| Leesburg, Virginia-based band My Kid Brother, who have been praised and featured by Billboard, Alternative Press, American Songwriter, and their hometown paper The Loudoun Times-Mirror, are pleased to announce their debut full length album Happy.Mad.Weird.Sad. It will arrive October 7 on Fearless Records. Pre-order it here.
“Spilt Salt” is a “f**k you” to the vapid social climbers of the world. But the video is a tongue-in-cheek homage to heavy metal imagery that even the staunchest headbanger won’t be able to help but love.
“‘Spilt Salt’ was originally written when I moved from Baltimore, Maryland to Loudoun County, Virginia,” says singer Christian Neonakis. “The song is about my first impressions with the new environment and new people that I met. Unfortunately, many of the first people I met were vapid socialites with rich parents and we had almost nothing in common. I felt bored, isolated, insecure, and hopeless. So I wrote a ‘fuck you’ song to the egotistical social climbers of the world and that’s what ‘Spilt Salt’ is about. Since having been here in Loudoun County for several years now, I have met some of the most wonderful people and made many truly genuine friendships. I just unfortunately met the dickheads first.”
After much enthusiasm that helped foster the band’s self-titled, 2021-released EP, My Kid Brother are branching out. The band rose up out of Leesburg with a singular sound reflective of the city’s small-town intimacy, yet wildly ambitious all at once. The indie pop quintet fuses warm keys, wistful psychedelic melodies, off-kilter guitar, wiry grooves, iridescent harmonies, and vocal interplay.
Happy.Mad.Weird.Sad, recorded with producer Eric Palmquist (Thrice, Bad Suns, Mutemath), builds on their EP’s polished, hooky rock with heavier riffs (“Roots”) and thicker grooves (“High Society”), colorful and quirky arrangements, lyrics that span stalker tales to unfiltered love songs, and choruses that punch with a newfound intensity (“Shoulders”).
As the story goes, Neonakis and drummer Sam Athanas worked together at a local restaurant back in 2015. After meeting guitarist Dylan Savopoulos, they began jamming before inviting bassist/guitarist Richard Smith into the fold. The lineup cemented upon Piano Whitman‘s addition as vocalist/keyboardist/synths in October 2018. Beyond music, their bonds even extend to their respective living situations. Their friendship is the backbone of their musical unit, as well.
And that fosters the creative surge on Happy.Mad.Weird.Sad. It isn’t surprising, given the amount of work they spent building up to it. The band members —who still live in and around the small-ish town of Leesburg, located roughly 40 miles northwest of Washington, D.C.— had plenty of time to think (and occasionally overthink) their songs, with the pandemic having stifled their early momentum. Even though the world shut down as the band was getting its legs under it, My Kid brother garnered media support and critical acclaim from key media outlets like American Songwriter, Billboard, The Noise, Guitar World, and Alternative Press, the latter of which christened them one of 100 Artists You Need To Know.
My Kid Brother will hit the road on co-headline run with Merci next month. The East Coast run kicks off on July 10 in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania and runs through July 31 in Washington, DC. All dates are below. Get tickets here.
MY KID BROTHER ON TOUR:
WITH MERCI:
7/10 — Harrisburg, PA — Stage On Herr
7/14 — Buffalo, NY — Mohawk Place
7/15 — Manchester, NH — Jewel
7/16 — Teaneck, NJ — Debonair Music Hall
7/17 — Rochester, NY — Bug Jar
7/19 — Amityville, NY — Amityville Music Hall
7/20 — Pittsburgh, PA — Black Forge
7/22 — Philadelphia, PA — Khyber Pass Pub
7/24 — New York, NY — Mercury Lounge
7/26 — Charlotte, NC — The Milestone Club
7/28 — Atlanta, GA — Masquerade – Purgatory
7/29 — Nashville, TN — The End
7/31 — Norfolk, VA — The Norva*
*With State Champs + Hot Mulligan
MY KID BROTHER ARE:
Christian Neonakis — Vocals, Guitar, Bass
Piano Whitman — Vocals, Piano, Synths
Dylan Savopoulos — Guitar, Backing Vocals
Richard Smith — Bass, Guitar
Sam Athanas — Drums
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