The Last Step is the closing chapter in the story of the characters first introduced in Evil Demon Weed, as told by City Council member, Tone Deaf.

Bob (the Pusher), Candy (the Evil Temptress), and Johnny (the Good Kid on the Path to Ruin) have been a big part of the growing Kicksville "mythology": they're featured on the cover on Enter the Flavor Hut, they're the thread that sews our live show together, and they're regulars in Tone Deaf's poetry.

When we last saw them, Johnny was taking his first puff of the Demon Weed, led on by Bob and his femme fatale, Candy. Now, as we catch up with them in The Last Step, Johnny has become a hopeless junkie, Candy has taken the Vows, and Bob has fallen into the depths of a drug-induced psychotic break. Fun for the whole family!

The Music
To paraphrase Frank Zappa, music without dissonance or tension is like eating cottage cheese. If that's the case, then The Last Step is the spiciest Pad Thai you ever had! Musically, this song owes a lot to Zappa's work with Captain Beefheart: check out the song Sam with the Showing Scalp Flat-top, and you'll see what we mean....

Citizens
cover art: "Monkey's Memento" by Tone Deaf
Conrad St. Clair: keys, programming
Mike Stehr: keys
Lou Caldarola: drum kit, percussion
Chris Huntington: guitar
Beaker: guitar
Tone Deaf: spoken word

This track marks the first appearance in Season 2 of City Council member, Aya Peard. According to Aya, Touch the Ground is about "...keeping your head down and wits about you.... It's a no-worries song: move forward, follow through, commit, and don't get trapped!"

We started working on Touch the Ground during production rehearsals for last summer's tour, which makes it one of the first songs we were able to write with the City Council all in one place at one time. We brought in Tim Gruber and Amir Alam to overdub some tasty extra bits, but the majority of the recording is pretty much the City Council, giving the track a very "live" feel.

The Music
The song is really built around the bass line - I started playing the progression, and everything else just fell in place on top. The bass on the final mix was actually recorded live (first take, too) as a scratch track for the initial sketch of the song. There might be a few minor clams, but overall the part had such a good feel it didn't make sense to re-track it. And although we've mentioned this before in Season 1, it certainly bears repeating: guitar + E-bow + Filter Factory = seriously hot aural action!

Citizens
cover art: "Pity the Foo" by Tone Deaf
Conrad St. Clair: bass, guitar, percussion, programming
Mike Stehr: percussion
Lou Caldarola: drum kit, percussion
Chris Huntington: guitar
Beaker: guitar
Aya Peard: vocals
Amir Alam: guitar
Tim Gruber: percussion

Fair warning: If you're easily offended, you probably shouldn't listen too closely to this song! Started as an homage to Ministry (one of The Mayor's biggest influences), Krankypants is crude and filthy, but seriously tongue-in-cheek. Krankypants, the song, features the secretly-taped mutterings of Krankypants, the man. Ironically, despite his gruff demeanor, Kranky is an amazingly sensitve, award-winning jazz pianist, arranger, and accordionist. He's easily one of the best improvisers I've ever worked with...or even seen for that matter. And on some level, that talent translates when he's telling his very un-PC stories - you might get a little disturbed, but they're funny as hell and told with a certain.....shall we say, "flair"

The Music
Here's a good drummer joke (and it's funny because it's true): We had recorded most of this song around a programmed drum part, but it just wasn't clicking. During one tracking session with Lou Caldarola, we played him the song and asked if he wanted to replace the programmed drums with a live part. Lou goofed around a bit, and ended up recording a few measures each of the four or so "standard" Ministry beats. We edited the tracks he cut, fit them into the song, and a few weeks later sent Lou a rough mix of the result. His response was: "I love this song - who played the drums? They're awesome!" He still doesn't remember tracking this song....

Citizens
cover art: "Mmm...yuck" by Tone Deaf
Conrad St. Clair: keys, programming
Mike Stehr: bass
Lou Caldarola: drum kit
Chris Huntington: guitar
Beaker: guitar
Tone Deaf: wow
Krankypants: voice samples

Tani Diakite, the singer on Kalamaya, is from the Wassoulou region of Mali. The language he's singing in is Bambara (also called Bamanakan), and very roughly translated, Kalamaya means "it's not good to fight." That's also not quite the right way to spell it, but Tani didn't get back to us until after the track went out to the distributors. Oops... Anyway, the lyrics of the chorus are (again, very loosely translated): "Music makes me happy / I don't want to fight / I just want to play my ngoni / I don't want to stop." In other words, "I don't want to fight, I just want to play my ngoni all day."

The song was built around Tani's melody and kamale ngoni (African harp, like a cora but smaller), but since Tani makes this stuff up on the fly, the final version is very much Kicksville-ized...there isn't much structure to Tani's open-ended jamming/improv. And forget about getting him to do the same thing twice....

The Music
Tani's melody is incredibly haunting and beautiful - the main goal when arranging this song was to stay out of its way! Andy Ewen's guitar part (the main riff through the song) really adds a nice touch of old-school R&B, and Chris Huntington's flowing Afro-pop lines in the bridge provide an interesting contrast. Spice it up with some airy synth textures and a 1974 Buick hubcap strapped on top of a snare drum, and you've got a song!

Citizens
cover art: "Spiritual" by Tone Deaf
Conrad St. Clair: bass, guitar, keys, programming
Mike Stehr: keys
Lou Caldarola: drum kit
Tani Diakite: kamela ngoni, vocals
Andy Ewen: guitar
Chris Huntington: guitar
Beaker: hubcap, ride cymbal
Djam Vivie: djembe, kroboto

Dumfukistan, the first release from The Singles - Season 2 is available now! Click HERE to download!

notes from the Commissioner....
Here's where the name came from: I have a postcard that shows a map of the US broken down into Red states and Blue States according to the 2004 election results. The Blue states are labeled "America", and the Red states are labeled "Dumfukistan". Here's the scary part - on the flip side of the postcard is another map broken down into Free and Slave states circa 1860...the Red states match up almost exactly to the Slave states.

