“My interests off the stage, if I’m not up there doing lead guitar or the rock band thing, are more along the lines of playing with acoustic guitars and electronics,” Steve Kimock explains. “When I’m at home, I’m always playing the acoustic, working on the fretless stuff and the slide stuff—specific intonations—and doing whatever sound design I can manage with whatever electronics are around.”

This melding of acoustic and electronic sounds manifests itself on Kimock’s new studio album, Last Danger of Frost. The results are a cohesive whole, best absorbed in one sitting without distraction, as the music reveals and rewards with each subsequent listening session. Some of the palette may be unfamiliar to those more accustomed to Kimock’s electric expressions in Zero, KVHW, Steve Kimock Crazy Engine and his recent Friends project, which explored Jerry Garcia’s R&B roots. However, the spirit and emotion he vests in this new material reflects his musical intention in any setting. One of Kimock’s hallmarks is his ability to sound purposeful, yet simultaneously carefree. Such spirited precision is in abundance on this album, which he recorded in his Pennsylvania home studio before packing up his family and moving to the West Coast, echoing a journey he initially made in the 1970s, before he returned to the Keystone State in 2002.

Steve Kimock’s artistry, and his impressive array of guitars, is newly devoted to his touring quartet, K I M O C K. While the project is of recent vintage, the guitarist shares longstanding relationships with a rhythm section comprised of bassist Bobby Vega (a Zero alum with whom Kimock has shared the stage for over three decades), and Steve’s son, drummer John Morgan Kimock (a member of Mike Gordon’s latest quintet). Leslie Mendelson, who recently entered Kimock’s orbit, completes the four-piece on vocals and keys.

You recorded this album in your home studio in Pennsylvania before you moved with your family back to the West Coast. Did that imminent departure play a role in the creation and release of this music?

That might have been in there on some level, subconsciously. It felt like time for a move, maybe to do some new music or try some different things. I don’t think it was featured in my head, but I bet it was in there. I was just finding my way around my room with the sounds that were available to me in the moment. It was an acknowledgement of this not-super-directed activity that occupies me when I’m not up there doing the rock band thing.

As soon as I started working on it and listening back to the results, it kind of took me right back to being a kid and not knowing anything about music specifically. When I was a kid, I’d go hide in the closet and put the speakers up against my head and listen to Pink Floyd’s Ummagumma. I had that whole private world thing going on. This was kind of like that for me, that feeling of hearing something for the first time and just being in it and trying to make sense of it—the youthful, psychedelic wonder of it all.

The way the album unfolds reminds me of early Todd Rundgren records like A Wizard, a True Star or Todd. It’s something that merits an immersive experience, as opposed to a casual listen.

I was a huge fan of that music. One time when I was just a kid, Todd, being kind of local, showed up at a place in Bethlehem [Pa.], while he was still in the Nazz. When we saw those guys getting out of whatever vehicle they were getting out of dressed like spacemen—that messed us all up. [Laughter.]

But, yes, that comparison makes sense to me—that’s definitely how I felt about it myself. There are spots on the record where you kind of sit down and white-knuckle yourself into the chair with a big, dopey grin on your face; There’s a big component to this thing that’s very naively psychedelic. I enjoyed that, it took me back and I had no idea that’s where I’d be going in my head with it.

It was wintertime when I was doing it, during an East Coast snowfall. I remembered being young and seeing snow coming down through the streetlight outside and everything would get real quiet, and I’d think, “Oh, this is a good time to play, this is a good time to listen.” There’s something about that quiet time in the new snowfall that informed the thing. It took me back and being so close to where I grew up, with the snow and finding my way in the music. It all appears to have communicated. I didn’t know that it would—it’s a very personal little musical trip—but so far, it appears that what I was feeling is a lot of what people feel when they hear it, so that’s good.
One of the hallmarks of your music is the ability to express emotion, particularly through your instrumental passages. Has that been a conscious goal or just a product of your efforts to express yourself?

