In late August, Devon Kay & the Solutions released their latest full-length, called Limited Joy. We spoke with singer/guitarist Devon Kay and talked about the band’s new members and how they impacted the writing of this album. (Their lineup now features bassist Jake Levinson, drummer Ryan Scottie, trombone player Jacob Horn, trumpet player Ian Terry and keyboardist Joram Zbichorski). The resulting record is eclectic, a bit unconventional and does a good job of showcasing the talents of the various musicians involved. Additionally, we discussed how the album was recorded, the involvement of Mike Kennerty from The All-American Rejects, and the band’s relationship with A-F Records. We also conversed about future plans, including more new music that the band has already finished.

Bill – Before this album, you guys were a three-piece band. Now you’ve got six members in total. What led to these additions in the lineup?

Devon – The original lineup was me, my best friend from high school on bass and the drummer Ryan. Since then, that bassist has started a family and done all that stuff, and the band kind of took a break. I joined Direct Hit! and I was doing that for most of my time. Then I rekindled my friendship with Ryan at his wedding. We hadn’t seen each other, he’d moved away, but we both realized that we missed making songs together. Then we recorded Yes, I Can’t ourselves, but we brought in my buddy Jacob on trombone and we had a bunch of friends play a bunch of different instruments. We thought it was kind of neat and we thought about making it a thing. My first band had a horn section and a keyboard, and I’ve always liked a lot of composition. We just got really lucky on members. Our horns players and keyboardist are all from Lawrence University in Wisconsin. It’s like a music conservatory and they’re all godly on their instruments. Our bassist Jake was in Truman & His Trophy and a bunch of other great Chicago bands. He’s an unreal bass player. And then Ryan is the same drummer, but he’s also extremely talented. So basically, I’m a hack surrounded by insane talent and you’d be foolish not to surround yourself with better people. That’s kind of how it ended up becoming what it is.

Bill – That’s great, (laughs). And that’s why the band is called “The Solutions,” right?

Devon – Yeah. Every time I needed something done, I had to call on somebody else. It was originally supposed to be a joke and we were going to be called Nø Solution, but we quickly changed that because it sucked. Then we just went with the current name.

Bill – I think that was probably the right choice. How would you say the new members influenced the songwriting of Limited Joy?

Devon – A lot. It’s kind of still the same system where I write the words and the structure, but now with all these people I kind of do less. I mean, there’s some songs where I wrote everything and then there’s some where after we were done, I felt like I didn’t write anything at all. It was cool. The song “One Horse” was like me wanting to write a pop song on synth and then Ryan and I recorded some of it in the back of a van in Mexico on a different tour. Then our keyboardist Joram came in with all these Kanye West parts on the keyboard and I was like “That’s fucking amazing!” And it just took a whole new shape. Whereas “Anything at All” was a song that was written for Yes, I Can’t that was carried over. So, it’s this really healthy mix of structure and then people lending their abilities to it. There’s really not a lot of room to get upset about little parts when you have this many people, because there’s someone who’s perfectly proficient with writing as well. You learn to step back and allow for someone else’s input.

Bill – I could see how in a band somebody might be really hellbent on an idea that they had, but if everybody has a mindset to be open to other ideas, I would think some really cool stuff would come out of an environment like that.

Devon – Totally. I’ve played with a lot of groups and done a lot of junk with a lot of different musicians, and the way that it’s always worked is if you kind of just don’t care. Not don’t care, but it’s like ideas are free and execution is what costs money. My friend always says that. It’s like everyone has a bunch of ideas when you go into a song, but when you hear the right thing, execute it. That’s it. Don’t be a dolt and argue for something that doesn’t work. Then you’re just annoying and problematic.

Bill – That makes sense. Given that you recorded the album in your respective home studios, how would you describe the recording process for this record?

Devon – To me, it was perfect and ideal. I don’t like studios. I think studios are just kind of like this weird bane of my existence. Not that you can’t get a great experience out of a studio and not get a great sound, most of the time studios sound better. If we recorded this in a studio, it would probably sound better. But I also think it’s a testament to the fact that it sounds so good and we didn’t have to spend very much money. I think the budget was $2,300 total, which is not a lot of money, but also a lot of money. It’s an independent project and we didn’t have any funding. Recording at home saved a lot of money and gave us the freedom to send files together and just edit and completely change ideas. I don’t know. We didn’t want to be pop punk band or a ska band. We didn’t want to be limited by anything. All this computer crap, I tell ya, it does a good thing, (laughs).

