Kitchen Dwellers bring their high-energy bluegrass to recordBar on Sunday, December 3
Kitchen Dwellers. // photo by Allison Scavo
Kitchen Dwellers are a Montana-based jam band playing at RecordBar on December 3.
We interviewed Max Davies, the band’s guitar player ahead of their tour stop about their upcoming new album, Seven Devils, the band’s history, and more.
The Pitch: The last time you swung through it was in Kansas City, right?
Max Davies: Last time was at Lawrence it was awesome, so we’re super excited to get back. We actually have played [in Kansas City] once with Twiddle, probably in like… 2017, 2016 maybe. So it’s been a while but we’re really excited to come back and play because that was maybe one of our only other times so yeah we’re excited.
I love that you’re coming back to the recordBar because I saw Twiddle’s last, well, for now, show and was crying with them. Is anyone coming with you to Kansas City?
We have Armchair Boogie with us on that show. They’re going to be doing this whole Midwest run with us and we played a bunch with them before and they’re really, really great dudes and bring a fun element to the show.
They’re wonderful. So you have a new album coming out. Can you talk to me about the evolution of the style throughout the years and how that brought you to this album?
Yeah, I think that the evolution of the style has really just been kind of honing in what we’ve always wanted to be doing and what we’ve always wanted to be creating. We all come from very different backgrounds, but our main, kind of a consistent theme throughout the band is acoustic music and very heavily relied on folk Americana and bluegrass, but there are so many other styles of music that come out in the playing. Definitely more on the rock and roll side and like punk rock side, as well as singers and songwriters.
We love quality songs. I think it all has really come together these last few years that’s been the product of getting gear upgrades and being able to focus more on the music, being able to tackle some of these tasks that take up a large part of the day. We’ve been able to have some people come out on the road and help us.
That’s beautiful. What can we look forward to on this new album?
We are so excited to have this album out. It’s called Seven Devils and it’s kind of meant as one whole piece of listening with peaks and valleys. We wanted it to be emblematic of a show where we write a setlist that is hopefully taking everybody kind of through a little experience or a journey or what have you. This album really kind of demonstrates all of that. It has a variety of songs, song types, with some songs being a little bit more mellow.
Some songs are a little more in your face. I think it’s really a kind of polished fun. It’s music to listen to but it has a little more complexity than some of the stuff we’ve done before. There’s cool interludes, so there’s this whole theme that we have going with Dante’s Inferno and the seven deadly sins. Every song is kind of tied to that a little bit. We kind of dove deep into each song having a specific relation to a human component. We’re super pumped about it.
It sounds like it took a lot of intelligence to create this. There’s a lot of depth to it.
Yeah, I wouldn’t say intelligence because we’re not that intelligent, definitely intention for sure. We spent a lot of time talking about what each song meant to us and we honed in on each song having a certain feeling and or message when writing the lyrics. It took a lot of time, out of all the records we spent the most time making this one. We were in the studio for the most amount of time. We did a lot of pre-production work. But even when we were in the studio, we were spending full days just coming up with things on the spot. It has kind of a fun energy to some of these songs. We put a lot of time into it, but they also came to us very quickly. Like, we came up with some of the ideas for stuff pretty on the spot.
Kitchen Dwellers. // photo by Allison Scavo
Almost like a planned spontaneity.
Yeah, yeah.
Love that. So how did you guys come to where you are now as a band? Have any members switched out throughout the years? How did you guys come together to form who you are as a band?
So the band is something like 14 years old, so been around for a minute and there were a few lineup changes at the beginning. I’m actually one of them. I joined shortly after the band was formed. The original guitar player left and then I joined. I’m coming up on, I think it’s going to be 10 years this year. Once I joined the band there weren’t anymore no changes, not in the last 10 years. So the other three guys have been in the band since the beginning.
I thought so. I had seen you at festivals way before any of my concert photography was even an idea, let alone in fruition. I really did not think that there were any switches. I love that you guys are like a literal family at this point.
We 100% are. I mean, it’s interesting, I just saw in like music news that, the bass player from the 400 Unit from Jason Isabel’s band left, and it was like, “Oh man.” It could be for certain bands but you know, not every band. A lot of people now are like an individual part of them, like their band is their… is like their person kind of deal.
Oh yes.
So it’s like, when a band has been around for a long time and one member leaves it, it can be a very big deal. It is our family.
Oh yeah! Motley Crue found that out real quick. So when you guys are on stage, you know how the Grateful Dead switched up their spots over the years? Do you guys do that? When you’re on the stage, is the bass player always in the same place and the guitar player always in the same place?
So when we’re doing our live show, we pretty much have always been in the same place. I used to play on the other side of the stage but for some reason, we’ve kind of always been on this particular stage setup. But when we’re doing like acoustic stuff, we will change it up a little bit for just whatever fits the space. And also kind of acoustically, Sometimes it’s better for me to be on the other side next to the mandolin. But for our whole plugged in live show, we really haven’t changed it up that much. We’ve messed around with it, but I want to say that nothing ever really stuck.
Kitchen Dwellers. // photo by Allison Scavo
Oh yeah, I get that. Is there anything that you want to add?
It’s been a great year for the band and we’ve been having a lot of fun, like maybe some of the most fun we’ve ever had. And we’re just really looking forward to closing the year out with a bang and starting strong. I know that the Chiefs are playing the Packers on Sunday night. I personally don’t follow sports that much but our bass player is a diehard Packers fan.
Oh, that’s hilarious.
Yeah, so, maybe people can come and hackle Joe for hopefully a Chiefs win.
I don’t follow the sports either, but if you live in Kansas City, you kind of have no matter what. So you mentioned that you’re going to end the year on a bang, what is in store for us in 2024? Aside from this new album do you have tour dates in the works yet?
Yeah we’re doing a whole mountain run throughout Colorado, Montana, and Utah in January, and then February, we’re doing a whole West Coast run of shows up and down the West Coast. We have already announced our spring tour for nexMD: t year, which is the East and the Midwest.
Perfect!
Yeah, just kind of just continually touring.
Who is your biggest influence for this upcoming album? Do you have anybody that you honed into to like, tap into a sound or a unique idea or anything like that?
Every song is so different. You know, we definitely took some like Sturgill Simpson vibes. There’s some very different instrumentation from like Celtic music. It’s kind of all over the place. I’d say like some Sergio, some Pink Floyd. Glenn Brown, the guy who produced the album, we took a lot from him. He’s a product of the sixties and seventies. Incredible recording equipment. And general musician genius. So we took a lot of inspiration from him.
Kitchen Dwellers play RecordBar on Sunday, December 3, with Armchair Boogie. Details on that show here.
