Singer-songwriter is coming to the Turf Club in St. Paul with the New Amsterdams on May 6, 2023. Tickets for the show available HERE. Doors are at 7:00pm // Show is at 8:00pm. 21+ only.
Kevin Devine
Singer/songwriter Kevin Devine rose through New York’s indie rock and emo circles in the early years of the millennium, first as the frontman for emo band Miracle of 86, and later as a solo act. Thanks to albums like 2003’s Make the Clocks Move and 2005’s Split the Country, Split the Street, his introspective and emotionally urgent songs about love, life, and politics won a loyal fan base that followed him through a brief stint as a major-label act. Following his 2009 standout Brother’s Blood, Devine collaborated with members of Manchester Orchestra as Bad Books, a project which went on to release three albums over the next decade. He continued releasing solo albums throughout the early 2010s and in 2015 began a split-single series called Devinyl Splits which over the next four years saw him working with artists like David Bazan, Cymbals Eat Guitars, and Jesse Lacey.
Nothings Real, So Nothing’s Wrong (2022) is New York-based songwriter and musician Kevin Devine’s tenth full-length record. His career began in the early 2000s with the band Miracle Of ’86. Along the way, Kevin has amassed a loyal and rabid fan base. He has built an interesting career with the ability to play as a solo artist, his own band – The Goddamn Band – and as a member of Bad Books alongside Manchester Orchestra, and as a touring member of The Front Bottoms and Brand New. With his tenth full-length record, Devine invites old fans and new listeners to join him on an authentic, intimate, prismatic journey into the preservation of self and what that means, as reclaiming the inner landscape of our minds fast becomes our last, best remaining method of resistance.
The New Amsterdams
In March of 2012, singer and guitarist Matt Pryor decided to give up music for good. After seventeen years of writing, recording, and touring with a handful of bands—including emo ambassadors the Get Up Kids and folk-tinged indie troubadours the New Amsterdams—Pryor was exhausted, so he took some time to search for himself. First, he spent a few months working on a friend’s organic farm, then serving sandwiches from a food truck, but these he discovered, didn’t scratch any of his itches.
It was good timing, then, when former Get Up Kids and My Chemical Romance keyboardist (and Reggie and the Full Effect frontman) James Dewees approached Pryor about a collaborative recording project. “He emailed me out of the blue with some demo ideas,” Pryor explains. “They were the completed instrumentals of some songs that he recorded at home. I wrote lyrics and a melody and sang it, and then he sang the harmonies, and then we sent it to [producer] Ed Rose and he made it sound great.” The resulting three-song EP, co-released by Equal Vision Records and Max Bemis’s Rory Records, is something that sounds familiar and instantly different, something fresh but still in character, and something that Pryor found particularly cathartic.
It was this sense of satisfaction that lead to Wrist Slitter, Pryor’s third solo record and one that stands apart from his others. The title track speaks the album’s driving theme specifically. “It’s not about anyone else,” Pryor says, “and it’s not an anti-suicide anthem. It’s acknowledging the fact that I can go to a dark place sometimes, but that it’s never as bad as it seems.” It was this “dark place” that drove Pryor to turn his back on music for good. Six months later, though, he’s ready to release two new records—a turnaround he attributes to exploring a world apart from performing music. At the end, though, he found that he was where he needed to be all along.
