TVD Live: Residual Kid at Baby’s All Right, 10/25

Rock ‘n’ roll is not dead and will never die.

Meet Residual Kid from Austin, 14 and 16-year-old brothers Max and Ben Redman holding down the rhythm section, and 16-year-old front man Deven Ivy.

We were walking the dog Saturday morning past Baby’s All Right and Alex popped in to check the vibe for the big Brooklyn Vegan CMJ day party and on stage there were 3 kids jamming.

At first glance he thought they must be the children of one of the sponsors having fun, and we were told a great band was playing at noon, so we took the dog home and came back.

To our pleasant surprise, these kids were the band, a perfect 3 piece, power-pop, grunge garage band. A good, old-fashioned shred-fest performed with the ease and grace of the most seasoned of road dogs complete with a collection of solid songs, especially the last one, ripe with breakdowns and vocal hooks. We have no idea how the 3 got so good so young, but we are psyched for what’s to come for them.

After the show, we chatted outside with their manager, Bart Dahl, as the guys skateboarded around Broadway and underneath the Williamsburg Bridge. Dahl is a true believer in the power and energy that can be generated when youth play rock ‘n’ roll, simply and defiantly. Like our good friend Joseph Mauricio says, “the universe smiles kindly upon moments of self-expression in its purest form. Self-expression that says fuck it to the status quo. And when someone asks the question, how did they do it? The artist answers in earnest, I don’t know.”

These are kids innocently and authentically making the music we all have known and loved over the past half-century: The Beatles, The Ramones, and Nirvana.

We find ourselves regularly in the argument with somewhat jaded and cynical colleagues in the music biz who say that popular music has moved permanently into the realm of minimal instrumentation and will never again return to the sound of the band. They say kids just don’t care; they are all content to just watch people get on stage, push play on laptops, hit triggers, and sing along like karaoke. They tell us we’re living in the dark ages attached to our drums and guitars, and it’ll never go back to that, but we stand firm in our belief that rock ‘n’ roll will never die. When you hear a full band with bass, drums, guitars, people actually playing music together live and really ripping, it is undeniably exciting.

So, to the skeptics, we present Residual Kid.