Kilroy

originally published November 15, 2006

Kilroy - (L to R) Brent Grimes, Keven Gilbert, Mike Perkins and Shannon Rupp - is playing at Tasty World on Tuesday, Nov. 28.

This week, Spotlight is on the Eastside and catching up with Kilroy as the band practices for a radio performance the following night. Kilroy is one of Athens’ slow burners; it's a much more experienced animal than most of the bands featured in Spotlight thus far, but despite some stellar recordings and great local reviews, Kilroy hasn’t quite broken into the big league of local bands.

This may all be about to change, as the band has over the summer been hitting the road in its new van/ ambulance, showing the Southeast that there has to be room for a great-sounding, multidimensional pop-rock group with a country soul and a heart full of blues. Who wouldn’t want to see a band that has been compared to both Magnolia Electric Co. and Galaxie 500?

The Kilroy lads, Keven Gilbert (vocals, guitar), Mike Perkins (guitar), Brent Grimes (drums) and Shannon Rupp (bass), originally came together at high school in Cordele, GA, in the late '90s, but it wasn’t until they all arrived in Athens in 2003 that the rock really began to roll. It took them a couple of years to finish their debut album, but they released a free EP along the way to give all and sundry an appetite for what was to come. The waiting has been worth it and The Violent Jolt of the Capitol earlier this year received local critical acclaim upon its release. Not resting on their laurels, the lads were back in the DARC studio earlier this year laying down tracks for a follow-up album.

Flagpole hung out in the basement and chewed the fat on the patio as Keven Gilbert and co. gave us all the skinny on Kilroy.

Flagpole

Who’s the hottie on the CD cover?

Keven Gilbert

The cover art of The Violent Jolt of the Capitol is actually Mike’s mother when she was an airline stewardess…

Mike Perkins

…which is odd because we take ourselves quite seriously, but then I put my mother on the cover, which is not funny, but it illustrates quite a lot about who we are as people because we take our families quite seriously.

I think we all come from quite a heartfelt place, so it’s oddly artistically meaningful to have one of our mothers on the cover of our record, when she was 28 years old - our age - moving to Atlanta from a small town, Greenville, just like we came to town. So that’s the theory behind the cover. And the title is a Virginia Woolf quote.

Flagpole

Tell me about the van.

KG

On my birthday or Shannon’s birthday, my sister gave me a check for $2,000 which was left over from student loans and stuff, and we were all kind of wondering how the fuck we were going to get the record pressed, and how long it was going to be.

So we spent a grand on getting the record pressed and luckily the hospital that Brent’s mom works at in Cordele had a couple of vans that had been sitting out for five or six years and we called them up and they wanted $1,200 for a ’95 Chevy van, wheelchair lift and all.

Spotlight is a biweekly feature looking at newer or emerging local acts. Next up: Titans of Filth. Is there a band you'd like to see covered? Email music editor Chris Hassiotis at music@flagpole.com.