Today we’d like to introduce you to Drew Kirby.
Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
Georgia born & raised! I grew up in Marietta and my father commuted each day to Courtland Ave downtown to work so Atlanta always played a huge role in my upbringing as the place I’d go for pretty much any event all throughout my youth. It didn’t seem like there was a “scene” in the suburbs at the time, but looking back we had multiple solid DIY venues scattered throughout North Georgia so that made playing multiple shows a year a reality from a very young age. I played my first show at age 13 at Swayzes Venue off Barrett Parkway, it was November 1st, 2006 and we put up leftover Halloween decorations. Marching Banana started during my final semester of high school. I’d gotten into a little trouble and wanted to focus a lot of anxious energy into something productive – that became Kirby & The Mablets “The Story So Far” album which was supposed to be the first Marching Banana release but ended up being the 7th because things got off the ground rather quickly. I moved to Athens that summer at 17 for school at UGA, and Athens was the wind in the sails of Marching Banana Records – buoyed by releases that garnered a little regional attention by Athens acts like Futo and Meth Wax as well as Atlanta artists like Sea Ghost and Delorean Gray. This all culminated rather dramatically when myself and my dear friend Matt Anderegg put our band New Wives on hold to back-up close comrade Kristine Leschper in what was then her solo project Mothers. The success of Mother’s first album “When You Walk A Long Distance You Are Tired” allowed us to tour internationally three times, circle the United States a bunch and record a 2nd record “Render Another Ugly Method” with John Congleton in Los Angeles in early 2017.
The experience of meeting and playing with so many people both visionary and ordinary remains vital to my worldview and only further fueled my music passion as it – for once – felt externally validated and seemed to return the rewards of all this work ten times over. Marching Banana understandably took a backseat during this time period as I relocated to Atlanta, but still churned out some work I’m particularly proud of – Bananagrams Vol. 4 was a 20+ person 20+ song album of ever-shifting modular bands featuring members of all-Georgia groups, Jianna Justice “The Movies” was another highlight to me. These were both records that I engineered and mixed on vintage analog equipment – my Tascam 388 8-track 1/4″ tape recorder and a series of tube-powered gear & amplifiers. Most recently, I produced Dan Clifford & The Tall Boys album “Inaction” all out of their basement in Panthersville with this same setup, and am always open to work with groups interested in this particular type of analog recording style! For the last three years, I’ve lived in a room on the top floor of an old victorian house a block off of Grant Park, where I would come for field trips and picnics growing up. I love Atlanta – it feels like I’ve come home but also never really left!
I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle free, but so far would you say the journey have been a fairly smooth road?
It goes both ways – in a sense the whole thing has been a series of struggles, just to make something exist and have inherent or apparent value when it doesn’t need or have to. On the other hand, I feel so lucky whenever I’m forced to sit down for two seconds and think rationally about it. I didn’t have the kind of family life where music was outwardly encouraged, but my parents were never rude or questioning about the noise even a single time so I tried to maintain that mutual respect. They never really bought me gear, but they let me have free reign over basically the entire basement floor of their home for recording and rehearsal until I went to college. I’ve always wanted to use these assets to the benefit of others.
Even now, when I have to work full-time to maintain the label, I understand that I still had a massive headstart that helped me get to this point. So I try to be mindful of what is and isn’t worth feeling down over. The “fight” to exist is kind of a necessary aspect of any good idea anyways. I often specify that the label is Southern because that inherent “fight” is baked-into the lifestyle, and it’s not pretty, and there will perennially be a blind eye towards the region critically, even though it’s the most definitive of America’s actual cultural exports. That’s about the extent to which I can talk about that stuff without being wildly out of my depths (if I’m not already!) The short answer – telling anybody “no” is always the hardest part of anything. Art and commerce intersecting is always going to be tricky because expression is very vulnerable!
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
I’m fortunate and proud to have played on hundreds of recordings, and to have made a bunch of albums for a bunch of Georgia bands, and to have traveled the world doing it! I never took a lesson, I had no mentor and I try to “teach them to fish” so that the people I work with go forward with the same tools I have or the lessons I learned the hard way. I guess I am proud of the fact that I’ve become who I always knew I was. Marching Banana Records celebrated ten years of existence with our release POPULAR MUSIC THAT WILL LIVE FOREVER – a 20-song collection of Georgia artists with running affiliations to the label or future releases forthcoming.
There have been 77 releases on MBR during that decade and I think most of those are more honest & expressive music than you’re going to find algorithmically or in the day-to-day muzaksphere. Essentially I think there are labels with corporate money or fat-pocket backing that haven’t put out as much good stuff as we’ve been able to do on our own with everyday tools and gumption. So that name PMTWLF is sort of a flex – we will continue to exist, even in covid, even in old age – but also sort of a mission statement: this is music by and for regular people like us; we hope and think it may stand the test of time. The short answer to THIS one is: “It Hurts Until It Doesn’t” by Mothers was tracked entirely live in the studio and that song has over 7 million plays. We’d written and rehearsed the parts beforehand, and we’d played a couple of shows, but there’s also a lot of improv and nascent band energy in the performance that I’m proud was captured and maintained (shoutout to Drew Vandenberg).
Can you tell us more about what you were like growing up?
I feel like I’ve always embodied opposites. I’m a loudmouth that is somehow the quiet one at a lot of my family gatherings. I’m socially anxious but instead of retreat, I kind of do the opposite and perform. I’m quite a realist, which is to say I’m often fairly unhappy, but I think I feel true joy more often than most people as well. I’m critical but hopeful and I care about things improving if they have the capacity to. I despise jock mentality (even in the art world) but I personally thrive on competition and self-improvement. I think I’m just a live synapse taking any & everything as over-stimulating but learning to ride the waves of all these opposing forces. I’ve kind of always been this way.
Contact Info:
- Email: marchingbananarecords@gmail.com
- Website: marchingbanana.bandcamp.com
- Instagram: instagram.com/marchingbanana, @Ariana__greenday, @sunsethonorunit
- Facebook: facebook.com/marchingbanana
- Twitter: twitter.com/marchingbanana
- Youtube: youtube.com/marchingbananatv
- Other: http://marchingbanana.org
Image Credits
Main photo + all vest photos by Liz Wheeler. The portrait is by Taber Lathrop. Logo also by Taber Lathrop. Group shot of MBR by Cory Robertson.
