Country Fried Rock 1522: Kevn Kinney of Drivin N Cryin Celebrates Induction into the Georgia Music Hall of Fame

Sloane Spencer: 00:01:28

Jumping into a special week with Country Fried Rock. It's the first time we've ever revisited a songwriter. It's all for a special cause. Driving and Cryin's induction into the Georgia Music hall of Fame.

Kevin kenny, celebrating the 30th anniversary of the band.

Kevn Kinney: 00:01:42

Wow.

Sloane Spencer: 00:01:43

Which makes me skip in high school for the release of that first record, Scarred but Smarter. Making me pretty old. Sure beats the alternative.

We talked with Kevin Kenny a while back after his collaboration with Anton Fear and Golden Palominos on a good country mile, which is when he first turned us on to Aaron Lee Taschen. Well, got all kinds of mutual friends at this point. And we're going to talk about them in this special conversation.

Kevin Kinney of Driving and Crying returns to Country Fried Rock. And I'm your host, Sloan Spencer.

Kevn Kinney: 00:02:12

Hey, Sloan. Kevin Kinney in Brooklyn. I have to sit outside to talk on the phone because it's like Green Acres out here.

Speaker C: 00:02:18

There's no background noise. That's amazing.

Kevn Kinney: 00:02:21

Well, I have a little garden.

Speaker C: 00:02:22

Oh, cool.

Kevn Kinney: 00:02:23

Marm really is a rock. I've got my Caffeine Busello Keurig cup ready to.

Speaker C: 00:02:27

Ooh, I'm jealous.

Kevn Kinney: 00:02:28

Oh, my God. Did you have a Keurig kit? I bought one at Goodwill.

Speaker C: 00:02:32

I was kind of freaked out by the water. Living inside the machine.

Kevn Kinney: 00:02:35

Oh, this is like a single cup. So you pour it in every time.

Sloane Spencer: 00:02:38

Oh, now I could do that.

Kevn Kinney: 00:02:40

Yeah, it was at Goodwill.

Speaker C: 00:02:42

Even better. Even better. Cafe Bustello.

Sloane Spencer: 00:02:46

Can't go wrong there.

Kevn Kinney: 00:02:48

I'm a fan of Cafe Bustello. Cure cups now. It's really exciting.

Speaker C: 00:02:54

That is exciting.

Kevn Kinney: 00:02:54

It's the small things that excite me.

Speaker C: 00:02:56

Listen, caffeine makes me happy every day, so. Yeah, I'll take it.

Kevn Kinney: 00:02:59

Yeah.

Speaker C: 00:03:00

My guest today on Country Fried Rock is Kevin Kinney.

Sloane Spencer: 00:03:02

Welcome back.

Kevn Kinney: 00:03:03

How are you doing, Sloan?

Speaker C: 00:03:05

I'm great. I sure appreciate your time. I'm a fan girl. I admit it. Everybody knows that.

Kevn Kinney: 00:03:09

Well, thank you. I'm pretty excited for us lately too. We've had a really good last four years.

I mean, once we hooked up with Saddler Vaden, we just started making music. And you know, Sadler co wrote and co produced all of our eps that we had out and really rejuvenated the band.

And then when he went off to play with Jason, you know, we had a great thing with Aaron Tashin on guitar for a while. Was out there in America selling himself. He's awesome folk singer. And now we have Warner Hodges from Jason Scorches. So it's like full circle.

Just great energy. And we're having a lot of fun doing it. We are excited every time we get a gig booked, you know, we're like, oh, wow, that'll be fun.

But we're excited. And then, you know, little the cream of the crop. You know, the Georgia Music hall of Fame thing is exciting for us.

You know, it validates us, you know, validates our fans, that we have a lot of fans that are, like, cheering for the underdog. You know, people that like us, like John Daly, they like.

Speaker C: 00:04:11

You know, you also give a platform to folks like Sadler or Aaron or even Warner, who should be a household.

Kevn Kinney: 00:04:19

Name, but is not quite yet arrangements of our songs. I mean, this is a little craft talk here.