Bill – It sounds like it was recorded in a studio to me…

Devon – Well thank you. A lot of that is Mike Kennerty energy. He taught us that you can make big with small and I think we did that. The biggest thing that nobody knows is that the drums are actually not real live studio drums, they’re all triggered and built by Ryan. He actually samples his own drums and then lets people use them. He built all that because we couldn’t get in the same room. We all want to be taken seriously with this group, so we decided to do it tooth and fucking nail to get to the point of something really great, but on a really small budget. That was kind of the idea.

Bill – That’s awesome. You touched on this a little before, but I wanted to ask about Mike from The All-American Rejects, who mixed the album. What do you like best about what he brought to the songs?

Devon – Oh man. I’ve been working with Mike for about ten years now, going back to when Direct Hit! did Brainless God with him. And ever since then we’ve worked more and more, and that lends you to kind of some comradery. There’s something about when I was in the studio with him and the way we’d joke through the headphones while I was doing harmonies and like whisper to each other. He speaks my language and he gets my insanity drivel. If you listen to the demos of this record, they don’t sound perfect because they’re not touched up by a professional producer. Not to say Ryan, who edited the songs and pre-mixed them, didn’t do an amazing job, he did, there was just a level up when Mike put his hands on it. Mike puts that “I’ve got a gold record on my wall” shit on it and I don’t know the magic, but I guess that’s why I keep going back. Mike has a sense of scale and scope that a lot of people don’t when it comes to mixing. Mixing is everything. If you’re a small band and you’re wondering what to spend all your money on, it’s mixing. A good mixer can turn any sound into a different sound, and that is sometimes more beneficial than you can ever imagine.

Bill – That sounds like solid advice. The record’s first song, “Oh Glorious Nothing,” really sets the tone for the rest of the album. How did that song in particular come together?

Devon – Stress, (laughs). We didn’t have a song in the ten or so that were done that we thought would be good for an opening song. It’s one of those classic stories. It took a couple days of just sitting and writing this one song that kind of came out of nowhere. It became everybody’s favorite and then it just boosted all the way to the first song on the record. Now it’s the most played one. There was a lot of planning on Limited Joy and this one was the least planned, and as always, I feel like that’s at your most raw. You’re on time constraints and you want to have that song that grabs everyone’s attention, so let’s write it in two days, even though the record took a year to write. It’s such a weird mindset, but it seems to be a classic story of how people write their best shit. Same old story here.

Bill – It’s like you don’t overthink it, you just do and it kind of comes out naturally.

Devon – Yeah and it was like we kind of also hit this stride of having six people in the band and we were thinking about what we wanted to sound like and what sort of influences we wanted to include. I love that song. I think it’s a good song and it’s on brand with being all about death, (laughs).

Bill – It’s good to be consistent, right? “252 Brighton Ave.” is one that immediately stood out the first time I listened to the record. What inspired its creation?

Devon – It’s a real place. It’s a place called Replay’d in Boston, Massachusetts. It’s a store that I ran with my friend Brian in Boston for four years. It was a videogame store, independent electronics store. It was the most fun and craziest time of my life that I ever had. We were making our own rules, running our own business and being crazy folk, (laughs). I look back on those years with a big, full smile. I did go a little crazy and I got a little nuts for a minute. I had a little too much fun, but I don’t know. I only lived in Boston for four years and I met the love of my life there, I had the best job of my life and I had all these friends. It was very special. That address and that place is very special to me. I spent more time there than I did at my apartment. It was a place I really loved.

