Iâm daydreaming about Pinollasâ legendary Dead Kennedys â83 show as I hunt for the site of Kid Meets Cougarsâ Saturday-night CD release party. In Las Vegasâ punk-rock heyday, warehouse shows werenât so much the exception as the normâwith kids and cops regularly butting heads over the legitimacy of such underground music gatherings. Hmm, I wonder as I finally stumble onto the Whiskey Wolf Warehouse off Polaris between Sirius and Desert Inn, will the cops bust up tonightâs indie bash?
More importantly, I wonder whether the show will be air-conditioned, considering 8 p.m. temperatures are hovering near an unusually sticky 100 degrees. A quick inspection of the facilityâmore storage unit warehouse, really; apparently Bee Movie the Band practices hereâreveals the presence of a couple of oscillating fans offering little relief even before the windowless room fills with bodies. Itâs gonna be an oven in here.
Iâm amazed as car after car pulls up over the next hour; soon there are close to 100 people milling around outside, some drinking, some wishing they were. Maybe the cops really will show.
Nah, the closest we come to reliving Pinollasâ iconic momentâwhen Metro swooped in but allowed the DKs to finish performing to avoid a riotâis an announcement from electronic opener Ex-Dinosaur: âEverybody should come inside, because technically, we shouldnât be doing this here, and apparently there are some cops rolling around.â Cops never materialize, but the ploy works all the same, packing the âvenueâ as Pan de Sal hits the âstage,â a stack of wooden pallets topped with carpeting.
Sonically, the tight quarters work far better than I expected, thanks to ceiling insulation and clever speaker placement. âWe set it up in surround,â Kid Meets Cougarâs Brett Bolton explains. The beat-happy Pan de Sal gets the crowdâfilled with local musiciansâmoving pretty vigorously to set up Kid Meets Cougarâs similarly high-energy set. Birthday couple Bolton and Courtney Carroll coordinate their electronic pop concoctionsâfrom new disc For Breakfastâwith videos projected onto the wall; the live debut of Mike Thompsonâs âHey Heyâ is, in the words of its proud director, âa moment.â
Close to midnight the show nearly does get shut down, without help from law enforcement. Pan de Salâs Jeff Madlambayan starts spraying champagne on Bolton, Carroll and everything else on or near the stage. Boltonâs mic is toast, but quick-thinking buddy Vincent Campillo of Afghan Raiders helps KMC avoid further damage, ripping off his shirt and toweling off the bandâs laptop. Now thatâs punk rock. Jello Biafra would be proud.
Courtney Carroll and Brett Bolton need no prompting to rap and beatbox. Sitting in the rear lounge portion of Downtown Cocktail Room early one Saturday evening, the duo is already giddy to discuss its new album, For Breakfast. Upon mention of one of its songs, “Dr. Dre,” which ends with the two on rhyme and rhythm detail, acapella style, Carroll perks up. “Let’s do it!” Bolton smiles and counts down the beat. “1. 2. 1-2-3-4….”
And the two begin trading short verses and oral beat blasts. Carroll offers a line while Bolton boom-chik-booms, and, without missing a beat, the two swap duties, the words and voices changing but the human beatboxing sounding undisturbed and consistent. What began as a casual experiment in the car one day became a defining segment in a song, sans any instrumentation. Why rely on computerized beats when their own voices will do?
For Carroll and Bolton, a real-life couple who make up the electro-pop duo Kid Meets Cougar, the do-it-yourself ethic isn’t the usual artistic dogma, but what gives their act its charm and uniqueness — and KMC has charm and uniqueness in spades. It’s why their enthusiastically delivered live performances have become talk of the downtown music scene. It’s why people stare so attentively at their stage set-up, an complicated network of hardware and instrumentation that somehow produces such humanistic bliss. It’s why they can talk talented local filmmakers like Jeremy Cloe and Mike Thompson — the latter directing the captivating video for KMC’s “Hey Hey” — into producing accompanying shorts for their live show. And it’s why, even in a year already crowded with local releases, For Breakfast is one of the best Vegas albums of 2009.
A personal courtship that began in November 2007 developed into a casual musical foray in January 2008. There was no intent to start a serious musical project — especially given that both already were in Bee Movie the Band, and Carroll was also a member of The Clydesdale and Love Pentagon. “I never had a girlfriend who was into music, let alone playing music,” says Bolton. “It was cool just to experiment. After awhile, I said, hey, we have some pretty cool stuff we can do right here.”
At first, the two percussionists would face off with their respective drum kits and whatever else they could play simultaneously. But then they got creative with their ever-growing analog/digital arsenal — especially Bolton, a builder and manipulator of noisy gizmos. He installed drum pad on his guitar so his fingers could make beats. Carroll gets particularly excited about this. The pads not only trigger rhythms, but video clips (all stored via the Resolume Avenue 3 VJ program). This, on top of the conventional drum pads he also plays. And the other trigger pedal he uses. And whatever other rhythm Carroll the drummer provides, too.
You see, KMC is all about taking two or more pieces of machinery, regardless of their standard function, and — with the help of MIDI technology — making them complementary. Some samples and pre-recorded bits can’t be avoided. But there’s so much going on that it all looks and sounds live. And despite the occasional misstep in their multi-instrumental choreography, they thrive on being in control of the musical performance. It’s akin to driving stick as opposed to coasting on automatic transmission. And they modestly credit their relative mastery of musical multitasking to just being drummers.
