Kites & Powerlines

It was late afternoon when I arrived at Kites & Powerlines’ rehearsal/recording space in the hills of Binghamton’s South Side. I followed the sounds of their playing to the back door of a splendid suburban house. Not knowing whether they were rehearsing or recording, I waited until they finished the song they were in the middle of when I arrived. After knocking on their door and introducing myself, we sat down on their back patio for an informal chat.

Kites and Powerlines is Alex Walker (vocals, rhythm guitar), Scott Rasmussen (drums, sound engineer), Dane Minoya (lead guitar), and Conor Mitchell (bass guitar). They’ve been together for about two years. After hiring and dropping a couple of bass players, they settled on Conor Mitchell. Reeve Longcoy, group founder and former bass player, was with the band from the beginning and stayed for about a year, year and a half, much of the band’s life to date. Then he left to marry and start a family. He’s still considered a big part of and a great influence on Kites & Powerlines by his former bandmates.

I asked Alex Walker how his band got the name. “That came from a long time ago,” he replied. “I had a friend, Phil, I consider my best friend. I can’t remember exactly what the quote was, but it said ‘kites and powerlines’ in there somewhere. It was talking about life in some context. To be honest with you, it was so long ago. I named an acoustic project after it. And that somehow formed into this over six years.”

Dane Minoya chimed in: “I remember when you asked me to join up, we couldn’t think of a name. And then we decided one day that you had the name, ‘Kites and Powerlines’ before, so we decided to keep it.”

I remarked that their new single, “New Life,” has gotten airplay on a local commercial FM station, something which rarely happens in these days of rigidly-controlled radio formats. Rasmussen responded, “We had entered the 2015 Battle of the Bands back in [last] October, I think, that The Drive put on. And we were the grand prize winners. Part of the winnings is air time.”

Though Kites and Powerlines have a few EP’s out, they started recording their first full-length about a year and a half ago. The album is planned to be a 12-song full-length. It should be released within the next two months or so. The band recorded it all themselves, “the right way,” as they put it, without sacrificing any artistic integrity. They’re adamant about recording using real instruments, and recording all original and real sounds. They’ve actually recorded most of what they’ve completed so far upstairs in a big, open room in one band member’s home, to get real reverb. They’re trying to do as little post-production as possible and just get everything the way it was when they recorded it.

As an aside, one member spent the whole day smashing things on the street and making weird sound effects for one of the songs, the working title for which is “One, two, three, fuck!”

“Right in the beginning,” remarked one band member, “Al counts off ‘One, two, three’ and then screams, ‘Fuck!’ It’s one of the more offensive songs I guess! The rest of [the songs] are all happy - well, not all happy - but they’re not as explicit! We had a good time making a bunch of cool noises and recording them.”

The band calls their upcoming album the biggest thing that they’ve ever done. Scott Rasmussen has been engineering, mixing and producing the album and while all band members are involved in its production, it’s Scott who does the lion’s share of the hands-on engineering and mixing.

I asked the band what their primary influences were. Alex Walker shared, “We listen to everything. Dane started playing metal. That was your thing,” to which Minoya retorted: “I started playing guitar when I was about six. And I started learning on classic rock. Zeppelin, Hendrix, you know, the basics. And then as I got older, I hit my mid-teens and I was swooned by the metal. I played in a couple of different metal bands, and then I decided that wouldn’t work for me. So, then I kind of went back to my roots a little, and then I ended up here. I take a lot of influences from, obviously, Hendrix, Jimmy Page, John Frusciante, [a] guitar player for the Red Hot Chili Peppers. That’s generally where my influences come from.”

I asked the band who their favorite artists were. They dropped names like the Red Hot Chili Peppers, The Foo Fighters, Alt-J and Glass Animals, as well as Led Zeppelin, Incubus and especially Jimi Hendrix.

Dane Minoya remarked that he was currently going to school at SUNY Broome for guitar, as a performance major. He also went to Berklee School of Music up in Boston the previous summer.

The band is currently booking their CD release show. While they don’t have too many gigs in October because of the work on their album, they are hoping to book the Ransom Steele Tavern for their CD release.

Alex Walker closed our interview thusly: “I think that we are all trying to come together to do something bigger than ourselves and that’s a big part of our band. And I think that every time we plug our instruments in, we’re not just going ‘OK, how can we just make it through together?’ We’re thinking, ‘How can we influence people in a positive way?’ Because we live in a pretty dismal world, and I think that our main goal is to make people think and feel and try and be better people. So, I think that’s a huge part of our band.”

For upcoming show dates and more information, you can find Kites and Powerlines on Facebook. To hear their music, visit kitesandpowerlines.bandcamp.com.