So here we are in 2020. No venues. No gigs, No live events. Bands and labels both big and small are crash-landing in the wake of Covid 19 and the storm it has rained down on the music industry.
I've decided to take a different mode of transportation.
Kyd Kalydoscope is in all ways a New Thing. Every recording I've made under my own name (Dave Johnson) since 2000 has dealt with difficult personal struggles of health, change, faith, and crisis. Dark subject matter. Cathartic and necessary? Yes. Entertaining and fun? Not so much. I needed a change.
Kyd K doesn't feel like a new musical identity, but it does feel like I've found my way back to what made me fall in love with music to begin with. It's a love that was born in my living room at the age of 5 with the Statler Brothers and in a neighbor's living room with Stevie Wonder. It became an obsession in 7th grade when I heard Petra and Van Halen for the first time. It's a mish-mash of my 80's roots, my southern rock and country leanings, my love of all things Motown and 90's hip-hop. It encompasses my endearing love of grungy bands like King's X and Alice In Chains, the Beatles and Queen hodge-podge of Jellyfish and Moke, the pop of Michael Jackson and Bruno Mars... to me it finally sounds like...well....me.
I hope you'll join me on the journey as New Thing is unleashed on the world. I don't expect to change it much. But it's good to see it through a more colorful lens, crafted from my life's experiences and creative sensibilities. I feel like a Kyd again.