That was always kind of in there. It’s funny how trying to talk about this or understand it just takes me back to being young and in that environment.

When I started to play, I really enjoyed listening to music and I thought—and I still think— that “music” is the feeling that you get when you listen to good music. When I was a kid, I’d be playing and people would say, “You should learn theory.” I kind of resisted that for a while but, eventually, I pursued it, knowing that on some level, there was an absolutist point of view to the thing where I’d say, “It’s these notes.” But while it might be a C minor chord, at the same time, I also knew there was a referential point of view, like a ship tossed on the stormy sea or something that was melancholy or triumphant—there’d be some associated feeling to the sounds.

I followed both of those paths for a long time without being able to reconcile them. Then about 20-25 years ago, I started to get specifically into microtonality and tuning temperament and stuff like that. When I got that part of the technical information about music, the circle kind of closed. There weren’t two viewpoints anymore. You can follow either of those ideas and, eventually, it takes you to “music is proceeding; it’s a succession of feeling states.” You can take it from either direction and wind up in the same place—you harmony things together, and the longer you do it, the bigger that picture of harmony becomes. It’s not just the notes and the chords and all the sounds—it’s all the people in the room, it’s whatever energy the gathering has that you’re in. You do what you can to be sensitive to that and to do as little as you can to try and give it some balance.

That’s the basic approach. I just try and check in every day with the sounds and see how I feel about them and try to use all the different resonances. Where am I hearing this today? Where am I hearing these harmonies? How does this make me feel? I have a bunch of little exercises that I do to put me in touch with that. For me, the music is functional when it’s felt. Function is felt. So I do my best to stay on that. The emotional component of the thing is a built-in part, that’s the idea. I specifically possess that in my daily musical life.

Although you described this album as a reflection of your non-directed activity, it’s fair to say you have quite a work ethic. In a recent interview, you indicated that your last day off was in the 1970s.

I recall it very clearly, it was very powerful. I literally had nothing to do and nowhere to go. I just remember it being beautiful. Then you get busy and you eventually have to get to work. You’re aware that there is stuff you need to do and your day becomes this whole process of getting from where you are now to where you’re supposed to be. It kind of takes you out of the moment. What do I have to do now to be over there? And then when I get there, I’ve got to do this.

When I look back on your career, I think of someone who has pursued just about whatever he’s wanted to do. If something has moved you, then you’ve pursued it, irrespective of traditional commercial prospects.

That’s not too far off. I really enjoy music—it kind of bounces you around a little bit. There are definitely weeks where it’s Freddie King week and then, there will be two weeks of traditional Irish music. Then, somehow, there will be six days of Chemical Brothers. I just bounce around between stuff. There’s this giant list of things that keeps rotating. If you’re looking for something interesting, the thing that just floated down to the bottom of the list now becomes a matter of interest because it’s the least interesting thing. You pull that back to the top, and the thing you were most interested in drops to the bottom.

Can you talk about that relationship between acoustic guitar and electronic sounds?

In my head, the relationship between the acoustic stuff, and the electronic stuff is that those things were formative listening for me. There’s a lot of folk music in my family. My aunt Dorothy Siftar was a folk singer, a real dyed-in-the-wool, 100-percent folk singer, who played with Pete Seeger. So I was growing up with that and, at the same time, growing up with the early synthesizer stuff that was featured in pop music with The Beach Boys and The Beatles. Hearing the electronic sounds that were starting to happen on the synthesizer—I loved Switched-On Bach when it came out. It was a great record—I loved those sounds. There’s a purity to the analog synth thing and a purity to the acoustic thing that attracted me to it, and still does.

As time went on, I started appreciating the similarity between fingerpicking and sequencing. They’re very different styles of music for most people, but I’m fine with them coexisting. There is some rhythmic reiteration of a sequence of pitches. Why shouldn’t people morph in between those two things? One of my goals, moving forward, is to investigate the possibilities and turn those acoustic sounds into electric sounds and electric sounds into acoustic sounds.

