Patrick and the People - 11/23/24 PATP Presents: Patrick's After School Special w/ Kingsdown

Episode Date: December 2, 2024

Special Guest: Kingsdown #Kingsdown #patrickandthepeople #angrypatrick #music #interview

You're definitely one of the most famous bands to ever come out of Arkansas. You, man, back in the day, man, everybody knew that name from the rock songs you guys put out. What's going on with Kingstown now? Who wants to take it? No, no. Yeah, to tell you the truth, we've been talking for years. We've stayed in touch, of course. Right.

And texting for years, kind of saying that we'd love to, you know, have some reunion shows and maybe start playing some more again. So to tell you the truth, there was a show here in Batesville that they put on with the Levitt Concert Series. Right. show here in Batesville that they put on with the Levitt concert series. Right. My wife's been badgering me for years to get things going again.

So she actually is the one that initiated the conversation with the Levitt. You know, that's interesting because a lot of times the spouses, that's not what they want. You know, they want you to stay home in the nest. But yours is like, get the hell out of here. Go tour or something. All of our wives are big fans of ours, so we're lucky in that regard. We got that show together and made it kind of a big deal in Batesville. Then we were like, well, we've got to keep this going. We put forth a lot of time and energy to get this

set back in order. It looks like you guys are going to be playing at the Rev Room. I'm going to come back to reunion. You're playing at the Rev Room the 23rd of this month, is that right? Saturday the 23rd. That's amazing. I certainly plan to be there. Tell me, when you guys got into it, who were your big influences? What, what led you to want to be a rocker? There's a lot of, there's a lot of influences. A lot of, a lot of us listen to like, it sounds cliche, but of course, like the classic rock and

stuff like that, that we all listen to. But I got to tell you, like, especially from my perspective, like Dwayne knows this better than anyone. When I was in high school, I was listening to, you know, like credence,

clear water revival and old stuff. But I was listening to also like buddy Holly and the beach boys and things. And Dwayne was always, you know, Dwayne and I went to daycare together, by the way. So we've been, we've been,

we've been around each other for a while. Okay. But yeah, so like Dwayne and I especially were always aware of, like I said, like big boys and different things like that. Buddy Holly, those kinds of artists from the 50s even. And some of the other guys can tell you too. There's a lot of jazz and just all kinds of stuff. Well, yeah, one thing that Kingsdown is known for is all of the different musical influences it seems to have in the style and tone of the music. I mean,

every song is a little bit different, has a little bit different fingerprint to it. I appreciate that very much. Yeah, when we, you know, we're touring heavily, you'd be shocked at the playlist that came out of our iPods. In the beginning, it was CDs. Right, right. I did iPods and even now those aren't even a thing anymore but it was always anywhere from rock and roll to classic rock

modern rock, country, grunge blues so of the shows that you guys have done what stands out to you as one of the most memorable? One of those, man, I can't believe it's happening moments. The Poison Show.

Yeah. That was almost amazing. When we opened for Poison there at the amphitheater in Little Rock, I don't know exactly how many were there. I was told over 13,000, but I never't, I don't, I never got like a specific count on that. Well, it was insane. However many it was, it was, I can tell you from eyeballs that it was, it had to be at least that many because it was a packed ass show. I know that. Yeah. Yeah. It's awesome. So now that you guys go ahead and go ahead. I'm sorry. Oh, I was going to say that there are a lot of other shows that were incredible,

specifically some of the ones we did, I mean, all over the U.S., but in Europe there were some really great shows over there. They know how to rock it as a crowd. Yeah. So now how do you guys, as far as the response in Europe versus the States, did you have a pretty great response there and you were able to kind of get into the market there a little more? Yeah, some friends of ours, well, actually, I'm wearing one of their shirts, Spoken, a rock band. They had been over there and we had kind of just decided, well, that sounds cool. there and we had kind of just decided well that would that sounds cool so i started hitting up some uh people over there um that do festivals and then we found a couple of uh more local type

agents in that area uh from ukraine and germany and things like that so we just kind of just built a tour around festivals so that we could you know pay our expenses and everything and then uh filled in shows in between everything so but yeah i know the crowd response over there was was unbelievable well that's that's pretty amazing well given that there's been this this you know reunion and now that you're you know out on the road so to speak is there an album in the works? Do we have an album coming? I sure hope so. There were a few songs that we never recorded

before we stopped the last time. Yeah, James is right. I mean, there are more than enough songs. In the can? Yeah, that are... That never got completely finished. Okay okay so you kind of pull those out yeah we were going through several of them not too long ago and i was like gosh we've got enough for a record easy um and um yeah and i hope you know we can also continue to to write

and create with most of our energy recently has been focused on just getting back in show shape and things like that. But what does that mean? What does show shape mean? Um, well, have you've seen us, right? Yeah, of course. Okay. Yeah. I thought, I mean, I thought so. Um, we've always just been believed, uh believed for one to be super energetic and put on a great show. Yeah. Very dynamic. Even I think that that goes back to even when we probably weren't the best

musicians, even as a, not that we're the best musicians now, but you know what I mean? Like even as a younger band, it was like, Hey, let's just above everything else.

