Photo by Morgan lores
Kix headlines the Friday night Reynoldsburg Tomato Fest lineup and hits the stage at 8:30pm. Autograph, best known for the hit single “Turn Up the Radio” will play directly before Kix, from 7:00pm to 8:00pm. Admission to the Reynoldsburg Tomato Festival is free. More info here.
Kix guitarist Brian Forsythe can’t remember the last time his band played in Columbus and is looking forward to headlining the Reynoldsburg Tomato Fest on Friday night. Kix formed in the late ’70s in Hagerstown, Maryland and built up a following throughout the early ’80s, one of the first bands that would later be lumped into the “hair metal” category to release albums. 1988’s Blow My Fuse was Kix’s fourth album and, thanks to the chart-topping power ballad “Don’t Close Your Eyes,” the most successful in the catalog.
After non-stop touring for decades, and other interests, Kix took a break from 1996 to 2003 but have remained active since the reunion. On the East Coast, Kix often headlines large venues and festivals and has become known as one of the most consistent live bands still around from the ’80s, earning great reviews each time they play. There’s little doubt they’ll earn the same praise after Friday night’s show.
I spoke with Brian earlier this week via video conference. You can listen to the interview, which is the second episode of my new CHIP CHATS podcast, or read the transcription below.
This seems to be, in my estimation, the way of the bands from the ’80s and ’90s, playing these suburban festivals In Columbus, and the surrounding area, there’s the Tomato Fest, which you’re playing, the Zucchini Fest, which is coming up soon, there is a suburb called Pickerington that did the Picktown Palooza. In the last couple of years, Lou Gramm has played, Warrant has played, Jack Russell’s Great White has played. Is that pretty standard for you guys now to be playing these festivals, these fairs, these suburban type things?
Yeah, it’s starting to be. We’ve been doing festivals in the summer time but they are usually the bigger ones. But, every once in a while, we’ll get one of these. They are kind of cool to do.
I saw Jack Russell’s Great White and Firehouse a couple of weeks ago (at Picktown Palooza) and, it was $5 to get – the show you’re doing is free – and there was probably 4,000 people there. And, it was some people coming out just for a good night but I will tell you that I hope your merch game is strong because Jack Russell’s merch line was 20 deep the entire night.
Wow. That’s good to know.
Columbus is a big college city and a lot of the clubs cater to the college-age crowds. Kix is not necessarily going to go over with the 18 and 19 year old college students, but when you get out to these suburb shows, these people don’t have to drive very far, it’s in their backyard, and those are the fans. Those are the people who were following you and have been following you for as long as they have been. Merchandise seems to sell really well out in those areas, especially if you’re not paying for a ticket, you’ve got that extra money too.
Also, if we don’t come there that often, it’s a special thing.
I interviewed Joey Allen from Warrant a couple of years ago and he talked about these being, for him, “Weekend Warrior” gigs. He has a day job Monday through Thursday. Friday, he goes to the airport and hops on a plane and he meets up with his bandmates in Iowa, Illinois, Michigan, Ohio. He gets to hang out with his friends for two days, play a bunch of songs in front of people, and then he flies back and he’s back for morning coffee on Monday morning. Is that they way you view things these days? Through the rest of the year, you have a number of weekend shows.
That’s exactly what we do. That’s kind of the way it is now. You used to get a tour bus in the old days because you could play more often, more shows during the week and there were a lot of long drives that the band couldn’t handle on their own, and that’s where the tour bus would come in. But now it’s like you just fly in, do the gig, and then you’re home the day after. Actually, Mark, our bass player, he has a day job during the week but the rest of us don’t. We just come home and hang out and do what we do at home for the week.
I’ve talked to bands in the past who have said when the tour kicks off, it takes 3, 4, 5 shows to kind of get warmed up and get into the groove. When you’re only playing Friday and Saturday nights, how does that happen? Because you’ve been around long enough, are you in the groove pretty quickly or is there a challenge?
We have been playing these songs for 30 years or more, some of them more. So it’s not like we’re going to forget the songs or anything, but playing more often does help with the whole flow of the thing. So, you kind of cool down during the week and then you have to warm up again for the weekend.
Does it feel like it takes you 2 or 3 songs into the set to even find that point where you’re like, “Alright, this is what I remember, this is good”?