The arrangements of our songs are simple enough so that the people who do come to play with us can really shine. There's some songs that are, like, constructed that there's not a lot of place to jam in, like Hot Wheels or REM or some of those songs like that.

There's not really any room to jam.

But some of the songs, Waiting On Tomorrow and some of the newer stuff, there's enough Runway in there for them to really, depending on who I have, can really take off, you know. And Warner's been using every inch of that Runway. Man, he's amazing.

Speaker C: 00:04:53

Been keeping an eye on him for years of various Dan Baird projects and the Jason projects and his own work, of course.

Kevn Kinney: 00:05:00

He's just one of these guys, too, that just gets better every year.

And people say that, but, you know, the cruel part of this career that you have is the older you get, the better you get, because you can't help it, because you just keep practicing and you learn and you learn and you learn. But, you know, it's a young man's. It's a young man's game for publicity and things like that. So it's like drama crime.

his good as it is now back in: 1987

Speaker C: 00:05:42

Hey, y'.

Sloane Spencer: 00:05:43

All.

Speaker C: 00:05:43

Country fried rock has a few cool.

Sloane Spencer: 00:05:44

New things going on that we've been teasing for a while.

' all want as we plan now for: 2016

I know it seems so far away, but actually, we've Already got a very cool thing up our sleeves that will be happening while I'm in Nashville next month, so looking forward to that. Speaking of which, lots of Country Fried Rock alums are going to be playing Americana Fest in September and we'll be hanging out that week.

Come on by and say hello. So I think I've teased it long enough.

That super special fun thing we're going to be doing during Americana Week in Nashville is an official kickoff party with Sin Social and Guitar Town at the Basement east on Tuesday, September 15. Our headliners are the Bottle Rockets. We're doing a fundraiser for Eddie Spaghetti. Badge holders and wristband holders get in free.

Five dollar donation at the door goes directly to help Eddie Spaghetti in kicking Cancer's tail. We'll see y' all there. Hey, y', all, this is Sloan Spencer, the host of Country Fried Rock.

We've had an incredible year with more people finding us on the radio and our podcast than we ever imagined. Thank you all so much. Careful what you wish for. You just.

Kevn Kinney: 00:06:56

Hey, this is Kevin McKinney from Driver and Crying and you're listening to Country Fried Rock.

Speaker C: 00:07:01

You mentioned a little bit about the songs off of those eps. When we last talked, it was right after Great American Bubble Factory. And so these eps had not quite rolled around yet.

From a fan perspective, I thought keeping the concept tight and short with those eps was cool. But then I liked how they made a series and then now there's this vinyl on Plowboy.

Kevn Kinney: 00:07:18

Well, you know, be aware of your surroundings. That's what I always tell my kids. Like, look and see where you are. What are you doing?

When I look around me, I see people downloading songs and making their own playlists. So I was like, well, I'm going to stop making them their playlist. I'm going to make them the A and R person.

I'm going to give them the 20 songs, 25 songs that I would have given to, like, Kim Bowie, our A and R person. I would have given her 25 songs and then she would have picked nine. That would have been on Whisper Tim's lion or 10. You do that.

You know, what 10 would you pick to make on Earth? The ones I picked, I made onto an album that's.

I wanted to do an album and it's only available on the album because it's, it's my, you know, what would my record be if I made it from all these eps? And that's what I did.

But that's why I encourage everyone to go home and make their own if you own all four eps, make your own ep, you know, and see what you would have done and, you know, give it a title. Do a cover. Send it. Send it in. You know, we'll do a contest or something. Best album, and you come up with your. You can design an album cover.

I designed two of those covers on my phone on this thing called Fonto Cool. And another app called Psychotropic or something like that. I did, Yeah. I did two of those album covers on my phone.

Speaker C: 00:08:32

That's good.

Kevn Kinney: 00:08:32

Laying in bed.

Speaker C: 00:08:34

That album cover reminds me of, like.

Sloane Spencer: 00:08:36

Waiting for the K Tel compilations to arrive.

