Photo by John Mortensson
Interview by: Mark Lacey
Describing themselves as loud, unapologetic rock n roll, Kickin Valentina have been entertaining audiences for the last 11 years with audacious balls-to-the-wall live performances built on the foundations of the eighties hard rock bands that ignited a genre. With a new album in their back pocket, and shows scheduled for the UK and Europe from later this month, Kickin Valentina are riding the crest of a wave and building a reputation as one of the ‘must see’ club bands on the circuit right now.
“You want every record to be better than your previous one, and we all feel like this is probably one of our best records from top to bottom. We’re going to go out and play as much as we can to support this one. There’s no worldwide pandemic stopping us, so let’s just do it”.
MGM: The last time many people saw you in London, was in 2023 when you supported Tigertailz. You won a lot of new friends for your high energy performance that night.
Chris: Yeah, that was a fun show, man. I’ve listened to Tigertailz since way back, so it was fun playing a show with them.
MGM: You’ve been performing together for quite some time, but how would you describe what the band are doing right now?
Chris: When we started the band, we were just four guys that liked rock music and we didn’t really set out to do anything other than just write songs that we liked. We all grew up on bands like Guns N Roses and AC/DC and stuff like that. That was the stuff we wanted to play. There really wasn’t much more thought put into it than that. We knew starting the band, and even still to this day, we’re out in leftfield with what’s popular and we just kind of do our thing. When we started, we had goals; we wanted to get over to Europe and tour, but we never really set out to sound like anyone.
MGM: The music scene in your part of America is quite diverse. In Atlanta, Mastodon are probably the biggest band in the rock metal scene? But at a completely different end of the spectrum in Georgia you have blues bands like the Black Crowes, Blackberry Smoke and Georgia Satellites. What’s the music scene like in your part of America?
Chris: It’s not great. You’ve got some bands here, like Mastodon and BlackBerry Smoke. And Nashville Pussy are based out of here now. You’ve got Tuck, who was in The Biters, but he actually just moved over to Nashville, so he’s not even living here anymore. There’s some friends of ours, BSOL. There’s a few bands floating around. But Europe is where it’s at for rock n roll right now. That’s how it is.
MGM: The name for the band ‘Kickin Valentina’ has some quite interesting roots.
Chris: Heber and Jimmy had the name of the band before I even joined it; I was the last one to join. It started out as a joke and it’s one of those things that ended up sticking, because there was a porn star named Valentina whose fetish is kicking guys in the balls or whatever. So, it just kind of stuck, and here we are eleven years later.
MGM: The core of the group, of you, Jimmy and Heber, has been around since 2013. How did you guys meet initially?
Chris: I was in another band called ‘Rockets to ruin’ prior to this. I’d known Jimmy from around. He used to work at a strip club here in town and I would see him up there from time to time, and I’d see him at all the shows that would come through town. We were just casual friends. My last band broke up and he hit me up and he’s like, man, I’m working with this guitar player and we’re trying to put together a new band. I was coming out of another band and I was a little burned out and I was like, man, I don’t really want to help you put a band together, but if you get it together, call me. A year or so later, he hit me up. It was like, “hey, rockstar, you know, I got this band, are you interested”? He sent me some songs and I liked it and I went down and jammed with them and here we are.
MGM: DK Revelle is your third vocalist. Your original singer, Joe Edwards, recorded a couple of really cool albums together with you, starting with the ‘Kickin Valentina EP’ out and the ‘Super Atomic EP’, which you combined to release as your debut album. What was the ambition for the group in those early days?
Chris: For me personally, I was coming out of the band that I was in for eight years. We had toured, and opened for fucking everybody, and I just wanted to get back into something where I could have fun again. Jimmy and Heber were the ones that initially wanted to do this. I had the approach of, let’s see what happens. Once we started playing and opening up for some people, things just kind of snowballed and took off. Eleven years later, and we’ve been to Europe multiple times. We’ve been all over the US and we opened up for all these cool bands. It just kind of organically did its thing.
MGM: Joe was in the band for maybe four or five years before he departed, and then you had a very short stint with Brian Bezotte, which didn’t work out. The vocalist is often the focal point for a lot of bands, so any change, and especially two in quick succession, will have created some uncertainty. How do you reflect on that time?
Chris: Around the time that Joe left, it was really stressful. We did some really good stuff with Joe. I don’t want to take anything away from what we did with him. We were very different people, and when you spend that much time together, like we were doing, things just come to a head at some point. When he left, we, we knew we didn’t want to end the band and we wanted to continue on. We didn’t know anybody here in Atlanta that we really thought would fit with what we were doing. So, through a mutual friend, we met Brian and he came down and jammed with us. We thought he was cool, but Brian had never really done much outside of the Wisconsin area. So, when he played with us, we played five shows in five different states. We had one here. We did a little festival down in Florida, and we went out West for a few shows. And when he got home, he just decided he didn’t enjoy touring. Even though I stressed it a million times that we were going to be touring a lot, it just wasn’t his thing. We regrouped again and racked our brains and, DK was the first one that we called after Brian left. Before I joined and before Joe was originally in the band, Jimmy and Heber knew who DK was from when he was in Jetboy. They had called him to be the original singer, but at the time, they didn’t really have a full band and there wasn’t really anything going on. DK lives in California, so he wasn’t really interested. At the time, it didn’t make sense for him. But when Brian left, we called him up, and he came out and auditioned and he just nailed it, and we hit it off.
