From right: Adam “Luff” Lufkin, Josh Fairman, Jordan Linit and Eric Blumenfeld. Over Luff’s shoulder is drummer Jack Gargan. PHOTO BY:Wayne Armstrong.
They’re tired, virtually homeless and living their dream. It’s been a good year for the five members of the Kinetix, a funk/rock band that sprang from DU’s Lamont School of Music.
As their passion for beat and melody led them from small towns to DU, it’s taken them back out on the road now as graduates, playing everything from dive bars to pulsating music clubs and huge festivals.
“Even if all we ever did was play small clubs, we’d still be doing what we wanted,” guitarist Jordan Linit says.
Linit and his childhood friend and bass man Josh Fairman graduated from DU in 2006. Drummer Jack Gargan and keyboardist Eric Blumenfeld earned their degrees in 2007. The fifth member, guitarist Adam Lufkin, studied at Lamont and still has a year to go, but touring has taken precedence over graduation for now.
From their first gig — a 2005 DU party called the Mustache Bash — to their 2007 nationwide tour, band members says they’ve always felt they belonged together.
Linit says everyone in the band is committed to music. That’s why an education at a respected music school was so important to each of them. Accomplished musicians, he says, don’t get that way by simply experimenting or by copying someone else. They know what’s going on, why sounds work, and they practice constantly.
“It’s hard work,” Linit says. “But you look at it, and you’re working, you’re spending time in class, but it’s music. It’s what you love. It’s what you want to do.”
Like many musicians growing up in the era of electronic music delivery and file transfers, members of the Kinetix aren’t counting on album sales and the backing of a wealthy studio to propel them. They expect their music to be copied and swapped among fans. The band recently opted to give away their newest CD to hundreds of fans who attended a show. Instead, they say, the recordings are a way to build fans, who will buy tickets and T-shirts.
That model may build a fan base, but it also means nonstop touring. Only Fairman has a permanent place of his own — a single room in a house packed with recording equipment. The others live in a tour bus.
“For me, this is my way to see the world,” Lufkin says. “If that’s all I get out of this, if it just lets me get out there and see everything I can see, that would be fine.”
The Kinetix are online at www.myspace.com/kinetixmusic/. The band’s second album, Talking to Faces, came out this year.