Stephen Kellogg isn’t your run-of-the-mill singer-songwriter. After several years of solo shows and a couple of albums recorded with session players, the Northampton native finally shook things up by assembling a full-time band, the Sixers. The group hit the ground running and has become one of the hardest touring acts to come out of the Northeast in recent memory, logging in the neighborhood of 300 shows a year with acts such as O.A.R., Guster, Jason Mraz and Carbon Leaf.
After a development deal with Universal Records ran its course, “SK6ERS” went back into the studio with a renewed mission to mature as musicians. With a little help from members of Whiskeytown and Counting Crows, the band emerged earlier this year with "Glassjaw Boxer," a strong collection of rootsy, alt-country-based pop songs.
It’s much trendier for singer-songwriters to keep the focus squarely on themselves these days, but you’re more highly invested in the band approach to things. What’s the appeal for you there?That has been a very conscious thing for me, and it most has to do with when I was a kid; the reason I wanted to do this job, the inspiration came from seeing bands. It wasn’t from seeing Phil Collins…not slagging off Phil Collins in any way, but it was going out and seeing Whitesnake and Bon Jovi. Those metal concerts I saw when I was 9 or 10, the camaraderie of it has always been way up on my priority list for what I want out of this experience.
I was playing music, but I started taking myself seriously and started thinking I could actually do this for a living a little late in the game, comparatively speaking. I was probably 23, 24 before I said “Shit, I could probably make a go of this.” So I started out and I put out a couple records on my own, and I met the guys who became the Sixers kind of into it. After putting out some records and making a living at it for a couple years, it felt a little weird to suddenly say Stephen Kellogg is now a band name. So we kind of did a Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers type thing. Was that the right decision? I have no idea. My 12-year-old sister always says to me, “All my friends think you’re in like a ‘50s group because of your name.”
Do you find that you get more respect with a full-time band as opposed to being a solo artist doing what everybody else is doing?You know, the press is something I’ve never totally understood, where we’ve been somewhat ignored. We’ve gotten some nice reviews on this record, but we’ve gotten a lot of shitty, shitty reviews, too, that I felt really misunderstood what we’re all about. But I think our fans really appreciate the camaraderie and the consistency of it.
It seems like having a really tight-knit group like that builds on the fun stage show and presence you’ve developed going back to being a solo artist. What’s the vibe like on stage these days? Are you still playing the kazoo and engaging in a variety of shenanigans? I saw photos on your message board of Sixers-sans-pants…Yeah, there is certainly an element of that; there always has been and there always will be. Like any artist, I think that I’ve evolved somewhat, and the level of hijinx and stuff is—it’s still there, but there were times in the past where there was just out and out silliness for the sake of being silly. We now have so much music and so much that we want to say to people that we don’t mire it up as much [with] weird, goofy shit. I still am totally goofy, and we try not to ever take ourselves too seriously. I think we’ve made a conscious decision that, OK, if we only have 90 minutes with people let’s make sure that we also share what we’re all about and make sure that they get that.
You worked with Mike Daly of Whiskeytown on "Glassjaw Boxer," and Dave Bryson of Counting Crows did some mixing as well. Was there a specific reason for choosing those types of musicians at this point, or a certain direction you were hoping they could help lead the band in?Well, musically that’s always where I’ve wanted to be. I like music that sounds a little raggedy. The bands that I listen to a lot now tend to be from the ‘70s, you know, Jackson Browne and the Eagles and Crosby, Stills and Nash. And in the modern day, bands like Whiskeytown and Counting Crows have managed to kind of carry that torch; so working with those kinds of people was definitely something that we wanted to do.
One thing that’s always bothered me is when you read a bad review and they chalk it up to some goofy thing we did at the end of the show—the music has never been silly, but it’s like “oh, these guys have a shtick that they do.” I don’t think any of these people we worked with had ever even seen us live beforehand. We were just talking about the music. So in that sense it is moving us in the direction where I do think we belong, and hopefully the wider world will come to understand that whatever we choose to do on stage doesn’t impact what we’re doing musically.
This last record was released on O.A.R.’s label (Everfine, an imprint of Lava/Atlantic). How did you get hooked up with those guys originally?Two years ago we went out on tour with them [Everfine], and musically it didn’t feel like it was going to be a great fit at all. But they invited us out to do a couple weeks, and it just went really, really well. Even though our music is a little more on the roots side, it was a match in that their fans really understood what we were doing. So we continued to tour over the years, and do some writing together and hang out. We put a record out on Universal, and the term of that contract was up, and O.A.R. said, “Why don’t you make a record with us?” And we really liked that idea—so we did.
More so than most bands that have achieved your level of success, you guys have become very focused on charitable endeavors. Why has that become so important to you?That’s something that kind of evolved from being on the road for the last four or five years. You start to take stock of your life and you say, OK, I don’t want to just drive around the country for 10 months of the year trying to satisfy my ego—there has to be a greater purpose to what we’re doing out here than just purely paying the electric bill. A couple years ago we took a tour of the St. Jude Children’s Hospital, right around the time my daughter came into my life, and it was just really evident for me immediately that this was something I could sink my teeth into. I never really had a focus until the medical community and children in particular became something that I felt passionate about. These children’s hospitals treat people regardless of their ability to pay, and they need support to keep that up.
Catch Stephen Kellogg & the Sixers live at Toad's Place April 2.
