Kick Like a Lion to fill past bands’ shoes?
If you’ve been in the high school as long as I have you know that good local bands are hard to come by. Luckily, we have had an abundance of extremely nautical bands take over the school in the last few years. Bombardier rocked the socks off of Ames High students every year at the Battle of the Bands, and Strawberry Tree was the heartthrob of all the girls. Even Pregnant Dan and the Crunchy Oats had a fantastic sound and a killer banjo to boot! But ever since Pregnant Dan’s Kevin Stasko and Neil Gerstein went to college, the music scene at Ames High has been longing for another band to fill the starstruck eyes of underclassmen females and soothe the angst in all of us. Well, that band may have already arrived. Kick Like a Lion has been around for several years and have already played shows in a variety of places. From Ames Progressive in campus town to right here in our own multipurpose room during coffee houses, they are no stranger to the stage. But, when asked if they love the attention they vehemently denied it.
“We are very disorganized,” drummer Ben Tuggle said. “We just like getting together and playing together.”
“I’m only in it for the women,” bassist Paul Jasper said.
Such dedication to music has never been found. Besides their stage life, KLaL has never ceased to impress me with the amount of original content they produce. They create all their own music and don’t play any covers.
“We have only ever played one cover and it was for a friend’s party. Everything besides that has been music written by KLaL,” singer Peter Gartin said.
Indeed, KLaL is way ahead of the curve. Many bands don’t take the composing aspect of music to this level until college. Bombardier did not come out with an album until many of the members were in college, and Strawberry Tree and Pregnant Dan played many more covers than original content. According to sources within the band, each member writes part of the song corresponding to their respective instruments. Tuggle noted that they switch styles a lot depending on who starts forming a song idea first, and what artist they are currently into.
“While we don’t play covers, we try to copy other bands’ styles a lot.” Ben said. “If we really like an artist, we try to go see concerts, and our songs usually end up having a bit of that band in them.”
Some major influences that the band named were Phoenix, Cowboy Indian Bear, and the Envy Corps. So while they stay within a general genre, you can hear a lot of variation in their shows. When asked how long they thought they would play, they said that they thought they would be together for a long time, at least to the end of high school.
“We just played our last show a couple weeks ago,” guitarist Jon Laczniak said.
So if you want to see Kick Like a Lion in action, ask one of the members about their show coming up at Ames Progressive on October 20th. Hopefully they can fill the void that Pregnant Dan has left in all of our hearts.
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