Kenny Howes (born February 10, 1970) is an American musician primarily in the power pop genre.
Musical style/influences
While swaying into other genres such as rockabilly, garage, psychedelic pop, and indie rock, Kenny Howes favors the power pop genre ("like The Beatles but louder," he says).
History
Early years
Raised in Mulberry, Florida, United States, Howes began his musical endeavors at the age of ten by simultaneously learning the guitar and piano at home and the French horn at school.
Through his musical ferocity for The Beatles, he quickly became proficient on these and other instruments. By his teens, Howes was performing regularly with many local garage cover bands in a variety of styles, including punk, new wave, new romantic, Paisley Underground, folk/acoustic, and AOR rock/heavy metal.
1989 – 1996
In 1989, after graduating from Mulberry High School and then Polk Community College, Howes attended Florida State University in Tallahassee, and while there began his recording career, following the breakup of his band The Mustardseeds and after a stint with local faves Zombie Birdhouse.
Overdubbing all voices and instruments (except drums, performed by schoolmate Kelly Shane), Howes released his first collection Nothing Wrong With That first as a DIY cassette EP in 1993 and then (after adding four songs) as a full-length CD in 1995.
After an East Coast US solo tour, he then recorded and released his CD Kenny Howes' Second Album in early 1996, which had favorable reviews and is known not only for the song "Girls With Glasses" ("one of the finest power pop tracks of the '90s," said author/power pop reviewer John Borack), but also for its cover art, which parodies The Beatles' Second Album. In addition to favorable reviews, Kenny Howes' Second Album was ranked #157 on The 200 Greatest Power Pop Albums list in the 2007 book Shake Some Action: The Ultimate Power Pop Guide.
This disc once again featured only Howes and Shane, who had begun performing live as Kenny Howes and the Curious Yellow, along with guitarist Bob Anthony, bassist Ben Pringle (later of Nerf Herder and The Rentals), and Chuck Vaughan on combo organ (later replacing Pringle on bass). The band embarked on an East Coast tour in spring 1996.
1996 – 2002
In 1996, Howes and drummer Kelly Shane relocated to the Atlanta, GA area, and began work on Howes' next CD Back To You Today! (released 1998). The disc's cover art was an unintentional nod to Grand Funk Railroad's "Pointing Finger" logo.
While piecing together a new group, Howes joined the psychedelic pop band Orange Hat (playing the Vox Continental organ), with whom he recorded the CD Pufferfish and continued to perform live until 2002. He rejoined Orange Hat ten years later, and continues to record and perform with the band.
In 1998 a lineup stabilized for his new group, Kenny Howes & the Yeah!, comprising Howes, Shane, guitarist Jason NeSmith (of Orange Hat, later of Casper and the Cookies) and bassist Kyle Harris (later of The Diamond Center). The group was a popular draw in both the Atlanta and Athens, GA indie rock scenes.
Also, starting in 1998, Howes also began performing regularly at the annual International Pop Overthrow power pop music festival in Los Angeles. He would typically perform with local L.A. backing musicians, although KH&Y did perform at the festival as a group in 2000, at the El Rey Theatre.
In 2000, Howes signed a licensing/distribution deal with short-lived indie label SecondHeaven.com, who released The Right Idea, a compilation of remixed songs from Howes' first three CD releases, which were now out of print.
Kenny appears briefly in Glenn Tilbrook's film One for the Road, accompanying the Squeeze frontman in an impromptu 2001 living room concert in Atlanta.
Howes and his band began work on their first group recording in 2000 at Chase Park Transduction studios in Athens, GA, recorded by NeSmith and David Barbe of Sugar. (Some pre-production was done in Hoboken, NJ with producer Don Fleming.) These sessions, which featured a re-working of Kirsty MacColl's "They Don't Know," were released in a small run of CDs on Royal Fuzz Records as Kenny Howes & the Yeah! in late 2001; the album was re-titled Until Dawn and re-released on TallBoy Records in 2002, to greater distribution and acclaim.
TallBoy Records also commissioned KH&Y to contribute to a special 7-inch record containing four artists' renditions of The Move's "Do Ya," which was released in 2002. The group also contributed a recording of Wings' "Venus and Mars/Rock Show" to the Demagogue Records compilation Love in Song: An Atlanta Tribute To Sir Paul McCartney (2000).