Sometimes, and then other weekends, the first show is like, “Oh, man. I’m just starting on the wrong foot” and then the second show is always like the good show because I played the night before. I love playing multiple shows during the week but Steve doesn’t like to do it because of his voice. It’s a lot harder for a singer to handle something like that.
I suppose that’s good for Steve because there are some of your contemporaries out there who have been doing somewhat non-stop touring and the wear and tear on their voices is apparent. Fortunately, or unfortunately YouTube reveals a lot of stuff these days that you didn’t have to deal with back in the day. I think only playing two shows a week or whatever schedule you’re on, it probably is what makes Steve still sound great 40 years later.
Not only is singing a lot wear and tear but just age in general, your voice changes. A lot of guys can’t do what they used to, it’s not because they’ve abused their voice or anything, it’s just that they’ve changed and they haven’t adapted to that change. When we first got back together in the early 2000s, Steve was struggling a little bit. He had to go back and relearn how to do that transition from regular voice to the high voice. It was a different point where he’d switch over form when he was younger. It’s a learning thing. The other thing is, George from Rhino Bucket, we’ll go over to Europe and do 22 shows straight and he gets better as we go. Some singers sing better the more they sing.
Kix put out a record in 2014. There is no MTV any more. Commercial radio probably isn’t playing new Kix stuff, there’s probably some markets where, maybe, but, as a whole, you’re not getting a lot of radio airplay. Maybe satellite radio, internet radio, so it’s still getting to people. I’m a reader of SleazeRoxx.com and they named it the album of the year. It got really great reception. Does that inspire you to want to keep creating and making new music or are you more like, “We’ll put that out there once in a while but really we’re sticking with our 12 or 14 songs that we know and play live”?
Well, that’s a good question. In fact, we were just talking about that last week. It’s kind of cool to throw a new thing out there here and there, but, because of the fact that there is no MTV, we’re not on a major label and, really, record sales now a days, 20,000 in sales is considered a success. In the old days, that was a complete failure. So, it’s almost like it’s not really worth it. We can, but it’s a lot of work for a little bit of payoff. It’s good for the fans, I guess. We did that record in 2014 and it turned out a lot better than we thought it was going to turn out. But, we’re not in a hurry to do it again. We may, we’re not saying no, and everybody’s got their little song ideas that they sort of hang on to. Maybe someday, if the right thing comes along. That’s the other thing, there’s no record companies to finance it, so we’d have to finance it ourselves. To do it right, it’s not as big of an expense as it used to be but it’s still, if you want to do a good record, it’s going to cost a little bit of money.
The fact of the matter is, the people who are going to come out and see you Friday night, they don’t necessarily want to hear new stuff. They want to hear the stuff they grew up with. You put all this work into writing and recording new stuff and then how do you fit those into the 14 songs that you’re going to play. You probably don’t fit them in.
There are 2 new songs in [the setlist] from that last record but, that’s exactly right, when I go see a band, especially a classic band, I just want to hear their classic songs, you know?
Speaking of which, I saw a photo on Instagram that you got to see ZZ Top not too long ago, just before Dusty passed away. I suspect there weren’t a lot of deep cuts there, they probably played the songs that everybody wanted to hear?
Pretty much, I think there was one more fairly recent song that they did but everything else, yeah. As soon as they go into a song, like “Waiting for the Bus” or one of those, you’re like, “Oh yeah!” That’s just the way it goes.
Was that a band you had seen before and grown up with?
Yes, I’ve seen them several times. Kix actually opened for the twice for two shows in Pennsylvania back in ’83 or ’84. ZZ Top, as far as my guitar playing, they are a heavy influence on my guitar playing. Billy Gibbons is one of my favorite guitar players.
The way you came up, Kix was around before the other music you were associated with. By the late ’80s, you guys were veterans on the scene. You weren’t getting signed off Sunset Strip in ’88. You had been around the block a few times. I’m guessing your influences and the bands you grew up with and emulated were more like AC/DC, Aerosmith, the bands who, even in the ’80s, were considered classic rock.
Yes! Both Ronnie and I, as guitar players, we came up through the ’60s and ’70s so by the time Van Halen got there, we had already been playing for years. That whole Sunset Strip thing was influenced by Van Halen. Ronnie and I are just the ’70s Humble Pie/Aerosmith type players.