The Music:
This song started as an introduction for the City Council's main drummer dude, Lou Caldarola, in how to build a part out of loops: We sent him into the drum room to track a few measures of a groove. Then, we had him come back in the control room, pick a cool bit, and tweak the hell out of it with effects and whatnot. We repeated the process with different grooves, and assembled one coherent part from the bits and pieces. Once the song had taken shape, Lou went back and tracked a completely different groove over the top to complement the loops. FYI, on the final arrangement, the main groove is made of the distorted, nasty loops we cut up, and Lou's overdubbed part is the light jazzy stuff on top.

Another cool thing about this song is that Tone Deaf's monologue over the end is completely off the top of his head, which explains some of the non-sequiturs.... He had tracked his part in the middle, we were still rolling, and he just started spewing. One last thing I'll mention is this: Listen carefully to the track. Notice that right after Tone's first spoken-word bit, there's a breakdown to just a shaker and Chris laughing in the background? That's not a shaker...

(The first person to guess what that "shaker" actually is gets a free copy of our entire catalog! Email me at info@kicksville.com)

Song Credits:
cover art: "Political Blind Eye" by Tone Deaf
Conrad St. Clair: bass, programming, vocals
Mike Stehr: keys, vocals
Lou Caldarola: drum kit, percussion
Chris Huntington: guitar, vocals
Beaker: guitar, percussion
Tone Deaf: spoken word

The Singles - Season 2 is the first Kicksville release that really focuses on The City Council. There are still about 18 writers and musicians that have contributed to the songs on Season 2, but almost every track is built largely by The City Council. For a few of the songs, we were even able to write as a group for the first time instead of our usual process (i.e., The Mayor and The Commissioner start a song, bring in various Citizens to play/write, and assemble the final song like it's made out of Lego blocks.). As a result, even though we're even more stylistically spread out than earlier releases, the songs have a cohesiveness as a whole that we haven't had before. Lyrically, we've been joking that our subjects range from politics to porn, but the closest we come to a love song is a tune called "Hot Alien Orgy"....

First up, Dumfukistan!

Skope Magazine just published a very good review about Kicksville and The Singles - Season 1. Here's a sample:
"Welcome to Kicksville. Your tour will last roughly an hour and will consist of an episodic journey into a genre-bending society.... As for the music, it’s unlike anything I’ve ever heard before. It’s electronic mixed with pop mixed with blues that is certainly never boring. In an age where a lot of music sounds the same, it’s refreshing to find a band that certainly isn’t afraid to take risks."

To read the whole article click HERE

This one's simple: straight-up high-energy drum 'n bass silliness. Also, like 'Southbound', this isn't a cover, but Anna's trumpet part weaves around and finally quotes a bit of a Miles Davis melody. Thus the song title....

The Music:
Tips and tricks: take an every-day vanilla sort of drum beat and run it through a plug-in called a buffer override. Instant weirdness! "My car won't start" is the track name of a loop on this song that we programmed and mangled using this technique (it’s the first squiggly percussion bit you hear, just after the guitar fades in). And speaking of guitars fading in, here’s more tips and tricks: guitar + flanger + delay hold + Filter Factory = very fucking cool.

Citizens:
Conrad St. Clair - keys, programming
Mike Stehr - keys
Lou Caldarola - drum kit
Chris Huntington - guitar
Beaker Parpovich - guitar
Anna Purnell - trumpet

When we started compiling songs for Season 1, we dug into our back catalogue and pulled this one out. We had worked on a version of this song many years ago but got sidetracked and never finished, so we decided to start over from scratch. This has always been one of our favorite Police songs: it has a very different feel from their usual sound, it's very dark, lots of synth sounds, and not a skank or a bubble to be found.

The Music:
The vibe of the original is so cool, we wanted to keep our version pretty close to that. We also kept the arrangement similar, although we updated the synth sounds, broke up the vocal parts (Mike is singing the intro, Chris is doing the verses, the chorus is Conrad and Aya), and added more meat to things in general. The recording came together very quickly, despite the fact the project file ballooned up to 250 tracks before comping it down to 100 or so for the final mix....

Citizens:
Conrad St. Clair - bass, guitar, keys, vocals, programming
Mike Stehr - keys, vocals
Lou Caldarola - drum kit
Chris Huntington - guitar, vocals
Beaker Parpovich - guitar
Aya Peard - vocals

Weirdo Recording Techniques 102 (prerequisite: WRT-101): You gotta be careful with this one - some people might have a problem with being bugged... Anyhoo, take a small, unobtrusive sort of mic, stash it somewhere in the studio control room, and run it to a DAT machine. Roll that DAT constantly whenever someone is in the room. After everyone goes home, edit to your heart's content! You'll find your best results will come from folks with "colorful" personalities.

The Music:
This song started as sort of a response to Cirque du Soleil's musical directors. Conrad had auditioned for them a few weeks earlier and had been told he "didn't have enough globality". We still don't know what that means, but even though Conrad didn't get the gig, it gave us a great song title! Musically, it's as far from a Cirque song as you can get - distorted drums, chunky guitars, freaky theremin bits, and some very disturbing subliminal messages....

Citizens:
Conrad St. Clair - bass, keys, percussion, programming
Mike Stehr - keys, percussion
Geoff Brady - theremin, percussion
Beaker Parpovich - guitar, percussion
The Subliminal Chorus: Conrad, Mike, Randall Harrison, Shea MacElwain, Kraig Greff