INTERVIEW: Get your Kix on with this 30th anniversary celebration
Photo: Kix are celebrating the 30th anniversary of their 1988 album, Blow My Fuse. Photo courtesy of Mark Weiss / Provided by Kix press page with permission.
Kix, the hard rock band from Maryland, have been going strong for more than three decades, earning a righteous spot in the rock history books. To honor that legacy, the band recently released a remixed and remastered version of their 1988 album, Blow My Fuse.
That original album went platinum, and the guys of Kix are throwing a yearlong party for its success. That means the concerts in 2018 will feature all of the songs from the recording — front to back, without missing a beat.
Kix feature Brian “Damage” Forsythe on guitar, Ronnie “10/10” Younkins on guitar, Steve Whiteman on vocals, Jimmy “Chocolate” Chalfant on drums and Mark Schenker on bass. Schenker, who has been with the band for more than a decade, had the idea to resurrect the album on Loud and Proud Records for its 30th anniversary.
“I did an awful lot of work on the reissue,” Schenker said in a recent phone interview. “[In 1988], I was a Kix fan. I was friends with Ronnie at the time, and the bands that I was in were warming up for Kix often in the mid-Atlantic region. So we knew each other fairly well, so for me thinking back on that time, it was a time playing at the local club scene and Hammerjacks and the Bayou and all these great clubs that we used to have around the mid-Atlantic region that aren’t there anymore. L’Amour is another one that comes to mind. Thinking back on that, it seems like another lifetime, but yet the memories are so vivid. It just seems like it was last week.”
Disc one of the new release, appropriately titled Fuse 30 Reblown, features a remixed and remastered version of Blow My Fuse, while disc two features never-before-released demos of each of the 10 tracks. That’s a special gift for fans of “Don’t Close Your Eyes,” “Red Lite, Green Lite, TNT,” “Cold Blood,” “Dirty Boys” and “Boomerang.”
“Since I was friends with Ronnie, I did actually have the demos, so that’s one of the reasons why I wanted to include the demos on the release because I distinctly remember that the demos were great,” Schenker said. “I used to ride around in my car and listen to the demo cassette well before the record came out. Ronnie had given me demos, just a cassette, that had all the songs on it, and so I had already been digging those songs for five or six months before the record came out, when they had gone off to record it and release it and everything. So me and my friends had a little bit of access that most other people didn’t, so I knew how good those demos were. And I was already in love with the songs. When the record came out, of course, it had a little bit bigger sound. Some of the songs are exactly like the demos, and some of the songs are pretty differently evolved from the demos. So for me it was icing on the cake because I had already cheated a little bit. I had the pre-released stuff.”
Having Kix play the entire album on the road means they can enjoy rediscovering some of those deeper tracks, like “Boomerang” and “Piece of the Pie,” which are not always in a typical set list. Fans can see this in action when the hard rockers come to town in the next few weeks. They have gigs set in Leesburg, Virginia (Nov. 17); Harrisburg, Pennsylvania (Nov. 23); Raleigh, North Carolina (Dec. 1); and Los Angeles (Dec. 7), among other cities.
“It’s kind of a whole package idea that I had, and so the guys were like, ‘Yeah, let’s do it,'” Schenker said. “Ever since I’ve been in the band, it’s been 15 years now, we would always talk about what songs to pull, deep tracks to pull off any of the records to add to the set. And one of my favorites was always ‘Boomerang,’ and I would always say, ‘Boomerang.’ And they’d be like, ‘No way, forget it, shut up. You’re the new guy; get out of here.’ So for me it was a way to leverage ‘Boomerang’ into the set, which I think is a lovely, quirky, surfer-rock, punky song that is just such a blast to play, and I just love listening to it. I love the melody, so that was one song that they didn’t play very long back then.”
Another tune like “Boomerang” is “Piece of the Pie,” which didn’t see that much playtime when it was originally released in 1988. Now it has been worked into the Kix tour.
One of the reasons these songs weren’t regulars in the 1980s was because the band was coming off the success of Midnight Dynamite, and their time on stage was already jam-packed with in-demand tunes.
“So they didn’t play ‘Boomerang’ very long, and they didn’t play ‘Dirty Boys’ very long,” he said. “I don’t ever recall seeing them play ‘Dirty Boys,’ and I always liked that song. … It’s quick. You’ve got to pay attention. You can’t get off, or you’re going to train-wreck yourself.”
No doubt Schenker and Kix will be paying attention and enjoying this 30th anniversary celebration.
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
Kix are currently on tour celebrating the release of the 30th anniversary of Blow My Fuse. Click here for more information and tickets.