MGM: Before DK joined Kickin Valentina, he’d already done quite a lot. He was in Jetboy; he was in Beggar’s Ball; he did an album with Slam Alley, and he also did his own thing with Beautifully Demolished. Why do you think it was such a good fit for both parties to come together at that point?
Chris: Personality is a big part of it because we’re around each other so much. We spend so many hours together in a van and travelling, so you have to be able to get along with each other. That was the main thing we were looking for, somebody that we actually liked. Style wise, he’s got that raspy voice that we were looking for. He has the same influences as us. And when it comes to writing, everything just clicked. We pretty much had most of the music to the song ‘Sweat’ when he joined, and so that was the first song that we had written with him, and it just worked.
MGM: Did you have to make many adaptations when he joined? DK was already quite a seasoned vocalist and musician at that point. So, he would have wanted to stamp his own mark on Kickin Valentina.
Chris: The whole process of how we do things now is very different from when Joe was in the band because DK lives in California. It’s a six hour flight for him to just get here. So, the way we approach writing is different. When Joe was in the band, we would just all get together and just write with everyone in the room. Now, Heber or I will bring in a riff or a basic idea for a song. We’ll record it, send it to DK, and he sends his notes back, we tweak things and we just go back and forth. One thing that we never really did before was a lot of harmonies, and that’s just something that we played around with a little bit more with DK. We’ve definitely played around with more melodies. And especially on ‘Revenge of Rock’, we went a little bit more in a pop direction than some of our previous stuff, or even compared to ‘Star Spangled’.
Photo Credit: Joe Schaeffer
MGM: When DK joined the band in 2019, you played some quite big shows, including that Rocklanta show, and Bang Your head festival. He would have only been in the band a short time. You recorded one of those songs at that Germany date, which you released on ‘Chaos in Copenhagen’. Why did you call it that? There’s nothing live on that EP from Denmark.
Chris: We had a show booked in Copenhagen called ‘High Voltage’, but it got cancelled because of some issues that were going on with the venue, so we ended up just hanging out in Copenhagen for a few days. We had a few days off and our label was based out of there, so they hit us up and said, do you guys want to go into the studio and record while you’re here? DK was brand new to the band, and we had some songs we hadn’t even really played live yet. So, we were like, yeah, we’ll go in. Those three studio tracks were just recorded in an afternoon at Medley Studios. We wanted to add another song to it, and we had ‘Bang your head’ coming up. We knew we were recording that show, so we just ended up putting ‘Get ready’ on the EP.
MGM: The last couple of times that you’ve been to the UK in 2022 and 2023, you’ve been touring the ‘Revenge of rock’ album. You’re back over here from the end of August for 2 weeks of shows, and presumably you’ll focus on the new ‘Star Spangled Fist Fight’ album. That album is not easy to find in the UK, so many fans won’t yet have heard the material
Chris: A lot of that album was written during COVID. We put ‘Revenge’ out and then a couple months later, COVID hit and we couldn’t go out and play and so we just ended up just writing. We probably had 25-30 songs written. We went into the studio and recorded twelve songs from those and put ten on the album, so we’ve still got two songs recorded that we’re going to do something with at some point.
MGM: This album is raw, ambitious, and energetic, and there are moments within the songs that are full of purpose and aggression. Star Spangled Fist Fight would appear to be a very fitting album title.
Chris: Star Spangled Fistfight was one of the first songs that we had written. Heber had this riff with this KISS, ‘Calling Doctor Love’ and LA Guns, ‘Rip and tear’ kind of vibe to it. We just wrote the songs, and that’s what DK came back with. Down the road when we were trying to think of an album name that just seemed perfect. It sounds cool, and we can do a lot of stuff with the imagery.
MGM: This is your fourth album, and the second one with DK as vocalist. You’ve been building a lot of momentum since he joined the band in 2019. This was an important album for you, and you needed to really make a statement with it. Did you feel any pressure behind that, or was it just a case of having fun with it?
