30. Reel Big Fish - Part 2 (w/ Devon Kay)
We're not happy until you ARE happy as Checkered Past continue their discussion of Ska megastars Reel Big Fish. To help, Rob and Celine welcome Devon Kay of Devon Kay and the Solutions to break down RBF's Jive years. First, they swap some tour stories, talk about the Solution's new album Grieving Expectations and twitch streaming. Then, they get into Reel Big Fish's more polarizing years from their upbeat horn pop to their internal breakdowns to their furious final mainstream record. They cap it all off by playing a round of Sophomore Slump and answering listener questions!
Devon Kay
Devon Kay & The Solutions are a power pop band from the flats of the Midwest. A super-group of Chicago musicians playing their feelings in a major key, prepare to ponder your very existence as you power through the last sip of your mostly-backwashed Pabst. Prepare for an adrenaline filled ride into terrifying mind of Devon as he explores what makes him tick. Life isn’t too short. It’s too long.
Devon Kay readily admits that he finds it difficult to write a normal love song. Usually, when he starts putting pen to paper in an attempt to be romantic, it goes off the rails and ends up becoming more morbid and existential. It’s a pattern he’s noticed over the past decade or so he’s spent playing with his band The Solutions, but it’s one that “The Space In-Between” manages to break.“This is more of an introspective love song,” chuckles the Chicago-based musician.“It’s one of the first ones that isn’t about you or your spouse dying and that bumming you out. I think it’s a breakthrough.
”A jaunty, upbeat tune full of horns, driving guitars and a paradoxical sense of uplifting melancholy, “TheSpace In-Between” issomething that pretty much everyone in the entire world can relate to after whatwe’ve all experienced over the past 18 months–constant interaction with our immediate loved ones.“It’s a love song about appreciating each other’s space,” Devon explains. “Like drugs, everything has to be enjoyed in moderation. This pandemic really doesn’t care about moderation. It laid everything out unrelenting, and this song embodies that in accordance to the time we spend with our loved ones.
”The song also serves to announce that Devon Kay & The Solutions have signed to Pure Noise Records. Self-produced and mixed by Mike Kennerty from The All-American Rejects, it’s a song that shows off themajestic musical capabilities of the band –which is completed by Ryan Scottie (drums/vocals), JacobHorn (trombone), Jake Levinson (bass), Ian Terry (trumpet) and Joram Zbichorski (keyboards/vocals)–and their uncanny ability to make music that, in Kay’s words, “bum people out with my songs, even though they sound happy.” He laughs,then adds: “If you don’t like to listen to the lyrics,then you can just listen to nice happy music.”
“The Space In-Between” is the first single from the band to be release on Pure Noise Records. Devon admits it’s been hard to track down the origin of The Solutions,but that this song and album represents everything it’s been leading up to.“It’s been what I’ve called my personal music since god knows when,” he explains, “but this is the final and most definitive version of the band. This line-up and this team is truly the foundation for our music both sonically and emotionally.
”You can really hear the chemistry and talent, as well as their familiarity with each other,flowing through this track. Or, as Kay, in typically humorous, self-deprecating fashion puts it: “Make sure you surround yourself with people who are better than you and then try not to take all the credit. The band took my pretty standard songwriting ability and amplified it to a million.”The song also demonstrates a quandary Kay has found himself in ever since he started using the moniker –that Devon Kay & The Solutions make music that is truly in a world of its own. As a result, he says thathe’s always had trouble fitting in to any one particular musical scene. “We don’t belong anywhere. And I just want to be part of something.”
Really, though, he shouldn’t be worried about not fitting in. Because what makes Devon Kay & The Solutions so awesome, so wonderful, so magical, is precisely that they don’t fit in. This song is the most perfect example of that to date.
-Pure Noise Records
