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Kenin

Written by Bruce Moore

With their thought provoking lyrics and catchy melodies Washington DC based Kenin are a breath of fresh air. The newest CD features song that range the gamut from rock and roll to country which results in a diverse collection of tunes that are sure to please everyone from the casual music listener to the experienced musician. I recently spoke with guitarist and lyricist Devin Macaughnahy, about the bands’ approach to songwriting and their live show.

When you write songs, do the words or melodies come first to you?

“For me it is mostly words. We have a pretty split songwriting scene in the band. All four people write but it is dominated by Sean and myself .I tend to write words first and then come up with the melodies but Sean tends to go about it the other way around.”

Along those same lines, what benchmarks do you use to determine when you have written a good song or when a song is finished?

“I would say that is probably one of hardest things to deal with because you can never know if a song is good enough for everyone else. There have been plenty of times when we have written tunes that we really love but nobody else responds to. I think it is kind of a toss up because sometimes you know and at other times you just toss it out there and see how people respond to it and then take it away if nobody does.”

How do you think you have grown as a songwriter and a musician over the years?

“Oh man, tremendously, earlier on in our career we did not take this seriously. We just kind of wrote about college and fun stuff or whatever was happening at the time. I think we have gotten a lot closer to music in general, we take it more seriously as an art form rather than a way to just be out in the bars and making noise. Now we deal more with the bigger issues that are related to the way we have grown over the years. I kind of write more political, environmental, big picture stuff whereas Sean is really good at writing personal country style lyrics that deal more with relationships and real life situations.”

Who are your influences and who were they when you were learning how to play?

“When I was starting to play I was all about the big classic rockers like Led Zeppelin and the Rolling Stones. I really didn’t know what was going on with music until one of my buddies in sixth grade showed me “Over the Hills and Far Away”. Since then I have been sort of obsessed with John Bonham and the whole steady rock, noisy but lo-fi, sound. Sean is very interested in singer/songwriter stuff and Tommy the bassists is very interested in stuff like the Raveonettes or anybody who is fooling around with the way their instruments sound. Mark is a big fan of Broken Social Scene. So I would say that our influences are very eclectic and we are hoping to represent that on our next album.”

What tracks on your latest album are you favorites? Are there any with some interesting stories behind them?

“I would have to say Blast, which is also the title track of the album. It sort of sums everything up, the album, if you don’t listen to it right can come off as a bunch of stories about girlfriends, but the ultimate theme is that everything happens in these huge, urgent, sequences. You go through a relationship and it is the most important thing in the world and then two years later you move on and you’re doing your thing. It is just sort of like a war. There was all this massive death with Hurricane Katrina but then two years later, it is not like people have forgotten about it, but they move on. That is sort of what the album is all about. The last song starts off talking about a relationship and then moves on to talk about a bomb blowing up a city. To me that holds a lot of weight because it seems like that happens about every two years or so.”

What message, if any, do you want your fans to walk away with after listening to your record?

“Well I would never want them to take it too seriously; we are not like the next prophets or anything. I would want them to come away with a depiction of what it is like to be twenty to twenty-four, that strange time in your life when there are a whole lot of emotions happening and you are sort of determining how you are going to live the rest of your life. If they came away from listening with that and at the same time thought, Wow, that band sounds good enough that I want to see them live then that would sort of be the ultimate compliment.”

How do you think your live performance differs from your albums?

“It is like black and white. That is why the most recent album wasn’t totally satisfying to us because we know it is such different scene from when we play live. I think the main difference between the two is that there is just a whole lot more experimentation going on live, it’s a lot harder and the edges are more defined and extreme. We will go from a big rock song down to a county singer songwriter song that Sean plays by himself all within four to five tunes.”

Tell me about a book or two that you have read and think others should read as well. “‘Everything is Illuminated', it is totally weird but it was fantastic.”

What is next for Kenin?

“Well there is a lot of stuff going on actually. We started our own label last year called Holster Records. We started it basically as a production company and a way to get this album out to the public but for the next level we are creating a collaborative association between artist in the Mid-Atlantic and the East coast. We have three artists that have signed on and will be releasing through us and basically the idea is that everyone fuels everyone else without being totally idealistic. Everyone contributes to everyone else’s albums. We are planning on releasing three records in April and May and then the new Kenin Album will be released in September, so things are pretty busy.”

For more information check out the Official Website at http://www.kenin-music.com

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