Music

Happy birthday, Kid Meets Cougar

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Kid Meets Cougar: Courtney Carroll and Brett Bolton
Photo: Corlene Byrd

KMC seemed to start life more as a bedroom project than an honest-to-goodness band. When did that change?

Courtney Carroll: Yeah, at first we were just jamming. We each had our own bands—I was in The Clydesdale and Love Pentagon, and Brett had Jr. Anti-Sex League. We were hanging out all the time, so we just started playing some music while we hung out.

Brett Bolton: Originally we had a bunch of different instruments, and we would try to loop everything live. It was a lot to handle, so we decided to go the sample route. But instead of just pressing play on a CD of music, we actually trigger each thing that we play live. And then eventually, I found out about software that would allow me to trigger videos along with audio, so that’s where we are now.

Prior to this project, you were both strictly drummers. What’s it been like singing, writing songs and doing everything else involved in running a band?

BB: It’s a giant experiment for us. We’ve always just thought of ourselves as drummers, but we feel comfortable trying new things around each other. So we took the next step and started singing in front of each other …

CC: I’d never sung in front of anybody before! Or played keyboards.

The Details

Kid Meets Cougar CD Release
With Pan de Sal and Ex-Dinosaur
July 18, 8 p.m., $5.
Whiskey Wolf Warehouse
3110 Polaris Ave., Unit 24
Band Guide
Kid Meets Cougar
From the Archives
60-second video critic: Kid Meets Cougar (06/25/09)

BB: I had written songs for a while, but just in my garage. Then I showed Courtney the stuff, and she liked it, so that built my confidence.

So regarding the name Kid Meets Cougar ... what exactly is your age difference?

CC: [Laughs] It’s only six years!

BB: She’s 28, I’m 22.

CC: I’m obviously not a real cougar [laughs]. It started as a joke with our friends.

BB: We get mixed reviews about the name … but we’re hoping that our personalities come out a little bit in it. We’re not trying to be cool.

On one hand, the album [For Breakfast] features some very realized songs, the sound of a band with serious intentions. On the other, there are moments—the rap in “Dr. Dre,” for example—that feel like two kids playing around. Why mix it up like that?

BB: We were recording everything as we were doing it, so it was kind of an experiment in technology for us. We just did whatever we felt, like having five different drum parts going at the same time … We wanted to include everything that we’d been working on. That little “hey, hey” rap was something we used to do in the car.

CC: And the beatbox part is something we used to do all the time, so we were like, we should put that on the album, too.

Any song you’re especially pleased with?

BB: A lot of them. We’d start with, like, a bass line and a drumbeat, and we’d just record and record and record until we got this whole song. And now, with it mixed and mastered, it’s like, hey, this turned out to be a pretty nice song. I think my favorite is probably the first track, “It’s All in Your Head.” Oh, and also “Fly as Hell.”

The lyrics to “Fly as Hell”—“We’re cruisin’, looking fly as hell tonight”—are pretty over-the-top …

BB: [Laughs] We came home all nicely dressed after a wedding, and that’s when we made that one up. It became a whole song about clubbing and throwing money in the sky.

Are you still planning on having local directors work up accompanying videos for every track on the album?

CC: Yeah, and every song will have a video at [Saturday’s show], but some of them are just filler videos [for now].

BB: As far as legit videos go, so far we’ve got Mike Thompson’s “Hey Hey,” Jeremy Cloe made one for “Sasquatch Con Bazooka,” and Joel Schoenbach is doing “It’s All in Your Head.” [For now], the rest will be just stuff I edited.

Why are you doing the CD-release show in a warehouse?

CC: Both of our birthdays are the 20th, so we wanted to have our birthday party/CD release/video debuts/tour kickoff/tour fundraiser that weekend.

BB: And we couldn’t book any other places that night. We also decided to do it there because we can make it special. It’s not the same bar everyone goes to every other weekend, and that kind of makes it an adventure.

Has simultaneously being a couple and a band stressed your relationship at all?

BB: No, it’s been a great thing. We’re always together, which works out really well.

CC: The only problem is that our practice room is at our home, and I like to chill, and he’ll be like, “We need to practice!”

So Brett’s the taskmaster?

BB: Kinda, yeah. It’s hard to stay focused on the band when you’re dating and you’re both busy all day, but we work it out. We’re pretty lucky like that.

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