Kevn Kinney: 00:08:39

Yeah, yeah. The album. I sent those albums. I didn't. That one I did not do. I did do all the pre work on the. In bed, though.

I sent the art director, like, a dozen different K Tel records. I said, I want it to look like the K Tel record. He's like, oh, I have this amazing graphic designer. So he's like, got it. Love it.

Speaker C: 00:08:58

I knew about the 30th anniversary of the band, which is making me feel old, but in a good way. And then right after, I guess, I found out about the Georgia Music hall of Fame. Y' all got a ton going on.

Sloane Spencer: 00:09:08

How did all of this roll around?

Kevn Kinney: 00:09:09

Do people love the anniversaries? I'm not a big anniversary guy because everyone's been around 30 years. It used to be a much bigger deal.

Like, remember when Sergeant Pepper was, like, 25 years old?

Speaker C: 00:09:21

Holy cow. Yeah.

Kevn Kinney: 00:09:22

Oh, Pepper's 25 now. It's like, who isn't around 30 years? You know what I mean? It's something to celebrate.

But when you do celebrate 33 and a third, that would be an anniversary at, like, 33 and a third. Well, I appreciate it. Which one? Scarlet. Smarter.

Speaker C: 00:09:36

Scarborough.

Kevn Kinney: 00:09:37

You know, garbage smarter. Be the better one.

Speaker C: 00:09:39

Yeah.

Kevn Kinney: 00:09:39

And then Whisper came out, and you were sadly disappointed. There's strings on it. What is the blue. Oh, this is corny.

Speaker C: 00:09:46

We were like, man, they went country. What the heck?

Kevn Kinney: 00:09:49

Exactly.

Speaker C: 00:09:50

You know, because I was a stupid.

Kevn Kinney: 00:09:52

Teenager that came from driving across country so many times listening to Hank Williams. I was like. I was like, tim loved Hank. I never listened to country music until I got in driving, crying.

I grew up in Milwaukee, so that wasn't really my dad's favorite. Country people were Charley Pride, Freddie Fender, and Willie Nelson. He's getting better. He's amazing, too.

He played here in Prospect park and killed it. Good for you, Willie. We love you.

Speaker C: 00:10:16

I want to know a little bit more about this Georgia Music hall of Fame thing. Sam Moore of Sam and Dave and Greg Allman and Monica Pearson, the TV personality from Atlanta. From Forever and then driving and crying.

Kevn Kinney: 00:10:28

Yeah, I thought the exact same thing.

Speaker C: 00:10:35

Is there a performance component for you all at the awards ceremony on September 26th?

Kevn Kinney: 00:10:40

Yeah, we're doing two songs. Yeah.

Speaker C: 00:10:41

Okay. So it's like any kind of awards ceremony thing, I guess.

Kevn Kinney: 00:10:44

I've never been to the Americana Awards. I've never even been. Never been invited. This is something, like I say, this is Georgia. We're still Georgia band.

We're trying to make a list right now, but we probably played every city in Georgia above, you know, 20, 30,000 people, 40,000 people. You know, we've played Ringgold. You know, we've played Dahlonega. We've played Helen. You know, just outside of the big ones, Aspen's Albany.

So we're trying to put the list everywhere from St. Simon's and Tybee island and Albany. We did two New Year's Eves in Albany. Yeah. Valdosta and Waycross. And we have crisscrossed Georgia dozens of times. So we're happy for all of our fans.

I don't know what you call them fans, but all of the people who follow us and have been rooting for us, you know, we got a lot of people rooting for us. I get a lot of people in the front row, like, don't quit, Kevin. It just started in life. Yeah. Don't give up, Kevin.

Sloane Spencer: 00:11:36

We'd like to send a big thank you to our Country Fried Rock listeners for supporting Country Fried Rock alum Alan Thompson, who is recovering from a diving accident. If you'd like to donate, every dollar matters and it goes directly to helping defray his bills.

You can find that link on Country Fried Rock's Facebook or Twitter. It's a you caring donation page. Keep your ears peeled for a few different benefit shows in the Nashville area for Alan Thompson.

