Kevn Kinney wrote his first songs more than 40 years ago, and he never stopped. Visit his art-strewn Scottdale house, and he will be casually composing a new one.
“This is a kitchen table kind of song,” he said one recent afternoon, strumming his Takamine, his long hair pouring out of his Atlanta Falcons cap. He already had the first line and a three-word refrain. He was practically finished.
How many songs has he written? “Oh, 300-ish?” his wife Anna Jensen guessed, as she dodged a backfield of four rescue dogs — three big sweet ones and one small tough guy. (”We over-adopted during COVID,” she said.)
That song-total doesn’t include the works in progress stored in Kinney’s iPhone, a new wrinkle on the old days when inspiration would strike and Kinney would call his own answering machine and sing it. Many were written with his band-mates in Drivin N Cryin, many on his own.
For the first time this wealth of material is being richly exploited. Kinney’s fellow musicians, local and national, have been digging into the trove of Kinney compositions to record their own versions for a year-long tribute to one of Atlanta’s most durable and prolific artists.
Such musicians as Wreckless Eric, Jason Isbell, Patterson Hood and Gordon Gano (of the Violent Femmes) have already recorded an album’s worth of Kevn Kinney covers called “Let’s Go Dancing: Said the Firefly to the Hurricane,” and three more albums are on the way.
Credit: Anna Jensen
Credit: Anna Jensen
The next LP is done and will arrive sometime this spring. In the meantime the Jensen/Kinney label Tasty Goody Records has been dropping a digital single every other week at www.tastygoodyrecords.com.
This sudden bloom of Kinney covers came about because of a scuttled 60th birthday party. When COVID interrupted plans to gather in Kinney’s honor, Jensen asked Kinney’s friends instead to send videos of themselves singing his songs.
It started out as a secret. Jensen took some screen shots of Kinney’s contacts and started calling people. (”Typically I don’t sneak into his phone,” she confessed.)
Then the videos came pouring in. “I was encouraged by some of Kevn’s friends to go ahead and get some of it properly recorded and turned it into an official project,” she said. “I decided I was going with the ‘Go big or go home’ attitude.”
And that’s when the project stretched out to 100-plus songs over the course of a year. Jensen, a visual artist, painted new artwork for every album cover and every single. (You can see them at AnnaJensenArt.com.)
Credit: Anna Jensen
Credit: Anna Jensen
“It was such a huge compliment to be asked,” said Vanessa Briscoe Hay, of the Pylon Reenactment Society. Hay recorded a raucous version of “Count the Flowers” from Drivin N Cryin’s 1986 debut, “Scarred But Smarter,” but with a trippy, noisy intro.
“I have such great respect for his music and his voice,” said Hay. “His voice has always got me.”
Kinney’s pure, high tenor is equally affecting in his band’s weepy countrified ballads such as “Check Your Tears at the Door” and their no-quarter rockers such as “Fly Me Courageous.”
Of that voice, Nashville singer-songwriter Shelly Colvin said, “It pierces like a freaking freight train. And it can be the sweetest. No one has tone like Kevn, bar none.” Colvin contributed an ethereal “Save For Me” to the project.
Kinney grew up in Milwaukee where his father strummed Kingston Trio songs and his older brother Mick played 78s on an ancient Victrola, including World War I songs and Sousa marches. “I had a lot of eccentric interests for my age,” said Mick.
Kevn was also enmeshed in Milwaukee’s resurgent punk scene, listening to Die Kreuzen and the Violent Femmes, and gathering with fellow reprobates in a scene he captures in the acoustic song “The House Above Tina’s Grocery.”
In 1985 he followed Mick to Atlanta. Borrowing bassist Tim Nielsen and drummer Paul Lenz from well-known Atlanta band the Nightporters, the trio became Drivn N Cryin. Their music has always balanced folky songs with a punk-imbued Southern rock sensibility, or, as Mick says, “the polarity between the full electric and this balladeer, troubadour guy.”
They built a loyal following with steady touring, and Parker Gispert of the Athens band The Whigs said that many a Georgia musician has grown up on Kinney’s songs. This is why so many were eager to contribute, he said. Gispert’s big brother took him to his first rock show ever, a DnC performance at Chastain Park.
Gispert is repaying the debt with a version of “Together,” from “Fly Me Courageous.”
The title tune from that album has become a must-play for the members of Drivin N Cryin, along with the crowd-pleaser “Straight to Hell.” Once upon a time the band saved those tunes for the encores. Eventually Kevn took pity on his aging audience members and started playing the hits in the middle of the show, telling the crowd they could go back home to their babysitters if they wanted to.
Nielsen laughs at this conceit. “I don’t know why he always says that. All of our fan’s kids have grown up. They have GRANDkids, for (heaven’s) sake.”
Kinney feels obligated to play those hits, but he’s found ways to make them interesting. Recently he played a “song-swap” show with Michelle Malone at the intimate Napoleon’s, and he switched “Courageous” from a rocker to a subdued, spooky ghost story. “Straight to Hell” grew a spoken-word middle section in which the girl next door invites the narrator to an illicit rendezvous with a sparkling white Pearl drum set. “We played ‘Jumping Jack Flash’ all night long.”
Jensen said assigning the songs from the Kinney songbook to potential cover artists has required planning and diplomacy
“It took some tippy-toeing and dancing around,” she said. “I would go through Kevn’s catalog with that person in mind and think ‘yes, yes, no, yes.’ Once somebody picks one, I take that one off the table.”
Kinney, humbled by the undertaking, said, “It’s, of course, embarrassing for me.” But he is loving it. He particularly appreciates all the new takes on his old songs.
The guitar battle between Jason Isbell and former DnC guitarist Sadler Vaden at the end of “Look What You’ve Done to Your Brother,” for example, was “like a fantasy,” Kinney said. “I wished it went on for two more minutes. It was epic.”
Proceeds from physical album sales will benefit a series of charities, including Out of the Woods, inspired by Shelly Colvin’s son Judge. It helps children with spinal cord and brain injuries.
The project will likely turn a spotlight on Drivin N Cryin, for which Kinney is grateful. “It’s hard to get anybody to notice who we are in this late stage of our career,” he said. “We’re kind of an under-known band.” They’re not quitting. The band goes to the studio this fall to cut a “rock-centric” album, and Kinney plans a solo project sometime soon.
Said Jensen, “Making a living as a musician is probably harder than it’s ever been. He would have been better off marrying a lawyer, and so would I.”
Gispert noted that the project is a love letter from Jensen that Kinney can read while he’s still living.
“I feel like a lot of times these tribute records come out after someone passes away,” he said. “How wonderful is it that Anna spearheaded this whole thing while Kevn is very much alive and playing and can enjoy it.”
CONCERT PREVIEW
Kevn Kinney. 7 p.m. Thursday, March 28. $15-$75. The Rialto Room at the Hotel Indigo, 500 College Ave. Athens, drivinncryin.com/tour
Drivin N Cryin. 8 p.m. Friday, March 29. $20. Barrelhouse Ballroom, 1501 Long St., Chattanooga, Tennessee, drivinncryin.com/tour
Drivin N Cryin. 7 p.m. Saturday, March 30. $34.54. Radio Room, 110 Poinsett Highway, Greenville, South Carolina, drivinncryin.com/tour
Drivin N Cryin. With the Blips. 7 p.m. Friday, April 5. $40-$65. Buckhead Theatre, 3110 Roswell Road, Atlanta, drivinncryin.com/tour
