I kind of lucked into this interview. I had seen the name Stephen Kellogg come up in my email a time or two, but I didn’t really know too much about the guy and his band Stephen Kellogg and the Sixers, so I didn’t pay too much attention. It took a friend at a concert in Iowa sending me text upon text of: “This is the greatest band ever,” “OMG. Best live show ever,” and then “I will kick you if you do not interview this band or do something for them. So amazing.”
What choice did I have? I was told I would get kicked if I didn’t make this interview with Stephen Kellogg happen. Granted, I’m now kicking myself for missing out an an amazing group for so long. I quickly caught up to the singer in Lawrence, KS.
So do yourself a favor and read this interview about nicknames, marching bands and how to survive in the music world for nearly ten years. Then get yourself to MySpace and give them a listen. My friend was right. Stephen Kellogg and the Sixers really are amazing.
Bethany, PopWreckoning: How was the show tonight?
Stephen Kellogg: I had a lot of fun. I had a really fun night. I have a growing affection for Lawrence. After missing this town, I’ve played here twice in two months, and they’ve in my feeling been magic.
PW: I saw something on Twitter–I don’t know if you prefer nicknames or real names–but on Brian’s Twitter, he said something about some girl saying the Bottleneck was her favorite Stephen Kellogg and the Sixers show without Stephen Kellogg or something. Were you not there or what happened?
SK: What happened was that the first time, and this is why Lawrence is kind of legendary, the first time we were coming through and we had been playing for like three years, four years, and for whatever reason we never had gotten to Lawrence even though we knew it was a cool town, we were ready to do our gig there. We had a day or two off, so I flew home because I have a wife and two daughters and I try to see them as much as I can. I flew home. I caught a really bad flu–like a stomach flu, one where you can’t fly. I called the guys at probably 8 in the morning when I was supposed to be flying in and I said, “I’m not going to make the show tonight.” They said, “What should we do?” And I said, “If you’re up for it, play the show. We’ve never been there.” They spent the whole day–oh and this is the other thing, we had a sub guitarist at the time because our guitarist was having surgery. So it is like Boots and Kit and this guy who sort of knows the music, but is a little bit new and is a great artist, this guy Kyle, the three of them did the gig without me. The big triumph was that they sold kind of a lot of CDs to the people that were there. They called me that night and go, “We don’t even knew Stephen Kellogg in Stephen Kellogg and the Sixers anymore!” Then they went to Oklahoma City and got their butts kicked the next night. That is really the spirit of this band. We have a motto: “Dare to suck.” Don’t be afraid.
PW: And you guys since have a recent new addition to the band?
SK: Yeah.
PW: You’ve grown a bit.
SK: Boot and Kit and I have always been in the band for six years together, but the guitar position has moved around a couple of times. We’ve had some great people and all good friends, always amicable, but for awhile now we’ve been looking for something firm. Sam Getz just joined the band and is playing peddle steel and guitar and we all feel like we’ve found our missing piece.
PW: Awesome.
SK: Yeah.
PW: With the nickname thing, what is his?
SK: Steamer.
PW: How do you guys pick the nicknames?
SK: I don’t know. I don’t know. They just find themselves. They create themselves. We have them for everything. Even the little table I use on stage to put my harmonica on is named Alan. I don’t know.
PW: What is the tour bus nicknamed?
SK: The Bear. It is brand new.
PW: That’s the Bear? That’s what the album is named for?
SK: Noo. This Bear came after The Bear that is the record. Kit named that one. He went, “Ah. It is gold just like the Bear.” So we went with that. Our trailer is named Evan.
PW: I feel like I’m missing out on an inside joke with the album title and what is “The Bear.”
SK: “The Bear” to me, that’s not an inside joke at all. There are plenty of them to miss out on in our organization, but “The Bear” is life. The whole record is just life. It starts off with the line, “Sometimes you get the bear, sometimes the bear gets you.” If you just substitute in life, that’s what the whole record is about. Sometimes you get life, sometimes life gets you. Every song on the record is about either the joys or the disappointments of life. To me, that sums it all up and “The Bear” is a nice little concise song where this is what we’re all in for, no matter who you are.
PW: This is also your first release with Vanguard. Before that you had been independently?
