Kevin Devine has a new "Both Ways" video, expands tour

Kevin Devine has been doing a lot of touring in support of last year’s Instigator, and he now has a video for a live version of “Both Ways” off that album. The audio was recorded on his tour with Pinegrove and Petal and the video includes footage of various shows on that tour, plus lots of backstage and off-stage clips of the tour too. (The video was filmed by Kenna Hynes, with sound recording and mixing by Megan Benavente.) It was recorded before Trump’s inauguration, and Kevin began the song by saying to the crowd, “This song is for our President-elect, and any other motherfucker that wants to stand in the way of people. It’s a pro-people song.” If you don’t already know the song, it is indeed very political and a big fuck-you to the type of discrimination that still goes on in the US government every day. The video premieres below, and you can also read more background info on the song from Kevin below.

Kevin has tour dates coming up, including Lollapalooza (and a Lolla aftershow with Whitney), the Brand New-headlined High & Low Festival, and a Philly show with Taking Back Sunday.

Since we last spoke, he added a Teaneck, NJ show at Debenoir Music Hall on 9/14. Updated dates are listed below.

If you don’t have a copy of Instigator, you can get it on vinyl/CD/cassette or digital.

KEVIN DEVINE ON “BOTH WAYS”:

I wrote Both Ways in the summer of 2015, before the Trump candidacy had really picked up much ominous steam. It was kind of a more broadly directed critique/assessment of some deeper, more structural issues I’ve had with both parties for some time (though in truth the Republican party’s current radicalism makes the centrist corporate Democratic establishment feel light years preferred, which is a really twisted accomplishement).

I guess it’s about the two faces America wears, about how our mythologizing & relative economic/cultural pole-position & our imperial militarism are inextricably linked, and about what strikes me as tragically & fundamentally hypocritical about Modern American Capitalist Christianity. Those all seemed to live under this larger roof, this idea that you theoretically shouldn’t get to be both things, the bully & the victim, the cop & the robber, the lion & the lamb, and that in claiming both spaces, the center can’t hold, and things fall apart. Which it feels like is happening, at least to me.

That said, nothing is so simple; it was kind of an exercise in being a little more black & white than I ever let myself be, in life or music.

Kenna shot & traveled with Pinegrove the whole run, and we all bonded pretty hard, especially after the election, where the shows became a place for people to feel good or feel scared or heal a bit or commiserate or freak out and these kinds of songs started to feel even more pointed and focused. That trip with them & Julien & Petal and my band – the Prince Brothers – and crew – Carly Hoskins & Megan Benavente – was one of my favorite tours I’ve ever done and it was fun to see Kenna cut it to such vivid effect.

Kevin Devine — 2017 Tour Dates
08/01 – Lancaster, PA – Chameleon Club%
08/02 – Cleveland, OH – Mahall’s%
08/03 – Chicago, IL – Lollapalooza
08/03 – Chicago, IL – Thalia Theatre (Lollapalooza After Show +
08/04 – Ann Arbor, MI – Blind Pig%
08/05 – Columbus, OH – Double Happiness%
09/09 – San Bernardino, CA – High & Low Festival)*
09/14 – Teneack, NJ – Debenoir Music Hall
09/23 – Philadelphia, PA – Xfinity Live!

% = w/ The Dig
+ = w/Whitney
* = w/Brand New, Death Cab for Cutie, etc
! = w/Taking Back Sunday