At this point, you can’t turn back time, no regrets, but do you think had you moved to L.A. or New York, things would be different?
That is a good question. People used to ask us that back in the old days and we just didn’t consider ourselves an L.A. band. We didn’t even really fit in with that scene, obviously, from what I just said. We just felt it was cooler to be from the East Coast. I don’t know if moving to New York would have done any good, that’s just grueling up there. New York is a nice place to visit but I would not want to live there.
My opinion is that you’re still doing well, you’re still playing these headlining gigs and getting great press. I don’t know for a fact, but I imagine your back catalog still sells a little bit.
It seems to. We keep doing these re-mixes and all that stuff just to keep it alive.
My awareness of Kix started, my real last name is Midnight, so when “Midnite Dynamite” comes out, my ears go to anything that has my last name in it so I’m pretty sure that’s how I became first aware of you. The re-issues have been great, they sound really good and it’s good to go back and listen to those songs with fresh perspective with the songs being 25, 30 35 years old and hearing them in 2021. I grew up listening to those songs that long ago but, fresh ears, they sound as relevant today. There’s nothing dated about them.
The same bands you were appearing on the pages of Metal Edge with, some of their music hasn’t stood the test of time the way yours does.
I don’t know why but Donnie was a really good songwriter and his influences were probably even further back than mine or Ronnie’s because he was a little bit older than us, he was like 4 years older. He had a lot of British influences like David Bowie. You wouldn’t be able to tell it by looking at him, he was good at disguising them, except for the AC/DC thing. That was a little more obvious. He was good with melody and that kind of thing. I think when you have good melody, like the Beatles had, I’m not comparing us to the Beatles at all but they had that melody thing. You listen to it and it’s not just vocal patterns, it’s actually melodies. That makes a big difference, I think.
Do you look back now, or have you looked back over the last 30 years, and seen the influence you’ve had on those East Coast bands like Cinderella, Britny Fox, Dirty Looks? I would venture to say they all took influence from you. They probably all saw you as they were starting out. Do you think that’s correct to say?
Yes, actually. They’ve told us [laughs]. There’s a lot of bands that say that when they first saw us, we were an inspiration and all that, which is really cool. It’s an honor to be able to inspire somebody like that. Even a band like the Supersuckers. Eddie Spaghetti will say, those guys were still in high school, I remember when they lived in Tucson and they came to our soundcheck and they were hanging out in the parking lot so they could meet us when we got there. We invited them in for the soundcheck, they couldn’t stay because they were underage. Supersuckers is not the same thing as Kix but Eddie will say we were definitely an influence on him.
That is awesome. That has as much to you starting a little bit earlier than the lipstick-and-leather bands, which I love, I absolutely love that stuff, but I think that you came from more of the rock stuff. You came from the core of the music first, not the fashion. I think bands like Supersuckers appreciated that and the rock sound of what you guys were doing.
Looking back, our thing, it did evolve. The whole glam thing didn’t come in until later. When we first started, it was more like a combination Stones and Ramones kind of thing. Then it changed when Hanoi Rocks came around.
Ramones and Hanoi Rocks, were those bands that influenced you. Did you go see them live?
Yes. Ramones especially, their whole touring philosophy we stole from them. The van and the Ryder truck and just going back and forth across the country. That’s what we did when we first started. If you look at us back then, it was leather jackets and Converse. Then Hanoi Rocks came around and they kind of reminded me of the Stones a little bit, the dark hair and the singer out front. I went to see them early on, they played at Hammerjack’s in Baltimore. I was still in my later ’70s Stones kind-of vibe with the ripped t-shirts. I saw them and I was like, “Wow, that’s such a cool look.” It kind of takes you back to the earlier Stones, the early ’70s. That’s when I kind of switched over to that Keith, early ’70s Keith, thing.
Are you a vinyl guy still?
I still have a bunch of vinyl.
Do you try to track down the stuff you grew up listening to?
I’ve bought a couple new things, but they are more new things, because people put stuff out on vinyl now and I’ll buy the vinyl. But, I haven’t really gone back. It’s funny because my nephew has a vintage vinyl store in Costa Mesa out near L.A. He’s way into the vinyl. He’s in his 30s now, which is crazy to think. If I were in a vinyl place and I saw a record that I didn’t have, that I used to love, I would probably buy it.