Chris: Probably the most pressure for us was the ‘Chaos in Copenhagen EP because that was the first thing that we did with DK, and you know how it is if a band loses a singer. Is the new stuff going to be any good? How different is it going to be? Are people going to like it? Are they going to accept a new singer and stuff like that? So that was probably the biggest one for us as far as that, and it was received very well. And when we did ‘Revenge of rock’ that one did very well. It’s just we lost a lot of momentum from touring because of COVID. Every time we tried to book something it would get cancelled. We’d wait a bit and rebook it. And it cancelled again. COVID killed the momentum for that album. You want every record to be better than your previous one, and we all feel like this is probably one of our best records from top to bottom. We were like, we’re going to go out and we’re going to play as much as we can to support this one. There’s no worldwide pandemic stopping us, so let’s just do it.
MGM: You’ve already played a fair number of dates this year, most recently across Europe. 2024 looks like it will end up being one of your busiest years for shows. Looking at your set list, it’s changed quite a bit from when you last came over here in 2023 supporting Tigertailz. Previously you played from across your catalogue, but this tour is almost exclusively from your new album. Fans may remember hearing you play two new songs last time around, in ‘Fireback’ and ‘Taking a ride’, but they’ll largely be hearing these new songs for the first time, live.
Chris: We love the new album. They’re fun songs to play and it’s trying to find that balance of new stuff and sprinkling in some of the older stuff. We’ve still got three songs in the set from when Joe was in the band. It’s getting to a point where it’s hard to choose what to put in there. But, as a musician, it’s trying to find that balance of keeping some of the older stuff in there and keeping things fresh for us as a band.
MGM: You’re playing twelve dates in the UK. The first one’s in London at the Black Heart on 29th August, and your play throughout the country across those 2 weeks. One date that many will be excited about is your return to HRH Sleaze, which takes place in Leicester this year. Is there anyone else on the bill you’re looking forward to watching or catching up with? There’s usually a really good camaraderie between the bands and the fans at that festival.
Chris: The band that I wish I could see would be ‘Space age playboys’, but they’re playing on a different night than us and we’re playing in Grimsby that night. But I’m a huge Korey Clark and warrior Soul fan. I wish I could see them. I think Shiraz Lane is headlining the night that we’re playing. They’re a cool band. We played with them at ‘Call of the wild’ last time we were over there.
MGM: Where else on the tour are you most excited to be visiting?
Chris: We love playing at the Waterloo in Blackpool. That’s such a fun show. Hard Rock Hell, obviously. We love playing at Bannerman’s. We’re going to Glasgow for the first time. We’re going to Southampton for the first time. So, there’s some cities that we’ve never played, and we’re looking forward to that. And then right after that, we head over to Germany for a festival and we’ve got a show on our own over there.
MGM: You’ve only given yourself maybe one or two days off while you’re over here. Will you get a chance to see much of the UK or is that just for recuperating?
Chris: Man? You know, on our days off, we’ll just go hang around the city wherever we’re at. For me, personally, my wife is British, so on our day off, I’m. I’m going to go see my in-laws. She’s going to be over there a couple of days. She was from Carlisle, but her parents are down in Barrow.
MGM: Hopefully, you’ll get a good home cooked meal.
Chris: I better. Yeah.
MGM: The UK and Europe, especially in Germany, have really started to fall in love with live rock music again, so that must be a driver to come over to play more and more shows.
Chris: For us, being an American band, it’s just crazy for us to go over there and just discover this whole, “new to us” music community. There’s a lot of cool places that we like playing over there. Nottingham is right up at the top of the list. We’ve played there a couple of times and the crowds are just awesome. You go to a festival and you always see the same group of people. We played ‘Call the wild’ a few times and it’s just like a family of like-minded people going to enjoy music and it’s been fun being a part of that.
MGM: Let’s talk about the ‘what next’. You’ve talked about some shows in Germany, but you mentioned that you’d written 25-30 songs for this album, and you’ve only put ten on the album, and got two others ready to release. What do you think will happen to the others that you haven’t recorded yet?
Chris: I have no idea. The two that we have recorded, we talked to our label about doing something with those; maybe a split 45 with another band on the label. I don’t know yet. As far as the other songs, we might revisit some of the ideas and see where they go.
MGM: Given your momentum over here and, that sounds like a good excuse to come back in 2025.
Oh, we’ll definitely be back. We’re already working on stuff for 2025 over there, so I don’t know what time of the year yet, but we’ll, we’ll definitely be back.
For more information:
https://www.facebook.com/KickinValentina/
Kickin Valentina will be touring the UK through August / September:
29th August: The Black Heart, London
30th August: KK’S Steel Mill, Wolverhampton
31st August: Billy Bootleggers, Nottingham
2nd September: Trillians Rock Bar, Newcastle upon Tyne
3rd September: Bannerman’s Bar, Edinburgh
4th September: The Classic Grand, Glasgow
5th September: Waterloo, Blackpool
6th September: The Tivoli, Buckley
7th September: HRH Sleaze, O2 Academy, Leicester
8th September: Yardbirds Rock, Grimsby
10th September: Suburbia, Southampton
11th September: The Brickmakers and B2, Norwich
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