{"id":1386,"date":"2011-08-13T18:33:55","date_gmt":"2011-08-14T00:33:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bhamterminal.com\/timetable\/?p=1386"},"modified":"2011-08-13T18:33:55","modified_gmt":"2011-08-14T00:33:55","slug":"interview-kurt-jenkins","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/bhamterminal.com\/timetable\/2011\/08\/13\/interview-kurt-jenkins\/","title":{"rendered":"Getting to know Kurt Jenkins"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"KurtKurt Jenkins was a couple of hours away from a performance at Railroad Park<\/a>, spending the afternoon blending into the d\u00e9cor at one of his favorite hangouts.<\/p>\n

\u201cI like coming here,\u201d he said, taking in all of Mountain Brook\u2019s Continental Bakery<\/a> with a gesture that almost bumped into a rack of baguettes. \u201cIt makes me feel like I\u2019m in France.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ensconced at a table in his blue shirt, gray waistcoat, and tan boots, Jenkins had a distinctly European look himself. The front man for local alternative pop band Skyway Spirits<\/a>, one of the Birmingham Arts and Music Festival<\/a>\u2019s scheduled headliners with a set starting at midnight Saturday (8\/13) at Rogue Tavern<\/a>, serves on the festival\u2019s executive committee and readily fielded questions about the band, its intriguing name, and what he aspires to be as a performer.<\/p>\n

A native of Hoover, Jenkins attended college in Orlando, where he played the lead role in a production of Bat Boy: The Musical<\/em>. He can\u2019t remember a time when he didn\u2019t love music. \u201cI brought Jeff Beck\u2019s \u2018Blow by Blow\u2019 to kindergarten show and tell, which was completely inappropriate for a kindergartener to bring. Everybody else brought action figures.\u201d<\/p>\n

He started taking piano lessons as a fifth grader and first picked up a guitar in a sixth grade music class. \u201cI remember it being really easy to play. The guitar was a piece of crap, but I got the concept right away. It made perfect sense to me, maybe because I\u2019d taken piano lessons before. I continued playing piano for a couple of years, then I heard Jimi Hendrix, and it was all over. I quit piano the next week and started playing guitar.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t want to sound too highfalutin about it, but it was completely free. I listened to \u2018Red House,\u2019 and hearing a guy express himself with the instrument like that, I started freaking out. The emotion that came through was amazing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jenkins could be considered an instrumentalist, but is he?\u00a0\u00a0\u201cI can make you think I can play mandolin and bass, but the guitar is the only instrument I can really hang with. I\u2019m trying to get back to my roots with the piano. I want to learn to play it well.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jenkins is backed in the trio by Don Tinsley on bass and Jesse Suttle on drums. \u201cA mutual friend introduced us. He told me they\u2019re the only two guys in town you want to work with.\u201d His original name for the band was Skyway Patrol, derived from his obsession with the idea of flying cars. \u201cI\u2019d love to drive on s a skyway, but Skyway Patrol that sounded too much like Snow Patrol, which was a British band from a couple of years ago. I needed another word than \u2018patrol,\u2019 and \u2018sprits\u2019 just phonetically flows.\u201d<\/p>\n

The band performs Jenkins\u2019 original compositions and a few covers. \u201cYou have to do one or two covers just to break everything up. An audience can only take so much they\u2019ve never heard before.\u201d He dislikes describing its style by naming influences or drawing comparisons with better-known bands. \u201cIt\u2019s dangerous to have influences if you sound just like the music that influences you. I don\u2019t want that. I have no problem being compared to somebody, but if that\u2019s all they see, I\u2019m doing something wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAt the end of the day, I don\u2019t know what it\u2019s like to write a song. Very few times have I sat down to write a song and had a song come out. It\u2019s not romanticized at all.\u201d<\/p>\n