Speaker C: 00:12:00

We love you, man.

Sloane Spencer: 00:12:01

Get better soon. Oh, yeah. I'm so excited to tell you all about this. A while back, I mentioned we were going to have a new way for bands to submit to this program.

It's been a great problem to have, but I've been getting so much email, I can't even get to the critical things. So for several weeks, we're going to be working with Reverb Nation on a special submission page. It's called a Country Fried Rock opportunity.

To make it easy for you, I put a direct link on countryfriderock.com.

all you need to do is click on the category that says contact and Then when it says for musicians, you'll have the direct link to the Reverb Nation page. The coolest part is a lot of y' all are truly emerging bands working on your very first recordings completely of the loop of our circle of friends.

And we love it. Thank you so much to all of y' all who have found us. Looking forward to a ton more great music and featuring these bands soon. Hey y'. All.

This is Sloan Spencer, the host of Country Fried Rock. Those of y' all who listen on our podcasts, it's a quick hit of just the conversation.

If you want the full radio program with all the songs that we talk about, ask for it on your local radio station joining 20 other stations across the country. Get the goods@countryfriendrock.org this is Kevin Kenney.

Kevn Kinney: 00:13:14

From Driving and Crying and you can check out all of our new EPS and our records and our thoughts on drivingcrying.com well, speaking of which, I noticed.

Speaker C: 00:13:23

That you've got a couple of shows coming up. I didn't realize that the Family Wash was reopening.

Kevn Kinney: 00:13:28

Yay, Nashville place with Chuck Profit. Yeah, there's going to be a little opening set there. Yeah, we're like a reopening kind of vibe. It's me and Chuck. It'll be great.

Tim Nilsen will be there for that. Tim's coming up, so it'll be me and Tim doing something.

Speaker C: 00:13:43

One of the things that I'm curious about is I've gotten to see a few of the Kevin and Friends shows that have really been surprising and wonderful. And there's a Kevin and Friends event going on in Augusta. What kind of things do you like to be able to do to bring.

Sloane Spencer: 00:13:55

Your friends in for those sort of open ended events?

Kevn Kinney: 00:13:58

I don't know. Sometimes I bring people from New York that I know that are amazing that you guys don't know about, people don't know about.

Like, you know Owen McCarthy, he's amazing. He's in a band called the Every Others. You should look them up. Yeah, he's amazing. He's like our new David Bowie here.

There's a guy called Finley Brown. Everybody should be in the Finley. Finley's got a brand new record coming out this week and he's amazing.

There's some people in Nashville, our friend Rory living up there in Nashville, you know, our Aaron Lee fashion.

So usually I like to bring people like that you've never heard of, you know, and blow your mind, you know, be like, oh wow, I need to follow this guy. So that's the special things about when I have something in friends. And then there's always the gunslingers I bring or whatever.

You know, if I can get Aubrey to come or, you know, Warner to come or, you know, you know, Angie Apparo or Edwin or whatever, whoever's traveling through.

Speaker C: 00:14:51

Man, Angie Pero's voice, he's like an angel.

Kevn Kinney: 00:14:55

Yeah. It'll blow your mind. In 15 seconds of him opening his mouth, everybody's like, oh, boy. Okay. Holy crap.

Speaker C: 00:15:03

I actually learned about Aaron Lee from you. When I interviewed you a few years ago, you said, oh, yeah, this band, Madison Square Gardeners, they got this kid. He plays really great.

His name is, like, Aaron Tasden or something. And that's how I found out about him. Before he was playing with you, Sadler was still playing with you at the time.

Kevn Kinney: 00:15:18

Yeah. Aaron's got a bunch of new stuff he's working on, and he's on there with Ray Riley Hubbard right now. He's doing some touring with him.

Look on, if you're a Ray Wiley Hubbard fan, go look and see who the opening act is. It could be Aaron. So that's always awesome, you know, as.

Speaker C: 00:15:32

Far as music discovery goes, looking for the people whose work you like, and then it's like, okay, who. When they have the choice, who are they bringing with them? And that's actually how I first heard Angie. I knew his name, but I'd never seen him.