Let's give these people a show, you know? Right, and I think that translated. Yeah, and we didn't want to come back as 40-year-olds being like, being those guys, you know, like... Like we should have stayed at... Yeah, you guys probably should have just stayed at... Right, you didn't want to come out and do the senior tour. Not that one, yeah.

We'll do that. I get that completely. So completely so so yeah by show shape i mean just getting tight again as a band and then also uh literally in shape conditioning for your the energetic performance that your your audience is accustomed to yes also five of us have kids now and so it was the first time for our kids to see all of us and we wanted to be local in front of our kids no that's that's pretty damn important i'll be honest with you of all the things that may be number one you know yeah for sure so what is the writing process like for a band like you guys you know i mean there's a lot of folks uh in the band and so does that work? How do you share that or do that?

I'm happy to keep talking, but I don't want to feel like... With us, I feel like it usually starts with a riff. It could be a riff that honestly any one of us wrote. Blaine is not on here. He's our drummer. I mean, even he has brought, you know, a guitar riff.

Hey, I think this sounds cool, you know. And then from there, we just kind of collectively we'll kind of work on it by each individually, but then just get together as a band and kind of hash out ideas and work through disagreements, which, you know, when you have this many people in a band, you know, but I feel like over the years we've kind of,

you learn to work with each other and, um, you know, learn to, I guess just have grace with each other. You probably get a little more mature and a little less interested in the fight part of it. You know, it was like, listen, we,

we, we were all past that now, you know, let's just work through it. Uh, yeah, there, there've been a handful of songs that came together,

you know, super quickly or whatever, but, we're definitely not one of those bands that, you know, just cranks out. Like, I mean,

I hear bands that, you know, just cranks out. Like, I mean, I hear bands of both kinds that can just crank out songs and it just seems to kind of just come together quickly. But then there's also bands that spend a lot of time on almost every line, every riff, you know, every note. And that's more, I think. So we're definitely not as fast. Most of our songs, most of our songs marinate for quite some time. But you know, obviously it's made good songs. And look, I mean, all these years later, people are still hungry for what you got. I mean, so that speaks, I think, volumes to your music.

Right. So I appreciate that very much. So that reunion show that we talked about. Yeah. That was, you know, when you talked about, yeah, that was, you know, when you talked about like, what was one of your favorite shows,

honestly, in the last 20 years of us playing. Oh yeah, for sure. I was telling people that night, like, I mean, there were people driving from out of state to come to Batesville,

Arkansas and hear us that had heard us like in 2007. Yeah. And now they're showing up and they're like introducing us to their 15 year old kids. And they're like, so excited. Some of them were literally in tears talking to me about it. And, um, so that to me was pretty incredible. That was, I told him that I could honestly not play single note tonight and I've already had the best time. Yeah. It was a special night. Well, I mean, it's rewarding. It's valid it's validating you know that that you've done something that meant something to someone and and that's that's a moving thing when someone wants to

introduce your music to their offspring and say hey this is a band that's worth hearing i mean that's pretty powerful man i mean not many bands you probably did that with your kids about you know probably just a handful uh so yeah that, that's a big credit to you guys. Thanks. Yeah. Yeah, that's true. So the show in Batesville obviously went amazingly well for you. It did.

Yeah, it was great. Yeah, yeah. So that probably put a lot of wind in the sails of, man, we do need to get back out here. It feels good. It feels right. Yeah. Yeah, we might not have done this Reverend show if show if the baseball show would have gone too poorly yeah yeah yeah

if you'd shown up there actually no one cares let's just call it quits again yeah yeah no that that'd be a little defeating wouldn't it yeah yeah now you know when you guys were uh you know dropping albums uh regularly putting out music you were getting praise from both mainstream as well as uh you know the christian side of the equation how is it that you balance that scale um i think we've always just been willing to play wherever um was willing to have us um you know and we didn't ever want to be super pushy with things. I mean, honestly, we just wrote about what we wrote about, you know, in some songs that happens to reflect, you know,

our faith in some ways and, and others, not so much. I mean, it's just about life or whatever. Yeah. You didn't define yourself as a Christian band. And others, not so much. I mean, it's just about life or whatever. Right. And everything else. Yeah, you didn't define yourself as a Christian band. You just had some Christian elements that were in your songs, or more or less. Yeah. Is that fair to say? And that kind of evolved over time, you know, finding out exactly who we wanted to be in the music business. And, you know, so, yeah.

If anyone else has anything to say about that, that's cool. A lot of that, too, goes back to just the way that we are. Like, we've all been raised, you know, certain ways. And, like, our faith bleeds over from our parents and grandparents and things. It's just our own life experience, too. Obviously, you learn on your own, live in your own life what you believe. But like Dwayne was saying, it's never been so much like, hey, this is our faith and we're going to be in your face with it.