Even when it came to For Breakfast, Carroll and Bolton ultimately decided to mix and master it themselves. It turned out to be just as well, too. “Everything came out better than we even thought it would,” says Carroll. “I feel the songs made themselves. We would come up with a little part and think, oh, that sounds cool. And then it would expand both ways from that. Like, how did this come from that?”
After the band plays its all-ages CD release party this Saturday, it hits the road for a week with pals Pan De Sal and then concentrates on more music/video synergy for the ever-developing live show, undoubtedly the primary builder of KMC’s fanbase.
“We’ve been pretty overwhelmed with the reception so far,” says Bolton, who cites their friends in Uno Momentum and Macro-Fi as their biggest motivators. “We just belonged to this group of supportive musicians that didn’t care what you did as long as you did it and loved what you did. That’s when we started making out music and not caring what others thought. So it’s all been positive.”
It is here Carroll acknowledges the limits of KMC’s appeal. “But I think if we played the Double Down, I don’t think we’d go over so well!”
Kid Meets Cougar plays its CD release party with Pan De Sal and Ex-Dinosaur 8 p.m. July 18 at Whisky Wolf Warehouse, 310 Polaris Ave. Cover: $5.
Kid Meets Cougar: Courtney Carroll and Brett Bolton
Photo: Corlene Byrd
KMC seemed to start life more as a bedroom project than an honest-to-goodness band. When did that change?
Courtney Carroll: Yeah, at first we were just jamming. We each had our own bandsâI was in The Clydesdale and Love Pentagon, and Brett had Jr. Anti-Sex League. We were hanging out all the time, so we just started playing some music while we hung out.
Brett Bolton: Originally we had a bunch of different instruments, and we would try to loop everything live. It was a lot to handle, so we decided to go the sample route. But instead of just pressing play on a CD of music, we actually trigger each thing that we play live. And then eventually, I found out about software that would allow me to trigger videos along with audio, so thatâs where we are now.
Prior to this project, you were both strictly drummers. Whatâs it been like singing, writing songs and doing everything else involved in running a band?
BB: Itâs a giant experiment for us. Weâve always just thought of ourselves as drummers, but we feel comfortable trying new things around each other. So we took the next step and started singing in front of each other âŚ
CC: Iâd never sung in front of anybody before! Or played keyboards.
BB: I had written songs for a while, but just in my garage. Then I showed Courtney the stuff, and she liked it, so that built my confidence.
So regarding the name Kid Meets Cougar … what exactly is your age difference?
CC: [Laughs] Itâs only six years!
BB: Sheâs 28, Iâm 22.
CC: Iâm obviously not a real cougar [laughs]. It started as a joke with our friends.
BB: We get mixed reviews about the name ⌠but weâre hoping that our personalities come out a little bit in it. Weâre not trying to be cool.
On one hand, the album [For Breakfast] features some very realized songs, the sound of a band with serious intentions. On the other, there are momentsâthe rap in âDr. Dre,â for exampleâthat feel like two kids playing around. Why mix it up like that?
BB: We were recording everything as we were doing it, so it was kind of an experiment in technology for us. We just did whatever we felt, like having five different drum parts going at the same time ⌠We wanted to include everything that weâd been working on. That little âhey, heyâ rap was something we used to do in the car.
CC: And the beatbox part is something we used to do all the time, so we were like, we should put that on the album, too.
Any song youâre especially pleased with?
BB: A lot of them. Weâd start with, like, a bass line and a drumbeat, and weâd just record and record and record until we got this whole song. And now, with it mixed and mastered, itâs like, hey, this turned out to be a pretty nice song. I think my favorite is probably the first track, âItâs All in Your Head.â Oh, and also âFly as Hell.â
The lyrics to âFly as HellâââWeâre cruisinâ, looking fly as hell tonightââare pretty over-the-top âŚ
BB: [Laughs] We came home all nicely dressed after a wedding, and thatâs when we made that one up. It became a whole song about clubbing and throwing money in the sky.
Are you still planning on having local directors work up accompanying videos for every track on the album?
CC: Yeah, and every song will have a video at [Saturdayâs show], but some of them are just filler videos [for now].
BB: As far as legit videos go, so far weâve got Mike Thompsonâs âHey Hey,â Jeremy Cloe made one for âSasquatch Con Bazooka,â and Joel Schoenbach is doing âItâs All in Your Head.â [For now], the rest will be just stuff I edited.
Why are you doing the CD-release show in a warehouse?
CC: Both of our birthdays are the 20th, so we wanted to have our birthday party/CD release/video debuts/tour kickoff/tour fundraiser that weekend.
BB: And we couldnât book any other places that night. We also decided to do it there because we can make it special. Itâs not the same bar everyone goes to every other weekend, and that kind of makes it an adventure.
Has simultaneously being a couple and a band stressed your relationship at all?
BB: No, itâs been a great thing. Weâre always together, which works out really well.
CC: The only problem is that our practice room is at our home, and I like to chill, and heâll be like, âWe need to practice!â
So Brettâs the taskmaster?
BB: Kinda, yeah. Itâs hard to stay focused on the band when youâre dating and youâre both busy all day, but we work it out. Weâre pretty lucky like that.
Kid Meets Cougar packs the âhouse.
Kid Meets Cougar: Courtney Carroll and Brett Bolton