When asked about what inspires his songwriting, the answer is quite simple.\u00a0\u201cWomen. Through the ages, that\u2019s what it\u2019s been, and it still is today.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSome songs are definitely written out of sadness and joy. Any kind of art is filtered by what we\u2019re going through. Take Jackson Pollock. I don\u2019t know anything about him, but he was obviously going through some stuff. The work is trying to make that explain something, and the way it\u2019s ingested \u2013 particularly music \u2013 is not very artistic. Very few people sit down, listen to music, and take it in. It\u2019s background for their conversation. An audience is not obligated to like you or pay attention to you. As a musician, you have to put yourself in a space to influence somebody to want to know you. You have to do something to make someone stop a conversation in its tracks.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"JenkinsJenkins prefers performing over writing and recording. “My foundation is in theater, and it\u2019s a lot more fun than writing and recording, which are more like processes. I like it once\u00a0we’ve\u00a0got it, we\u2019ve written it, we\u2019ve recorded it\u2026now let\u2019s do it.\u201d<\/p>\n

His goal with a live show is\u00a0\u201cat best, to be mistaken for a god for an hour or two.\u00a0I’ve\u00a0never reached it yet, but that\u2019s the ultimate goal. A performance is a symbiotic broadcasting of emotions and feeling. When I see a really good live show, it makes me want to go home and write and play music. Really good performers make you want to be a really good performer.\u201d<\/p>\n

He’s seen some really good live shows over the years too.<\/p>\n

\u201cBonnie Raitt, when she came to City Stages<\/a> a long ago. \u2018N Sync, although at the time I didn\u2019t tell anybody I went to see it. My favorite show was Billy Joel, in 2007 when I was in college. He\u2019s older, but he still has some energy and passion, combined with being a great singer-songwriter. Every song he played, the audience knew all the words, and it was great to be singing along with \u2018Piano Man\u2019 on a Saturday night. A close second would be Bob Dylan, the last time he came through here. I\u2019d never heard sound like that before. It really was a wall of sound.\u201d<\/p>\n

I wondered if\u00a0Dylan\u2019s set include \u2018Like a Rolling Stone?\u2019 \u201cOf course. He\u2019s contractually obligated by God to do that song.\u201d<\/p>\n

Although he\u2019s a staunch supporter of the local music scene, Jenkins has high sights set beyond Birmingham. He\u2019s lived in New York, recently returned from doing a couple of performances there, and hopes to make his home there again. \u201cI consider myself a New Yorker marooned in Birmingham for the time being. Birmingham is a tough town to get something going whose purpose is to get out of Birmingham. The shows aren\u2019t much different in New York, but the opportunities are. You never know who anybody is in New York. Some random kid in the audience could be a scouting agent for MTV or a music blogger read by a million people. It\u2019s easy to be a big fish in a small pond, but I\u2019d rather struggle in a big city. It makes you work harder.\u201d<\/p>\n

If you miss their show at Rogue during BAAMfest!, they’ll also be performing on 8\/20 at 9 p.m. with\u00a0<\/em>“Sperry & The Top-Siders” at The Barking Kudu\u00a0benefiting\u00a0Alabama’s Lost Birthdays &\u00a0<\/span><\/em>10:30 p.m. Friday, September 2 at The Metro Bar.<\/em><\/p>\n

Visit the band\u2019s website at www.skywayspirits.com and follow it on Twitter @SkywaySpirits.<\/em><\/p>\n

Photos<\/strong> courtesy of \u00a0Buddy Roberts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\"\"<\/a>

Buddy Roberts of BirminghamProfile.com shares his first piece for The Terminal – an interview with Kurt Jenkins of Skyway Spirit – in advance of their upcoming performances at BAAMFest 2011 and The AL Lost Birthdays benefit in mid-August. Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[25,38],"tags":[214,439,499],"class_list":["post-1386","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-festivals","category-music","tag-buddy-roberts","tag-interview","tag-kurt-jenkins"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4PdO-mm","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/bhamterminal.com\/timetable\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1386","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/bhamterminal.com\/timetable\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/bhamterminal.com\/timetable\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bhamterminal.com\/timetable\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/20"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bhamterminal.com\/timetable\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1386"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/bhamterminal.com\/timetable\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1386\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/bhamterminal.com\/timetable\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1386"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bhamterminal.com\/timetable\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1386"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bhamterminal.com\/timetable\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1386"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}