Kim13 – An Xperience Interview

Kim13 – An Xperience Interview – by Rob Smittix.

RRX: First off, I thought it was a great idea to chat because 1313 Mockingbird Lane will be a recipient of a 2026 Listen Up Hero Award!

K13: Yeah, nobody told me. If I didn’t see it on Facebook, I wouldn’t have known, but a couple of other people told me the same thing.

RRX: Oh, that’s a wild way to find out. And you work at Last Vestige, right?

K13: Yes, I’m not hard to find, people.

RRX: I’m surprised that Jim (Furlong) didn’t say anything to you. He’s also up for a hero award.

K13: Yeah, well, there’s two different things, aren’t there?

RRX: Yeah, so there’s the Hero Award night, which is February 21st, and then the actual award ceremony for the year is the next day on the 22nd. It’s a two-day event.

K13: Right, but he was up for some other award too, I thought.

RRX: Oh yeah, that’s right. Shortly after we announced our Hero Class, they also announced he’s up for an Eddie Award, too. He’s getting double the love this year.

K13: But yeah, I’ve been at Last Vestige for like 36 years, just so you know.

RRX: That’s awesome!

K13: Apparently, it’s my career.

RRX: Well, it’s great to be still be working in music, you know? It’s kind of like how my band’s not active at the moment, but I work for Xperience for a living, so I still feel like I’m a part of it.

K13: I remember your band, of course. I saw you guys a bunch of times.

RRX: That’s dope! Well, I wish I got to see you with 1313 Mockingbird Lane a bunch of times, but it was kind of before my time. Although I do play your music all the time on the Local Lunch.

K13: After 1313, obviously, I was in a bunch of other bands. But I mean … I worked at Valentine’s and The Low Beat too.

RRX: I miss those venues. You know, it’s really hard for a local band to even have a Wikipedia page, but 1313 Mockingbird Lane has one, which is pretty cool.

K13: I know, and you can’t make your own Wikipedia page either.

RRX:  Yeah, I know, I gave it a try. It didn’t work.

K13: They won’t even let you edit … if you try to edit the Wikipedia page and you’re someone that’s in the band, they won’t let you. It’s totally whacked because there were things that were wrong on there before, and they’re like … no, you can’t fix that.

RRX: I know you gotta be like some certain designated somebody, I guess.

K13: I was in Susan and the Surftones for a long time, too, and it happened with that Wiki pag,e too. You can’t edit when it’s wrong; it’s stupid.

RRX: That’s annoying. So you were the organist. Do you still play?

K13: I don’t play keyboards all that much, like around the house lately, but I do still have all my keyboards. I mean, sometimes I pick up my acoustic guitar more, but I’m not really a very great guitar player. I mean, I would play … people have asked me a couple times to play different things. The last thing I did live in front of people was a reunion tour with The Surftones in California. That was fun!

RRX: Heck yeah! Like I said, I play your music all the time on my show, so I’ve been a fan. But I really feel like I missed out on this great time period of music in the Capital Region because of my age. Everybody’s telling me all these great stories, you know? Like the early days of the QE2.

K13: We were like a house band at the QE2 for the longest time. I mean, whenever she’d (Charlene Shortsleeve) have any kind of music that sounded haunted or creepy, they’d call us up. We’d end up on some really weird bills because of that.

RRX: I mean, that place is just legendary to me.

K13: One thing  I’d like to say about 1313 and being so … garage rock-y, was because we didn’t really know how to play our instruments very well. There’s a lot of bands now that try to do the garage rock thing, and maybe they’re good at it, but they tend to sound too polished, you know what I mean? That happened to bands like the Fuzztones. I always liked them. They were really garage at first, but then the longer they played, the more polished they got. And then people started being like, oh, they’re not really garage rock anymore, you know what I mean? If you listen to the 1313 stuff, sure it’s cheesy, but I mean, how do you go back to that once you learn how to play?

RRX: Right, I know what you mean, though. But over-polished does seem to take away some of the soul, for sure. So when you heard about the Hero Award honor, what did you think?

K13: I have to say that I’m always surprised that people still care about it, but I mean, it definitely makes me happy. I did talk to one of the other band members about it, Marty Feier. He was like our original drummer. I mean … we did have one drummer before him, but he didn’t wanna play gigs, he just played on our one recording. Marty forced us to play gigs because we weren’t ready yet. I talked to him, and he was really excited about the whole thing, and he said to me … cool, if I pay you like $1000 and I pay for Hausmann’s plane ticket, we could fly him up here, and we could play at the show and I’m like, oh wow! I’m like, get out of here, he would never do that. Haunted Hausmann, he would never … I don’t care if he paid for his plane ticket. There’s no way in hell he’s getting up here.

RRX: That would be awesome, though.

K13: I know, but I know that won’t happen. But I do also talk to Ethan, who was in the band, one of our guitar players. He was excited about it. So I guess three of us know. Unfortunately, Robin Graves is no longer with us. He recently passed away, and it was very heartbreaking to me. I stayed in touch with him all this time.

RRX: Yeah, that’s tough.

K13: I haven’t talked to a bunch of the other people, although Brian Goodman was one of our drummers. He thought it was cool. Because I feel like it’s an award for everybody in the band, you know what I mean?

RRX: It sure is.

K13: I’m the only person that anybody is able to get a hold of.

RRX: Actually, Brian sent me a message yesterday, but I didn’t even realize that he was in the band. Again, because of my age, I didn’t know the history.

K13: Oh yeah. Brian, I think he was like the last drummer that we had. I used to joke that we’re like Spinal Tap because we were together for 10 years maybe-ish, but we had like seven drummers. There’s quite a few people that I don’t know where they are these days. There’s Dave Heaton, he was a bass player. Dave Pollack, I know where he is. There’s OP (Callaghan) …

RRX: OP was in the band, too?

K13: Yeah, he was one of our drummers.

RRX: I didn’t know that either. I like OP a lot. He writes for us, actually.

K13: I love OP. I still talk to him all the time.

RRX: OP is also a doctor, and people tell me all the time that I should have him as my doctor.

K13: He is a really good doctor.

RRX: I’ll think about it, but I know him too well, and I don’t want him to see my p****.

(Both Laugh)

RRX: It’s just a little weird. Well, Kim, thank you so much for your time today, and congratulations again to you and the entire band. We’ll see you February 21st at the Cohoes Music Hall!

K13: Thank you.

 

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