Kevin Devine: What’s So Funny?
Brooklyn’s own Kevin Devine released his sixth full-length album September 15th of this year on Razor & Tie / Favorite Gentlemen Records. The album covers everything from the environment to love to the debt clock in New York. He distinguishes his latest album from his past work by experimenting with different sounds generated by a variety of instruments, some improvised at times. In this interview, he talks about the album, music he wishes he was a part of, and persevering in the ever-increasingly competitive music industry. The album has an evolved sound with poignant lyrics that encompasses the marginalized woes of the time.
So you had a new album out this year, Between the Concrete and the Clouds… what’s that about?
KD: What’s that about? So I have a new album coming out, that is true. It’s about forty minutes long. It’s about the greenest looking record I’ve ever made—the artwork is all shot in the woods by a photographer named Ruben Cox. It’s about my favorite title so far, which is Between the Concrete and the Clouds. And it’s about a lot of things, like lyrically… songs about love and politics, and the debt clock in New York… it’s about a lot of things.
You said that your album talks about politics… what would you like to see for America?
KD: I would like to see people calm down. I’d like to see the gap between our rhetoric and our actions closed. I’d like us to be a more helpful than militant presence in the world. If you take over the world, then you’re responsible for it. A lot of the things that go wrong come back around on us… like we have to take our shoes and belts off in an airport because we’re afraid someone’s gonna try to sneak a bomb on the plane. I think there’s probably more useful ways our leaders can spend their time implementing politics for people who are disenfranchised. Or I’d like to see the current gap between rich and poor close. I’d like to see the trillions of dollars we spend on illegal wars be spent on giving poor people clothes and food, giving middle class people relief on their skyrocketing mortgages. You know, I’d like to see a lot of things, but I’ll probably just see my girlfriend for dinner later.
What’s a song that you wish you wrote?
KD: “Humpty Dance” by Digital Underground is a good one… there’s so many songs. Like pretty much all of Leonard Cohen’s songs, Bob Dylan’s songs, a lot of Neil Young’s songs, a lot of Sinead O’Connor. I would be happy to write many of those songs. They’re all so good. “Black Boys On Mopeds” by Sinead O’Connor is a great song. I can’t write those. They’ve already been written. Oh, and “Kids” by MGMT. I wish I wrote that… that was a cool song.
What’s been music’s major influence and impact… what made you want to pursue a career in music?
KD: I don’t know. I guess the answer could be traced back to being a kid. I always really liked music. I have older brothers and an older sister, and my mom who grew up in the ’60s, so she was big into all of that kind of cultural moment. So I heard a lot of that music growing up and I was always interested in that… when Nirvana came out, I felt like that was our band… like my band, you know? I was like twelve or thirteen when that record came out, so it kind of felt like that was mine.
In your career, I’m sure you’ve met with obstacles, so how do you overcome pitfalls and what motivates you to persevere?
KD: Sometimes it’s like anything continued, you find something to complain about right? Even the greatest thing over an amount of time is going to seem less great. Like, if you eat pizza everyday, you’ll get sick of eating pizza eventually… getting to play music for a living is like being a kid who gets to eat pizza all the time. So sometimes it’s great and sometimes you’re sick of it… being a musician at this level where I am, it’s kind of like I’m big enough to be making some kind of noise but I’m not big enough to be able to write my own ticket all the time. [But] it’s like getting mad at the weather or something—when you get mad at the things that are bigger than you. It’s like if I miss a train and I get mad that I missed the train, it doesn’t roll the train back into the station or get me to where I’m going any faster, it just gets me mad. So that’s kind of how I try to approach my career… as best as possible…. [It] can be challenging, but fuck it.
So I won’t ask you what the “five favorite records” question, but what’s a guilty pleasure song that you listen to?
KD: Oh, what’s that’s song? “You can run, you can hide, but you can’t escape my love…” by Enrique Iglesias. I think that melody is really great and I really like the way he says “but you can’t escape my love.” So that’s one… but anything you like shouldn’t be guilty.
So you’re a big Bob Dylan fan? What’s your favorite Bob Dylan album?
KD: Right now, because it changes all the time, Blonde On Blonde. I can make a case for every record between Freewheelin’ and John Wesley Harding, and then I would skip a little while to Blood On the Tracks, then I would skip again to Time Out Of Mind, which is like twenty years. But I could make a case for literally fifteen records by him and say that’s my favorite one right now. But Blonde on Blonde, “Visions of Johanna”… oh my god, that song is just ridiculous. “The ghost of electricity howls in the bones of her face…” Alright, come on. How are we supposed to write songs after that?
If you could write a song that everyone would hear, what would your message be in the song?
KD: It’s hard. I don’t know if I can answer that question, because I don’t know. I think the message I most like is, you know, people should start from a place of understanding and move backwards from there, rather than start from a place of contention and never move forward from there. There’s not as much empathy as I would like to see. You could write a song about that, you know? “What’s so funny about peace love and understanding?” as Elvis Costello said.
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