When Brooklyn singer/songwriter
Kevin Devine
decided he needed about $50,000 to record his next two albums, one a solo project and another with his longtime accompanists the Goddamn Band, he turned to his fans for help and asked for donations through the crowd-sourcing site Kickstarter.com.
“It took me a long time to decide - should I do it, should I not do it,” Devine explained. “At best we thought that if we let the campaign go for six weeks, we might just squeeze by. But I also knew it could turn out to be a complete disaster.”
Apparently, though, someone out there wants to hear more Kevin Devine. The campaign reached its goal in a matter of days, and eventually raised an astonishing $115,000. “Complete and utter amazement doesn’t begin to describe what I felt,” Devine said.
It will be a while before the two albums can be completed and Devine returns to the grinding tour schedule he’s maintained for the last decade, but in the meantime fans will get to see him at Maxwell’s on June 14 in quite a different light, performing with the band he started in high school back in the Nineties called Miracle Of 86.
“I really thought there was no way I would ever perform with this band again,” Devine noted. “I really thought that part of my life was over. But I am so happy that we’re going to be doing this.” Miracle Of 86 will perform twice, at Maxwell’s on June 15 and at the Mercury Lounge in Manhattan on June 16.
Miracle Of 86 pose after a show in 2003.
Devine and bandmate Chris McAllen grew up on Staten Island and late last year, learned that one of their childhood friends had lost his apartment and most of his family’s belongings to Superstorm Sandy. “At that point, I hadn’t talked to Chris or (guitarist Mike) Robertson in years,” he said. “I had kept in touch with (drummer) Mike Skinner (who played in an early version of the Goddamn Band) and he was all for it. So I emailed the other guys and asked if they would be interested, and eventually we just got the idea that it would be nice if we got back together to try and raise some money.” The show, held at a small club on Long Island in January, sold out almost immediately, and the band was able to split the proceeds between their old friend and a Staten Island-based Sandy relief organization.
“We got together the night before the show, having not been in the same room together for almost ten years, and it just felt really good,” Devine said. “We spent the next afternoon rehearsing, and by then any awkwardness had melted away and it just felt really natural to be back together again.”
“I was never happy with the way that band broke up,” Devine admitted. “There was a lot of stress and bad feelings. But these people had been my closest friends for years. Chris and I had started playing together in high school. So for the four of us to be playing together again just felt really great.”
Over the course of the next few months, old friendships were repaired and old grievances forgiven, and eventually the group decided to do two more shows. “Maxwell’s just seemed natural because Miracle played there so many times, it felt like home,” Devine said. “And since Brownie’s (in Manhattan) isn’t there anymore, the Mercury Lounge seemed like the perfect fit to do our New York City show.”
“What we discovered after that first show was that there is still a lot of interest in what we did as a band,” Devine added. “And I think we made some good music. Especially our second record (“Every Famous Last Word,” released in 2002,) that was a really good record that I’m still very proud of.”
"What this means going forward, I don’t know,” Devine said. “Will we play some more? Is this something we might keep doing? We haven’t even talked about that. We’ll see what happens and go on from there.”
Tickets for the Maxwell's show are available from Ticketfly.com, or at Tunes Records in Hoboken. Tickets for the Mercury Lounge show are available from Ticketmaster. Both shows are expected to sell out so fans are encouraged to purchase advance tickets.