SK: No, we did some and I was on my own doing independent then the Sixers formed. Then we were signed to Universal for a record. Really nice people, huge label, but really tough for a band like us. How do you market us? We’re transitional. Like, “Hey, I work at a country radio station, can you qualify?” We can qualify as anything, which is a blessing, but it has hurt us too because they are good at marketing very concise things like this is the Jonas Brothers. This is a pop act. This is whatever. This is a roots act. We straddle all these and this just how we are. We were on Universal, then we were on Atlantic. Same thing. Very tough. Vanguard has embraced the diversity that is our band has run with it. We’re all having a lot of fun. It is blowing my mind how much more we are doing with a lot less.
PW: I feel like your name has been coming up more recently, especially considering you’ve been doing stuff since 2000.
SK: Yeah. Good. That’s really good. I feel it too. Part of it is us. We’ve changed. We know why we’re playing now. When we signed to Universal, we were like, I hope this cool life doesn’t go away. We don’t ever want to look bad. Hope we look cool and you just want to write cool tunes. Now we’re singing because we want to keep this job as long as we want to keep it and we have to grow. When you go out on stage, if there are five people there, you need to make sure they are fans or there will be zero people there. Everything you do counts. We are trying to really honor that.
PW: How do you guys stay motivated and energetic? You’re coming up on your thousandth show, 300 in just the past two years. How do you stay motivated and not get burnt out and be like I want to quit and just go back to my family full-time?
SK: Yeah. Well, I mean, it is a great question. I like answering. The truth is, at the end of last year, we had gotten burnt out. We were like, “Wow. We’re not being joyful.” And this band was never designed, even though we write songs that are sometimes sad, we’re happy. That’s what we want when people leave; we want people feeling better than when they came in. At that point, we had, even though we couldn’t afford it and didn’t know if it was the wrong thing to do, we just took time off. We just said, “We’re going to go in the studio.” We went overseas and did some charity work and played some military bases and did things that reminded us why we were doing it. We ran out of money and ran even more out of money. We had a lot of struggles in that way. What I saw happen was the love came back. That’s what you have to do. You have to find ways to keep the love alive and honor whatever it takes. It means you have to have the balls to do that and I was really proud that we did. We hit the ground with record playing with a lot more soul than I think any of us had ever done. Changing the sets every night helps too, just changing the songs. And daring to suck. If you’re like, “Woah, we totally blew that tonight. Let’s try to get it tomorrow.” It gives you something to do.
PW: Great answer.
Interrupted by Terry Clark (Carbon Leaf): Anyhow, that’s how I brought peace to the Middle East.
SK: Exactly. I’m spinning yarns over here. This is Terry.
PW: A friend mentioned at the Iowa show you said you had a college student on tour writing a book about you guys.
SK: Yeah.
PW: How did that come about? What’s it about?
SK: It’s remarkable, right? We’re all geeks. We’re all readers in the band. We love learning. We go for history stuff. Everyone else is making DVDs, but here we are with two young writers working on books about the band right now. One of them is writing a much different book. She’s a fan who just happens to be a great writer. This other cat, Hunter Sharpless, is on the road with us, sends us this email like: “I hate college. I’m not getting much out of it. It’s such B.S.” His email hits our management. Our management is like, “This does not sound appealing. An unhappy college student wants to write a book. What does he want to do? He just wants to party or whatever.” So Hunter flies out to Ohio to meet with us and he has written up this heartfelt, two-page thing on like this is the type of book I would write and here’s why I’d want it to be you guys. I really put him through the paces. I was like, “I’m sure you’re a nice guy, but there’s so many bands whose whole existence would be more exciting. We’re a working class band that goes out and does what we do. We’re not always nice. We can be grumpy because we’re going to drive ourselves out to Boulder for eight hours right now. We’re not going to go to sleep and then we’re going to go do radio with people that aren’t always excited that we’re there a lot of times because we’re relatively unknown because you’re always on.” So I told him, “I can’t bring somebody on the road who is going to judge that all the time and if you just want to party, we’re not the band.” Hunter was really was persistent. He flew down and did a week with us, which is not easy for a 19-year-old to get a rental car. He did all this stuff. I started to feel like he would write a really good book and a really honest book and a book that was like, hopefully would show the full picture and not be just a fan piece. He has a good idea and an interesting angle to put on it. I became convinced that he would become empathetic to our situation, especially by living with it. We just lost a crew member and needed an extra set of hands. So we made a deal. And he’s not a drinker and not a liability. We said, “You come out, we’re going to need help. We’re going to need to bring somebody out to help and it will be you. We’ll pay for you to come and you can do your research for your book and spend three months on the road with us.” He’s from Iowa, so up there, I actually brought him on stage and told his story. Most of the time he’s quietly in the back, grabbing cases and helping out. Running to the store, wrapping up the presents I gave to Goose on stage. He’s doing that, but we see him writing in his journal constantly, so we know he’s making his book. What kind of book he writes and the other author that’s working right now, I’m excited to have our story be told because I think it is worth telling, and I think it takes a lot of courage on both these guys’ parts–both Hunter and Nicole [Roberge]’s part–to set out and be ambitious to write a book. So many people go, “I’m going to write a book,” but how many people do it? It’s cool. It’s a great story. It’s cool.