Bill – That’s awesome. I’ve read descriptions of your band that I don’t feel are very accurate. I think it’s really lazy when a band has horns, so people label them a ska band. There are no upstrokes in your songs, there’s no accent on the offbeat. To me it’s not ska, but the one band that I thought of when I listened to the album was They Might Be Giants. Not a direct correlation, but more of like the same spirit…

Devon – Oh, that is an extreme compliment. Maybe not directly like going out of my way, but I think I always have a little bit of TMBG in my blood. I used to be in a band called The Fur Coats with Marc Ruvolo, (No Empathy singer/Johann’s Face Records owner). I learned kind of that songwriting aesthetic from Marc. It’s like don’t dive too far in, because it kind of ruins it. I feel like it’s similar with The Fur Coats and They Might Be Giants, like the song has meaning to you, but it’s also kind of silly at the same time to everyone else. I don’t know. The ska thing is really weird. I honestly thought we’d be welcomed with open arms into the ska scene. I thought that people were going to be super-stoked that there was a band blending a bunch of styles. I know there’s no backbeat, but genre police are still cops and cops suck. So, I guess I was kind of expecting that and we did not get it. We got very much told that we are not ska and don’t come sniffing around here, (laughs). I don’t really know what genre we are. I guess I don’t care, but I feel like what I care most about is that we are all big ska people. We’re adjacent, you know? That would be the easiest place to put us, but people don’t really know what to do with us. That’s been the problem.

Bill – I like that description, ska adjacent, (laughs).

Devon – Yeah, I think we’re wildly influenced by it. I’m a huge encyclopedic ska nerd. I don’t know. Punk thinks we’re a little too poppy and indie thinks we’re too old, so wherever you want to put us, get us a home.

Bill – That’s too funny. On a different note, how did you go about partnering with A-F Records for the album’s release?

Devon – I compare it to applying for colleges. I sent out a lot of applications, boasting about my abilities and my achievements in the punk rock community. And I got about two responses, (laughs). A-F was really kind and stepped-in and listened to the record, like they said they would. They were like, “We think this is really good.” I wanted to do a super-low run, I didn’t want to waste anybody’s time, and then the first run sold-out. And we ordered a second run and it’s been going really well. A-F has a really steady head, which is a cool quality in a label, because I don’t have that. They’ve been the yin to my yang and I’m very, very thankful for them. It’s been a very pleasant landing point and we have a mutual respect for each other. Direct Hit! toured with Anti-Flag, so I got to interact with those guys a little bit and appreciate their mindset and their sense of humor, which is the only way I feel like I can win people over, (laughs).

Bill – Since live music isn’t a possibility for at least the rest of this year, what sort of things do you plan on doing to promote the record?

Devon – The first thing is on the next Bandcamp Friday we’re doing a song with Chris DeMakes from Less Than Jake. We’re going to do it for charity. We’re currently looking at Assata’s Daughters. I reached out to them today. So, we’re going to take all the money grossed from that Friday till Sunday and donate it to them. We do these acoustic records that we’re trying to do every half year and we were working on a Less Than Jake cover just for fun. And then Chris reached out to me during the pandemic. We’ve toured together, he’s a kind fellow and at the end of the conversation he was like, “If you ever want to work on a song or something together, let me know.” I took that as true and I jumped on it. I was like, “Yes I would, I want to do this right now.” And he said “yes.” He was probably backed so far into a corner, he had no other choice, (laughs). So, we covered a Less Than Jake song and we have the singer from Less Than Jake singing it. That’s the next thing that’s happening.

I’ve also been doing Twitch. I have that big videogame background and the whole band has been on it. We’re starting to do live writings there. Eventually we want to make it like a real-life Wayne’s World. That’s the plan. As we’re stuck inside, we’re still kind of figuring it out. We also have another record finished that we’re shopping.

Bill – So you have a whole new album already done?

Devon – Yeah, because we’ve just been working on stuff in our homes and in very small groups. We have another acoustic thing that’s done too. We have a lot. We’re trying to be very content savvy, because that seems to be the face of what we’re dealing with. I think the only way you can kind of connect with people right now is through consumables. I know that sounds so terrible. People want to get something and enjoy it, but since in most cases they’re not doing all that much, they consume things much faster. I think our record had a big spike when it came out, but you have to keep giving people stuff even though that’s tough. That’s why we try to find a way to do it on our own and that’s why we do home recordings and all that stuff. We’re going for a high output.