seen, but I just figured, "Hey, if it's not going to happen now, it's never going to happen," that's the way I felt about it. I was like, "Well, let's get to a down part between the third record or whatever," a lot of stuff was up in the air, so I said, "Hey, I'm throwing my hat in, I've got to go do this band." So that's pretty much about it, no hard feelings with anybody, we're still good friends.
I read that "Damn Son" was recorded on both coasts, in Los Angeles and in Brooklyn. How do you think working on both sides of the country impacted the sound at all?
Yeah, you know, it's like recording it out in Cali, we were recording at the studio Sound City, which is a pretty famous studio, Fleetwood Mac met there, "Pinkerton," Nirvana, it's the best drum room in the country, so that's why we did it out there. It wasn't like "Oh, let's record in Cali because it's Cali," the best drum studio happened to be in Cali. But you know, it was great weather, everybody's really relaxed.
I mean, I'm an east coast guy, I love the east coast too, but there's definitely something different in the air there, just to kind of get away from everything and kind of sit back and soak up the sun. I think it adds a positive, kind of happy vibe. I don't know how that translates into the drums and recording them, but it's that laid-back, good weather, good weed kind of vibe. But then we came to Brooklyn, too, we did a lot of overdubs there. It was good to be back on that side with the snow and it's cold and everything, we're trying to grime it up, too, you know what I mean?
Yeah, you've got the optimism on one hand and the grit and the grime on the other, and then you get dance rock.
Like I said man, I'm definitely an east coast dude, always will be, but I definitely love Cali, too. If I hadn't done the Jack's thing then I probably would have missed out on a lot of that stuff. Honestly, I like both coasts, you know what I'm saying, man? That's my favorite.
I hear ya. And I saw some exciting news on the band's Facebook page, that you'll have your own bass pedal coming out soon.
Oh yeah, the "Ole" fuzz. My friend James Seretis, he's a tech guy, he does a lot of custom work for me, like me makes custom talk boxes for me and everything, and we kind of sit around and talk about stuff, gear, and essentially he made it to my spechs, it's a fuzz pedal but it has a low-end boost, because a lot of the standard distortion pedals I've found with basses are a little muddy and they lack low end, so what he did was he added a low-end boost switch and put a mid contour on there so you can tweak your mids, because you know the mids for bass are what you want and the low-end gives you some extra air. So he went ahead and made those, and it's pretty cool, we're going to sell them on our website. He's actually in the video (for "Knights of Ole"), too, he's the guy at the end that falls down.
It's a cool video, man.
Like I said, the dude at the very end, the dude that busts his ass, that's James, that's the guy that makes them.
Kid is Qual with Ruby the Hatchet, Plus Plus Minus and Future of the Party, Doors open at 8 p.m. Friday (Jan. 27) at Asbury Lanes, 209 Fourth Ave., Asbury Park. $10. 732-776-6160; www.asburylanes.com
