Editor’s note: Today we begin a weekly Q&A of Kansas City musicians. We’ll be using the same questions each week so you can get to know the artists a little bit better. And if you’d like to be included, please send us a message at kceditor@thedelimagazine.com and we’ll get you in!
This week we’re joined by Jesse Kates, frontman of The Sexy Accident.
The Deli: Gun to your head: one sentence to describe your music. What is it?
The Deli: Let’s talk about your latest release or upcoming shows. What can we expect?
JK: We’re playing a bunch of shows to celebrate our fourth full-length, Ninja Ninja Fight Darth Vader, which we released in the spring. We’re selling it to raise money for charity, and the response has been great! We’re particularly excited about a show we have coming up on Friday, July 27 with The Hilary Watts Riot and Howard Iceberg and the Titanics. We think it’s the most eclectic and bizarre lineup ever assembled for a show by anyone on earth at any time, ever, which of course is not true.
The Deli: What does “supporting local music” mean to you?
JK: Speaking as Jesse (because I am Jesse), to me it means just trying to soak as much of it up as possible. I go to a show a week, and I try to pick the ones with newer bands. I like to go where having another person show up might make a difference in how the band feels at the end of the night. Putting yourself out there takes a lot of courage and I think that deserves recognition and respect.
The Deli: Who are your favorite “local” musicians right now?
JK: I don’t know why "local" is in quotes in that question. Are bands from Canada sneaking across our borders with guitars and posing as KU students? Well, if so, my favorite Canucks would be The ACBs. I’m a sucker for pop, and especially pop with a rhythmic emphasis and a lot of falsetto singing. I’m joking about the falsetto, but what would The ACBs be without falsetto? (The answer is AC/DC, obviously.) We played a show with Dolls on Fire a while back and I enjoyed that quite a bit. Hey, what’s this brown stuff on my nose? I also like bands that don’t exist anymore (much) like namelessnumberheadman.
The Deli: Who are your favorite not-so-local musicians right now?
JK: Top of mind would be Josh Ritter, who killed it at Crossroads KC the other night. I love his story songs. Especially the ones about mummies and nuclear warheads. And I’ve never seen anyone sustain a grin on stage for 2 hours before.
The Deli: What is your ultimate fantasy concert bill to play on?
JK: Do I have to worry about dying of shame because my band is not nearly as good as the other bands on the bill? OK, assuming megalo-Sexy Accident, where I have huge hair and wear leather pants (which is what we’ve been missing, really) and Daniel gets to fly around in an anti-grav drum saucer, I’d want to play with the reincarnated Marvin Gaye (backed by the Funk Brothers) and the 1986 version of The Bangles.
The Deli: Would you rather spend the rest of your life on stage or in the recording studio?
JK: Both would be horrible. Assuming continuous rockage, living on a stage would be like those dance contests in They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?, only it wouldn’t take as long for people to drop dead or start shanking each other. And living in a studio would lead to a pretty serious vitamin D deficiency, since studios almost never have windows (that’s how they keep the sound in). That said, given a choice of grizzly musical ends, I’d take death by rocking outdoors in Central Park on a series of crisp September days.
The Deli: A music-themed Mount Rushmore. What four faces are you putting up there and why?
The Deli: All right, give us the rundown. Where all on this big crazy web can you be found?
http://sexyaccident.com
http://facebook.com/accident.
http://twitter.com/
The Deli: Always go out on a high note. Any last words of wisdom for the Deli audience?
JK: Never take advice from a marginally successful, semi-professional musician.
Join Jesse and the crew of The Sexy Accident this Friday as they deliver their mercurial brand of pop to The Brick, alongside The Hillary Watts Riot and Howard Iceberg and The Titanics.
–-Zach Hodson
| Zach is a lifetime Kansas City resident who plays multiple instruments and sings in Dolls on Fire, as well as contributing to many other Kansas City music, art, and comedy projects. He is very fond of edamame, treats his cat Wiley better than he treats himself, and doesn’t want to see pictures of your newborn child (seriously, it looks like a potato). |