PW: It’s like the “Almost Famous.”
SK: It is. The guys actually went out in Minneapolis to party it up for a night. We don’t do it that often, but sometimes we do to blow off steam, the guys went out. I didn’t. Hunter didn’t. And Jessica, our tour manager, didn’t. So Jessica and I went back to the room we were sharing and we put Hunter in a room and we were like, “Man. Tonight’s ‘Almost Famous.’ The guys are going to come back with some girls.” And Hunter’s like, “No. Not really?” And I’m like, “Not really.” It was a fun story.
PW: That’s cool. I look forward to seeing books come out of that.
SK: Me too.
PW: You guys just did a video not too long ago. Any progress?
SK: Another great story. We approved it today. This is amazing. We are in like the business of just dreams coming true. With Vanguard, it has been fantastic. We were like, “What if Boots, who does a lot of these little home movies, makes some movies leading up to The Bear?” So he did these little five minute movies that are on the web site. They liked them. We weren’t originally going to shoot a video because the songs had just gone to radio and we were just going to see how it goes, but they liked Boot’s stuff so much, they were like, “What if you directed it?” Which we loved because the only videos we ever made were these cheesy videos where we were playing in a warehouse and then there’s a girl. It’s never us. We don’t feel comfortable. So the idea of one of our own making the video instantly appealed. Somebody floated the idea of what if we got a marching band? So we were like, let’s go for broke and see if we can get the UMass marching band, which is where we all went to college. It’s like one of the top ten marching bands in the country, so it was a long shot. We reached out and said we were alumni and on a shoestring to beat all shoestrings. We shot the video for less than $2,000 with everything, including flying Steamer in and every little nook and cranny. Vanguard wasn’t trying to be cheap about it, they were just like do you want to do this and everything kept falling into place. Next thing we knew, we shot this amazing video with 400 kids doing a synchronized dance that Boots and I had choreographed like two nights before in our hotel room–like a ridiculous hip shaking. They’re all doing it and they spell out S-K-6-E-R-S. It’s great and we approved it today. YouTube really likes it. We’re waiting and hoping in the next couple weeks that they’ll launch it and have it as a main video. Sometimes they feature a video. Whether they do or they don’t, it will be up within the month for sure. It’s for the song, “Shady Esperanto and the Young Hearts.”
PW: That’s cool. I helped with a video one time and it is just so hard to get people to just show up, let alone synchronize something.
SK: Oh my gosh. How cool to have 400 people learning it–they could only give us a couple hours because they had rehearsal–and to have Boots directing it, Kit teaching them how to do the dance and they gave us UMass uniforms…it took us a long time to realize that it’s not about money. It’s about how much energy do you have and how bad do you want to make things happen? You’re going to fail sometimes. The bear will get you, but a lot of times, you can get what you want if you just have the energy to keep up. The video was one of the five most fulfilling artistic moments of my life.
Editor’s note: The video has since been released and can be viewed here.
PW: Let’s end on that. It’s such a positive high note.
SK: Yeah, I should get into my sweatpants for this epic drive that’s going to take two days. But we’re picking my wife up. We’re going to get her at the Denver airport. I have inspiration to keep me driving.
Stephen Kellogg and the Sixers: website | myspace
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