Right. You're not a striper. It's kind of just who we are as people. We're not any different when we're playing a show than we are hanging out with somebody before a show or after a show or some weekend hanging out with our kids. We're pretty much the same people, um, 24, seven, three 65. So like, you know, we don't get up and put on like a, you know, crazy grungy rock and roll show and then turn into like, you know, roll somebody else after that or vice versa.

We don't get on stage and we're like real reachy, you know roll somebody else after that or vice versa we don't get on stage and we're like real preachy you know thinking that we're something special we're just well there are guys the other part of that is there's six of us in the band so we're like a microcosm i guess of a country i mean they're like we all i, we don't all believe the exact same thing. Sure. I wouldn't expect so. Yeah. You know,

we all have our own. So, yeah. So what, you know, you, when I asked about an album, you say,

Hey, I hope so. So, you know, what, what would prevent you from getting to that, that place to be getting that album out? Because we all want it now.

You know that, right? You can't come back on stage. You can't come back and perform and then leave us without a new album. Right? No, I don't think that anything is going to prevent us from doing that. Cause I was going to say,

I can pick up an instrument or help out. I mean, whatever I need to do here. Yeah. It's really the challenge at this point in our lives with like, I don't remember who said it earlier. Yeah. James about the kids. We all have kids. We've got businesses or, you know, things that,

so like it is much more challenging now than it was 15 years ago. Just logistically. Yeah. So I'm confident that we're we're gonna have an album uh it's just a matter of us being able to find the time uh and aaron said the funding to to um to make it happen well and how can we all live in different places? One of us moved to Nashville, so. Okay. All right. All right. Yeah. Technology being what it is, that at least is a little more, a little easier than it would have been. Yeah, no, definitely easier than it would have been, you know, those years ago when you started. I mean, then it was, it was a real difficult

prospect to do something like that. But now, obviously, times have changed and you can exchange that data much more easily than once you could. No, no, I think it's all very, very exciting. So you've got the show coming at the Rev Room. What's after that? What's next? You're going to book some more shows? What do you got lined up? gonna you know uh you can book some more shows what do you got lined up yeah i mean i do i do think we're going to try to book some more shows um and hopefully uh as i said earlier a lot of our energy has been more towards crafting the show itself back you know getting it back in order um and maybe after this we can take a little more time again to focus on the creative process of you know maybe getting some of those songs together or or new songs um either songs that we've had for a while that just haven't been completed or

brand new ones um that so i'm hoping that that can kind of happen well in the meantime i think what we could do is make sure that we get you as many streams as possible to try to build some of that up right uh you get some of the revenue up so where's the best place to stream your music today uh we're on i think all the major streaming platforms right spotify uh apple um you see you're across the board they can just go and put in kings down and that's what you should be doing now everybody is putting in kings down don't even wait for this interview dan go ahead and just put it in and yeah go ahead and load it down as a it's a great band to play um right before you go to sleep and just fall asleep and just put that album

on repeat. I mean, that sounds like a great idea. You know, just subluminate that in there. That's a really good idea. Even if you want to turn the volume down, you just push play and just let it roll. Just like Kingsdown Whisper, sweet metal in your ears. I mean, that's what you want.

Yeah. Okay, guys. Well, listen, I'm thrilled to see you back. Oh, one thing real quick. People can also go to, I mean, that's what you want. Yeah. Okay, guys. Well, listen, I'm thrilled to see you back. Oh, one thing real quick. People can also go to, I think, Aaron is at kingsdownmusic.com right now. That's it. Yeah. Okay. Yeah.

It's just a merch. They can buy some merch and stuff. Well, we've honestly got some pretty gnarly merch you can order. It'll ship straight to your house. Lots of cool designs. That's another way they can help get this album out. More designs than we've ever had at one time,

honestly. Buy some merch, stream some music, download some music. Let's get them filled up so we can get this album going. Come see us at the Red Room. I really want that show to be as special of a night as the batesville one was uh we had we've had so many great shows in little rock particularly at the

red room um so we're really excited to come back i know that chris and suzanne are excited i know that sam is excited i know everybody there uh. And I hear the buzz around here. So I know it's going to be a phenomenal show for you guys. I hope to personally make it myself and get out and see you. But what I do want to say is, you know, as you guys move forward and progress, you know, we'd love to share information for you and visit with you from time to time about where you're at, what's going on, how we can help you, and how we can keep Kings down moving into the future, man. Thank you so much.

Oh, no, it's awesome. We're very excited and very thankful for your time today. I know that it is difficult logistically to get everyone together. So let me say thank you so much for joining us today on Patrick and the people and and sharing your update with us. And we can't wait to see on the 23rd in Little Rock at the Rev Room and see what's next. Thanks, Patrick.

Thank you guys so much for coming in and I appreciate it. Have a good one, guys. See you here in a couple weeks. Yes, sir. We'll see you then, the 23rd. All right, man. Bye-bye. 1 min Takk for at du så med. Thank you.