In this weekly series, we spotlight the performers and other participants who will combine for the Emerge Music + Impact Conference on the Las Vegas Strip November 16-18. Tickets are available now at emergelv.com.
If radio and TV host Matt Pinfield and The Killers’ drummer Ronnie Vannucci both dig your band, chances are you’re on to something. Such is the case for Residual Kid, a garage-rock group out of Austin, Texas, that has impressed some of the biggest names in the industry with a provocative take on ’90s grunge. And its members are still teenagers.
“I wish I had someone like you,” Deven Ivy sings in “Scentless Princess,” a song from 2016’s Salsa that evokes comparisons to contemporaries like Wavves and Together Pangea.
In the past three years, the band has cut demos with the help of Dinosaur Jr.’s J Mascis and Off!’s Steve McDonald, signed to Warner Bros.’ imprint Sire Records and embarked on a European tour that including gigs at Norway’s Oya Festival and Sweden’s Way Out West Festival.
“Me and the drummer [Ben Redman] met when we were like 11 or 10, and we’ve just been playing in bands since then,” says Ivy, now 19. “Music is really the only thing that I’ve known; it’s my only passion or hobby. It feels natural [that] it has just progressed and evolved.”
The guys played their first Vegas gig in 2016 and returned this year for Neon Reverb, and they’ll be back in October to lay down some demos before returning to perform at this year’s inaugural Emerge Music + Impact Conference, once again sharing a bill with Vegas locals Mercy Music, plus East Coast punks Beach Slang and singer-songwriter Mondo Cozmo.
“I’m probably most excited about just meeting people in Las Vegas that are a part of the music industry,” Ivy says. “I’m really excited to see a different side of it and learn.”
