Did you ever have a conversation with someone who was so optimistic and positive that they almost made you feel guilty for being the cynical bastard you are? Maybe not, but I had that very experience while speaking with Stephen Kellogg (he of Stephen Kellogg and the Sixers, or SK6ERS, if you’re nasty) on the phone last Friday.
So, if you’re looking for some morose, shoe-gazey downer music, don’t go the the Highdive Wednesday night at 7 p.m., when doors open. However, if three days of interminable rain has got you down and you could use a pick-me-up, it might be just what you need.
Curtis Peoples takes the stage at 8 p.m., and SK6ERS start at 9. Tickets are $15 in advance, and likely a little more expensive at the door. As we promised in this week’s Overture, “They’re likely to be one of the best live acts you’ll catch all year.” And, as you’ll read below, Kellogg himself will refund your money if you have a shitty time.
Smile Politely: So, whereabouts are you today, Stephen?
Stephen Kellogg: We’re in Spokane, Washington. Washington State.
Smile Politely: Any snow on the ground out there yet?
Stephen Kellogg: We actually just did this radio performance, and we walked out and it’s snowing. We’ve gotten really lucky this tour, no major weather to contend with, and this, I’m not super-psyched about it right now. One week to go, and then we’re stowed at home, but we’ve got this snow going on.
Smile Politely: Are you crossing the mountains tomorrow?
Stephen Kellogg: We go west to Seattle tomorrow, but the big thing is just taking it one day at a time, you know. The whole thing that we’re doing out here is too damn overwhelming if we start thinking about what we’ve got to do tomorrow. It’s a blessing and a curse. It keeps you in the moment, but some days you wake up and think, ‘A little foresight would have been useful here.’
Smile Politely: I run into that in my own life quite often, yeah. So, what’s the worst weather you’ve ever run into out on a tour?
Stephen Kellogg: There have been so many Buddy Holly-type moments. I think the worst is we did one where we came out of the venue in Rochester, New York, and it was snowing, and there was like 11 inches, and I forget, we had some really big gig, I forget, but we just thought, we can’t miss this – it was opening for Guster five years ago. It was a gig that just meant the world to us. But to get there, with the snow, it’s normally a four-hour drive, it took 11 hours or something, because it was so bad. And we got there, we got to the gig, and then they cancelled it when we got there. So, we went out and had a beer and took a deep breath, and we realized it wasn’t a tragedy.
Smile Politely: At least you didn’t run into the ditch trying to get there.
Stephen Kellogg: Exactly.
Smile Politely: How’s the tour been?
Stephen Kellogg: It’s been going so great. We’re really just having a lot of fun, feeling really inspired, this has really been an incredible tour so far. It’s really just beginning, because the new album just came out two months ago, so we’re really just getting started, but things are feeling really good. Thanks for asking.
Smile Politely: I’m curious if you’ve played in Champaign or Urbana before? I’ve only been here a couple of years.
Stephen Kellogg: Yeah, it’s not a place we’ve gotten to very often, this will be our third time ever going there. But we have one really memorable gig that was in Champaign. Whatever that arena is downtown, we were opening for O.A.R. there a few years ago, and Mark, the lead singer of that band had got food poisoning, so O.A.R.’s tour manager popped backstage and said, ‘Stephen, can you go out and sing for a while. We like that sort of thing. It was one of the more unique experiences we’d ever had, and it happened to be in Champaign where I went out and fronted O.A.R. for a half hour or something like that. We’ve been back once since then, but we have warm memories of the town because people were really cool and nice about it.
Smile Politely: You guys are all from Western Massachusetts, or is there a mix?
Stephen Kellogg: Our newest member, Sam Getz, a guitarist, is from Cleveland, but the rest of the band is all from western Mass. Real rural, lot of cow shit.
Smile Politely: You grow to love it after a while though, don’t you?
Stephen Kellogg: Yeah, it does. Like, ‘Oh, I’m home. Smells like shit.’
Smile Politely: As you mentioned, you have a new album out. How long have you guys been on Vanguard?
Stephen Kellogg: This is our first year on Vanguard. We signed our deal with them and about a year ago, we started making The Bear. I have to say, they’re a really great record label to be on. We feel like we found a record label that really understands us. We’ve been on Universal and Atlantic prior, and we’ve met really great people there that worked really hard, but in terms of synergy and connecting with the people that are working on getting this music out there, we just feel like we’re in great company there.
Smile Politely: Yeah, I wasn’t familiar with Vanguard, but looking at their artist roster, they’ve got some great people on there that have been doing their thing for a long time [ed.: like Tab Benoit, Doc Watson, Indigo Girls, etc.]
Stephen Kellogg: Levon Helm of The Band is on there, and that’s all we needed. They’re like our heroes, so when we saw that, we were definitely interested.
Smile Politely: Do you guys play any songs from The Band in your live set, or is it all originals?
Stephen Kellogg: We do. There are about 70 songs that we’ll play on a given night, and we try to make it real different every night. It’s just something we do with our show. In there, there are a couple of Band tunes we have done: ‘Cripple Creek,’ ‘Rag Mama Rag,’ we’ve done ‘The Weight’ a couple of times. There are definitely Band songs that rear their head. There’s not a staple that we always play, but they’re all available to us any night.
Smile Politely: For somebody that hasn’t seen you live before, how would you describe your live show?
Stephen Kellogg: You know, it’s kick-ass. It’s really great. If you want to go have a fuckin’ great night, then come out to the show. I say that as sort of a third party. It’s a fun show to play, and anybody that comes out and doesn’t feel that way, I’ve said it before and I mean it, I’m good for it. Have a shitty time at a Sixers show, I’ll give you your money back. I think it’s a good time.
Smile Politely: I’m glad you have confidence in your product.
Stephen Kellogg: Yeah, and the thing is, we’re so under the radar, sometimes you get to venues and the crowd’s small, and we don’t play any different in front of 50 people than we do in front of 500 or 1,000 people or 5,000 people. We’re out there playing the music, but I do realize there are so many people who haven’t heard of us, and my hope is, ‘Come on out and check it out, and if you don’t dig it, that’s totally OK,’ but I hope for our sake so that we can keep doing this for many years to come that more and more people will come to the shows as we go here.
Smile Politely: It looked like from your website that you have a lot of holiday fundraisers and benefits going on. Do you want to talk about that?
Stephen Kellogg: Yeah, I’d love to. There’s a couple of things. At some point on this ride, we realized that it wasn’t just about us and being cool. When you do something and make a difference in one person’s life, you start there. Two of the things we got involved in were working with the St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital. We went down there and played a few times. This tour, we hit the St. Louis Children’s Hospital; we love kids, and we love the opportunity to go in there and do that and feel like that anything that anybody is able to do to further develop the research that it’s going to take to deal with leukemia and devastating stuff like that, we want to be part of it. This year, I did a duet with a seven year-old girl to ‘Winter Wonderland,’ that we’re doing as a fundraiser track. We do a calendar every year that people can buy on the website, and we give the proceeds to St. Jude’s. It’s just made our life a lot bigger for being involved with these people. That’s kind of the frontrunner, although we also do stuff for the troops. We feel so damn lucky that none of us had to serve and glad that there are people willing to do that. We want to go back and play to people that are doing that. Those are our focuses right now.