Time has a way of sneaking up, doesn’t it? You put out your first album 40 years ago and you formed before that. 40 years seems to go by in a blink of an eye.
I think about all the stuff that’s happened in that 40 years, it’s a lot of stuff [laughs] It seems like yesterday that we were at Atlantic Studios recording that record.
The Stones, in the ’70s, had been around for 10 years. Granted, they are still around so they’ve been around longer than you, but, a lot of the bands you grew up with, rock and roll didn’t exist 40 years before the Beatles. In 1923 there was no rock albums coming out. Rock and roll started in the ’50s and ’60s. Did you ever think in 1981 that you’d be playing a show in 2021?
No, it’s hard to think that far ahead. And, the way you put that, that’s exactly right. When I first heard the Beatles in the early ’60s, rock and roll hadn’t been around for very long at all. Even the Beatles, they were only around for like 8 years. That’s just crazy to think. Now, 8 years is nothing.
You’ve kept your core nucleus for quite a number of years. Interviewed the saxophone player from Los Lobos a couple of weeks ago. I’m paraphrasing, but he said this is sort of their job, they don’t hang out together any more, they see each other when they go out on tour but they’re not best buds, they’re not having cookouts together. What is your relationship with the rest of the guys in Kix?
You know, I don’t see them unless we’re doing a gig. I live in Nashville, they live in Maryland and the surrounding areas. I think, Steve and Jimmy still hang out. Their wives are best friends, so they’ll go out to dinner and hang out and do stuff together. I don’t. Mark lives down in Virginia, so we’re kind of spread out. The old days, we did do a lot of stuff together. We’d go to concerts together and all that. But when you get older, it’s like “See you next week.”
Being in Nashville, one of the music capitals of the world, do you go see shows or are you there by circumstance?
I do and I have, this last year obviously I couldn’t. I’ve been here a little over two years. It took me a year to sort of get going and then I discovered a couple of hole in the wall places to go see cool bands. And then all of a sudden everything shut down so I wasn’t able to. That’s what attracted me. I had to leave L.A. I was in a relationship that ended and she owned the house and I needed to find a place to live. I couldn’t afford a nice house out there and I didn’t want to settle for what I could afford. I considered going back to Maryland but there’s a good reason why I left there in the first place. I was just tired of the seasons. Somebody suggested Nashville. There’s a lot of people I know that live around here that have migrated here. The weather is a little bit more mild, it still has seasons but it’s not quite as drastic as Maryland. The music scene was the icing on the cake.
I play rock music but I’m a country fan too. I love country music and some of the best guitar players are country players. Nashville’s the perfect place, it’s a mix of different styles. You can go anywhere and see all kinds of different stuff here in Nashville. It’s great.
When you say you’re a country fan, I don’t know if you’re like me. I didn’t appreciate or listen to country music until I turned 35. My vision of country music was, the way I grew up, Alabama and the Oak Ridge Boys, I don’t want to call it “cheesy” country music but it was something that had no interest to me. But as I discovered that that was what mainstream country was selling you and topping the charts, I’m like you, I love country music now but not the country that was popular when I grew up. You’ll never catch me listening to Garth Brooks but I do love a lot of country music.
I’m not a fan of commercial country just like I’m not a fan of commercial rock. I like the more obscure or the classic stuff. It’s funny too because when I was really young, I don’t even know how old I was at that point because I was so young that I didn’t know my age, it was before the Beatles. My mother and father were music fans so there was always music around and my father was more into jazz and stuff. My mom would listen to whatever she liked, she would go to the store and rummage through the bargain bin and bring home records and 45s. Some of my earliest memories are of Johnny Cash, hearing that. I heard country early on and it caught my ear and it’s mostly the guitars that caught my ear which was weird because that’s even before I thought about playing guitar. Like you, there was a point, probably junior high or high school, I kind of closed my mind to country. To me, growing up in Fredrick, I associated country music with rednecks. I was the hippie kid on the bus and I was always getting picked on by rednecks. I didn’t want to know about Merle Haggard but now I love Merle Haggard. The gateway, a little bit of the Stones, the Stones have so much country influence. Like, “Honkey Tonk Woman” was my favorite. That’s when I became a Stones fan, when I heard that song. And then, later on, Dwight Yoakum came along. He was actually kind of mainstream, in a good way. He was the bridge for me.
