KEVIN DEVINE SHARES VIDEO FOR ‘BOTH WAYS’

Punk troubador KEVIN DEVINE has shared a slice of defiant tour life with a live video for Both Ways via Brooklyn Vegan.

Made by Kenna Hynes and Tiny Ship Co., the video features live audio and footage from his headlining tour last winter with PINEGROVE and PETAL. Speaking about Both Ways (taken from last year’s exceptional record Instigator), Devine says: 

“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.”

Check out the video below. 

Photo Credit: Shervin Lainez