After 20 Years, KevinDevineTwit Gets His Flowers | Profile by matt_mitchell48
When other parents at his daughter’s school learn that Kevin Devine is a musician, sometimes they talk to him like he’s in Mötley Crüe, even though he’s never sold out Madison Square Garden or had Machine Gun Kelly play him in a Netflix biopic. “You’re like, ‘No, no. So much more time in my pajamas, figuring out how to wire an audio interface into a speaker somewhere,’” he says.
Devine has lived in New York City his entire life, a place where many great, transformative bands arose from clubs and dives in the early 2000s. This is not news, though. I am just retreading old ground. We know how powerful that era in rock ’n’ roll was, how some acts have become so important to this millennium’s zeitgeist, like the Strokes, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Dirty Projectors and Grizzly Bear, that documentaries are being made about them now.
That really sums up a lot of Devine’s perspective these days. His “just happy to be here, making music for folks with an ear to lend” attitude is palpable. He’s a genre nomad who’s made so much music in so many different ways that he’s never been typecast in one place or another. And, for someone whose solo work has never been reviewed consistently by the big music magazines, he is pretty solid on what he’s accomplished, who he’s played with and where he might turn next.
So how is Devine still here, putting out new music in the wake of a tour that, to be quite honest, didn’t meet his full expectations? The answer is much simpler than attributing it to luck or magic. The truth is, Devine is one of the most likable musicians we’ve got, and that translates to his live shows.
Many of the folks in the audience have been with Devine for the long haul. In the front row, a person came all the way from the UK. Some traveled across states to be there and be present with him in the celebration. Collectively, this microcosm, at least in the sense of the big, scary, still-expanding life of music fandom, has been with Devine through everything, from getting sober at the end of the 2000s to becoming a father in 2016.
Who Devine is as a person lingers during his concerts. Not only is he one of the most underrated guitarists of this millennium, he is a goofball and an empathetic accomplice. “He is the most consistent live performer I’ve seen, in my experience of watching someone play many shows over the course of a few years,” Kiley Lotz, the voice behind Petal, says. “I was so transfixed by him and his band and the songwriting.
“To come into the environment of the tour, which is very much a bubble, and have that be a real safe harbor was really crucial,” Rose, who was the keyboardist in Pinegrove in 2016, says. “I’m grateful we had that space to navigate those times and talk about what was going on. Kevin is a real leader, a friend figure, and an older brother figure.
So many of Devine’s songs mention his family and the various people who’ve come and gone from his life. But perhaps the biggest figure whose presence could be felt throughout the night was Devine’s eldest brother, who passed away in 1998 at the age of 39 after contracting HIV, which developed into AIDS, from intravenous drug use.
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