I was the same way with the Stones. My parents didn’t have a deep music collection at all, but we had Beatles records. We didn’t have any Stones records so in the Beatles vs Stones argument, I always took the Beatles side. I don’t think “Wild Horses” is necessarily a country song, but when I heard “Wild Horses” as a late teenager, maybe even my early 20s, I was like, “They are different than ‘Let’s Spend The Night Together’ and I gravitated towards that non-rock and roll stuff. Understanding they had a country side, that’s the stuff I love by them..
When Beggar’s Banquet came out, it was like, “Wow”. I didn’t really care for anything before that.
The other little claim to fame in Columbus is that I think Dwight Yoakum grew up and went to high school in Columbus, Ohio. I have relatives who grew up in the country and they introduced me to Dwight Yoakum when I was still listening to Kix, Motley Crue, Def Leppard. I bought a Dwight Yoakum cassette but I would never tell my friends I had it. I associated it with my cousins and visiting them and having a good time but I would never tell my friends I had a Dwight Yoakum tape.
Yeah, I was kind of like that too. If there was something I liked, I would secretly listen to it in high school. In fact, when Kix first got together, back in the late ’70s, Ronnie and Donnie they were into Aerosmith or the British stuff and they looked down a little bit on the Southern Rock. I’m a big Southern Rock guy. I love the Allman Brothers and Lynyrd Skynyrd and all that stuff so I didn’t even bring it up when I was around those guys.
My third show once venues starting opening, my first one was Faster Pussycat and Enuff Z’ Nuff. Then I saw Jack Russell and Firehouse. But my third one was two weekends ago and I saw Blackberry Smoke and the Allman-Betts Band which was awesome. So good.
Blackberry Smoke, of current bands, that’s one of my favorites.
Yeah. I liked them before seeing them live but I love them after seeing them live. They definitely have more of a rock edge live than they do on album.
There was some down time, I think it was 2017, right at the beginning of 2017. I did a week or two with this guy out in California that I know, he’s a singer-songwriter. And he got onto 5 Blackberry Smoke shows, so we got to do 5 West Coast Blackberry Smoke shows. I’ve met them before, in fact, they’re big Kix fans too, which is crazy. And, I knew Charlie, the singer. We got to do those shows and I got to hang out with them and trade guitar secrets. It was a really cool experience. And I got to watch them.
That’s the first band in 10 or 15 years that I thought, “I wish I had a bag packed in my car, because I would jump and sell merch for them if I could stay on the road with them for the next two weeks” because I wanted to hear them night after night after night. They were really good. So, being in Nashville, are you doing any music stuff with anybody in Nashville? Do you have any plans or have you sat in with anybody?
Not really. I haven’t pursued it but I’m open to it. I’ve met a lot of people, which is really cool. There’s a bar, five minutes from here when I first moved here, I discovered Kenny Vaughn, who plays with Marty Stuart. He’s got his own little 3-piece band and he plays this place down the road, they don’t even charge a cover. It’s just this little whole in the wall bar and you go in there and they play early, like 8pm on a Tuesday or something. They are on this tiny little stage and it’s just him, the drummer’s from Average White Band and the bass player used to play with Johnny Cash. Just to see that caliber of musicians, for free, and they have a little tip jar by the stage, it’s just crazy. I’ve gone there on other nights where other bands have been playing and there’s some really good bands. Somebody will get up and sit in and you’ll find out that that’s the guy from such-and-such. It’s crazy how cool it is out here. When I first moved to L.A., I thought it was going to be like that there, but it doesn’t come close to Nashville. There’s something about it. I’d love to, in fact, I’m going out to lunch on Wednesday with that bass player from Kenny Vaughn’s band so … Here’s the funny thing. When I first met him, I was like, “Bass player from Johnny Cash” and he comes up and he’s talking and he finds out that I’m with Kix. He’s like, “Oh man, I just have to tell you that I’m a closet heavy metal guy,” and he says, “I used to love you guys.” It’s crazy, you meet somebody like that and they’re a fan.