Kevn Kinney: 00:15:43

Yeah, people have done that for me. You know, Peter Buck turned me on. A lot of people never heard of me until McDougal Blues or there are some things with Peter.

And, you know, Peter was like, hey, check out this kid Kevin.

Speaker C: 00:15:54

I'm excited that one you're continuing to make fresh music. I think for me, the exciting thing is that driving and crying isn't. Although, of course, I love Scarborough. Smarter and record changed my life.

I'm glad that it's not just that, that y' all have continued and you have continued to write and make tons of new, fresh music all the time.

Kevn Kinney: 00:16:14

Thank you. Oh, I still am. And I love doing it. I love that, you know, people allow me a platform to do it, but there's more to come.

I got two or three more different kinds of things coming up in the next year, the next 12 months, so more EPS. I like the EP.

Speaker C: 00:16:29

I like the tight concept.

Kevn Kinney: 00:16:31

Yeah. I'm gonna do one full on Kevin Kinney, record another one that's gonna take a little while to make. It's gonna be well thought out.

Speaker C: 00:16:40

And is there anything in particular that's pulling you in that direction.

Kevn Kinney: 00:16:44

Well, I don't have a real record out that is like, if you're a listening room kind of fan, if you like, you know, Nancy Griffith or you like the new Jason record, or you like. I don't really have one of those records to hand you. All my solo records are pretty much indie records.

I make them in Usually, you know, McDougal Blues was made in five days. Down Outlaw was made in two days. Flower Knife was made in five days. Broken up to Auto Parts was made in four days.

Duncan Legend Revival was made in a month. That was probably the biggest one good Country Mile was. That took about eight months. But that's the goal of Palomino.

So I don't have a real great sounding, you know, just me and my acoustic and, you know, an orchestrated kind of pedal steel and kind of record. So I felt like I could do one like that. I'd like to add one of those in my collection.

Speaker C: 00:17:34

Do you have any particular players or anybody you'd like to have be part of that, or is that still in the formation stage?

Kevn Kinney: 00:17:40

That'd be in the formation stages in my ultimate world. I'm going to write the song and then come in and sing them when they're already recorded.

Speaker C: 00:17:47

What about other solo and. Or driving and crying projects?

Kevn Kinney: 00:17:51

I'm working on a record with Chuck Mead right now from bf549.

Speaker C: 00:17:55

Oh, yeah. I love that guy.

Kevn Kinney: 00:17:57

So we want to do, like, a record where Everly Brothers meets something. You know what I mean?

We've written a couple songs together with Todd and Todd Snyder and Aaron, and we've got two really good songs together, and we're. We just need to write about three or four more and then. So I'll be going back to Nashville to do that at the end of the month.

Speaker C: 00:18:17

Almost rockabilly.

Kevn Kinney: 00:18:19

Yeah. Something pub rock. Cool. Yeah.

Speaker C: 00:18:23

I can't wait to catch some of this. Live in particular. Live is always special.

Kevn Kinney: 00:18:28

Well, live is always special because it's always different. Never the same show twice.

Speaker C: 00:18:33

Speaking of which, someone told me once.

Sloane Spencer: 00:18:35

You might have even been the person.

Speaker C: 00:18:36

Who said this, that you don't work off a set list. You like to have a bank of things, and it's like, be ready for anything.

Kevn Kinney: 00:18:42

Yeah.

The hardest part about being in driving and crying is you have to know about 100 songs, you know, and you don't just learn the 15 songs we're doing on tour. You have to know a hundred songs. Jim knows 200 of them. Dave probably does 150. And Warner's getting up there. To 100.

But you know, you have to know because if people shout stuff out, this song will go good with that song or this is not something I want to say. You know, I don't even do the first song till I get out there and look at the audience and go, okay, I get it. I get it. Yeah. Thanks, Sloan.

Sloane Spencer: 00:19:11

I appreciate your time.

Speaker C: 00:19:12

Take care.

Sloane Spencer: 00:19:12

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