“It’s a little bit of a circus. In the best way.”
Life for Stephen Kellogg is about to pick up again in the familiar way, the way he’s come to know over the last few years. He’s about to hit the road again with his band, the Sixers, in support of their new self-titled record. And the “circus”, as Kellogg calls it–that life he has with his band on the road—is something that he is ready to join again.
“It’s been great. We’ve been off mostly for about five weeks. It’s been a nice break, enough to get me fired up to be ready to go again.” It’s easy to tell immediately Kellogg is a disarmer; a patently likeable guy quick to count his blessings. His demeanor is easy-going and humble (much like his music) but there is an underlying fire in his words—contentment peppered with drive. It comes from a man who has known his passion for a long time, and made the conscious decision to morph that passion into his day-to-day life.
Stephen Kellogg certainly knows his way around a verse. The lyrics of his songs are split pretty evenly between confessional and conversational, observing acutely that vast area between the lines. There is a decidedly heartland sound to most of his tunes, but he has never limited himself, adding a harder edge where it’s called for. Now, with his band The Sixers adding some depth to the sound he cultivated on his own, he is exploring some new musical corners, while always keeping an eye on where he started.
When he graduated from the University of Massachusetts, Kellogg started off doing what a lot of his friends were doing—working the 9 to 5 job. “I remember telling my mom that I felt like a caged animal,” he said. “I figured out pretty early on that I needed to get myself out of that situation.” He ran into quite a bit of the usual resistance to the idea of following a more “impractical” career path, with strangers and friends alike telling him what a hard living playing music is.
“I was like, ‘Well, have you done it?’,” Kellogg recalls of this time in his life. “I don’t think it’s any harder than anything else. If you’re going to be a doctor, you still have to go to med school. You’ve got to pay your dues in anything you do. There’s a period of struggle.”
And struggle he has. Early in his career, Kellogg made due at small bars and venues, taking requests to bring in money. “I had a gig for a while at a steakhouse. That was a big part of where I was getting my income for a while. There’s nothing glamorous about that, but playing requests for drunk hecklers was more fun to me than anything I’d done to that point.” Knowing that he did not want to be in that situation forever, though, Kellogg took it upon himself to take the next step. He started his own record company to put out his music and support some of his friends’ music. “I was calling it Fat Sam Music,” he says. “I wasn’t really thinking of it as a record company, because I wasn’t really signing other acts. I just started putting out my own records. I saved up some capital, and made an album and starting selling those. It was just out of a necessity to want to get your music out there.”
Since those early days, his prodigious songwriting has borne a spate of albums, each a unique blend of trenchant Americana with an agreeable simplicity. Kellogg has claimed some pretty varied influences, from Jim Croce to Motley Crue. The former certainly informs his songwriting (though it sounds something like Jackson Browne playing in a sandbox with the Counting Crows), but he still infuses the latter’s charged stage presence. There is clearly a poet’s sensibility in Kellogg’s music, but he is careful not to let that anesthetize his live shows. “There’s nothing more boring than going to see songwriters who are like ‘Here’s the next one about my broken heart’,” he says. “When I got tickets to see Bon Jovi last summer…you know, they were jumping around and putting on a show. That was always, for me, as important as the music. There’s no reason we can’t put on a show.”
The shows are legion now, and national, with the new self-titled album coming out on Foundations Records. Kellogg is excited about it, and about the band that has evolved out of what was once a solo gig for him. Stephen met up with bandmates Keith Karlson and Brian Factor somewhat providentially, as each was winding down another chapter in their creative lives. It was just another step that made sense for him. “The Sixers formed around the last record that we had done, Bulletproof Heart, but this record was the first where it wasn’t just Stephen Kellogg and ‘these guys’. We did this as a band, and this was the first record where that was understood from the outset. I don’t think it’s a big musical departure from what we’ve been doing. I think it sounds a little clearer, and it has a little more sparkle in it.”
It all appears to agree with Kellogg, and he seems genuinely happy to be doing what he is doing. At one point in our conversation, I decided to test the waters a bit, to see if I could draw out a more caustic Kellogg – the tortured and cynical rocker beneath the amicable New England songwriter. I brought up Ashlee Simpson and the Saturday Night Live debacle.
“Yeah, man, I don’t know. What’s funny as hell about that whole Saturday Night Live thing is that they refuted it,” he said. “Sometimes people just want you to acknowledge that something was a little weird. Someone like Ashlee Simpson — I ‘m thankful she’s in the world because it gives us something to laugh at.” That’s it? But didn’t she blame the fact that she got caught lip-synching on the band? ”I’m sure she’s a nice person and probably just getting bad advice.”
So much for tortured and cynical. Kellogg embodies normalcy, and embraces the rock star life with the same verve as he does the tranquil environs of Home Sweet Home. Though admittedly comfortable in the hot lights of the stage, he is just as content couch-bound. “I am big Soprano’s fan. I conk out for two days and cook huge Italian meals for myself. I have a shamefully normal situation.” Normal being a relative state, Kellogg represents it well for the masses.
The tour schedule stretches the whole country where once there were only regional gigs. He, Keith and Brian are playing everywhere from New York to Hollywood, and sharing the stage with such established acts as O.A.R. and Braddigan from Dispatch. All of it has Stephen and the Sixers in a pretty good spot, with a solid fan base that’s only getting larger. Kellogg is smiling—but not finished. “I think I’ve always been happy with wherever I’ve been,” he says thoughtfully. “But with just a little bit of healthy dissatisfaction. You know, it’s a miserable feeling when you are always wishing you were somewhere else.” And has he taken a minute, in the midst of his entrepreneurial drive to do just a little more, to enjoy the how far he’s come? “You know, you keep revising your vision. But I keep checking in and having moments when I realize that we’ve bettered our lot a little bit.”
For now, Kellogg just hopes that the music reaches his fans, and that they are able to get something from it. “I really just hope that they relate and feel cool listening to it. To me, great music, when I listen to it, makes me feel like the better version of myself. I like to think that maybe, for people that are fans of our music, that it helps them tap into the people that they want to be.”
For his fans, there will be a whole new record for them to enjoy. For Kellogg, the circus continues. And its ringmaster is enjoying every stop along the way.