Did I think that I would go out and tour the album specifically? No, I didn’t think that. I thought that I would just make it as sort of a keepsake, a statement for myself for personal reasons. I pushed in those directions because I’m attracted to them but I hadn’t initially conceived it in terms of: “I’m writing for a tour.” That never entered my mind, although I think the concepts involved are workable onstage.

A lot of it is made doable by my son John, on the drums, who is just a super musical cat and somebody who really understands the electronic portion of things. The technical folks that we have were able to get all kinds of sounds into the live performance and we’re finding more ways to manipulate that stuff and use it as we go. We’re incorporating the electronic aspect into the improvisational chemistry.

John’s bio mentions that Todd Rundgren once destroyed his drums onstage at The Fillmore. How and when did that happen?

We were up there with Missing Man—me and Bobby Vega, Prairie Prince and Vince Welnick, back in the day. Johnny was onstage. He was just a few years old, and he’d play along. He had these little bongos with the drum stick taped on there with a cymbal on top. Then Todd came out to do “Bang the Drum” and saw those little drums onstage and started running around the stage beating them. They were falling apart and he was breaking them. The audience was horrified—they didn’t get that he didn’t get that the drums weren’t a prop or a toy. That was Johnny’s trip.

Have you seen your son play with Mike Gordon’s band and, if so, what was your takeaway?

That was an extreme proud papa moment for me. Last time Mike Gordon was in town was at The Fillmore, so I got to sit down and enjoy the gig. I thought it was fantastic and Johnny did a great job. He’s got a lot of responsibility in that band and he nailed it. I’m slightly biased, but it was great just watching him.

He could always play. It’s kind of unusual. He was like, “OK, I’m two. Where’s my drum?” And he just started playing. The progression I’ve seen is in his professionalism and maturity as a writer, and the amount of focus that he has on realizing his music—it’s pretty extraordinary. He’s a powerful dude.

So he just gravitated toward the drums when he was a toddler?

He started when he could crawl, pulling the pots and pans out of the cupboard and beating on them with spoons. He figured out right away that he could hit stuff and did a good job at it. The part that got me to thinking that he was going in this compositional direction was he would make these little collections of stuff. He’d have a pot, a box and some toy or a cymbal, and lay them out on the floor around him and sit or kneel. I’d walk through the room and he’d say, “You want to hear a song?” Then he played this thing on this little collection, this little compositional array. I would do the obligatory daddy clap and go, “That’s really good, man,” and he would look at me and say, “You want to hear it again?” Then he played it again.

He saw his material, saw what path he wanted to take and it was pretty neat. It was a very compositional approach at a very early age. He kept with that. The drumming, which is fantastic, is one thing, but watching his progression as a composer has been most satisfying for me.

John is in your current group, along with your longtime collaborator Bobby Vega. Leslie Mendelson completes the quartet. What drew you to her and how did you meet?

My interests from a very early age have been equal parts world music and electric blues and the quirky pop stuff. You can’t be a fan of Rundgren’s without being a fan of songcraft—the level of craft that goes into putting that stuff together. Leslie is one of those folks who is all about the songcraft. I like having that element in there. For me, it balances the improvisation, the blues aspect and world music aspect. It makes sense to me. It made sense to me when The Beatles did it. It makes sense to me now.

We bumped into each other at one of those TRI “Weir Here” things, the Bob Weir show. I don’t remember what the tune was, but I said, “Let’s play a song.” She was on the piano and pulled out this nice R&B kind of thing, which I thought was hip. We enjoyed that and there were gigs almost immediately. I think I was at the Great American Musical Hall with Bernie Worrell, and everyone just came down. Weir came down and played his ass off, Leslie came down and sang her ass off, we did a bunch of stuff and it was just fun playing. There’s enough overlap in our listening and musical interests, and enough stuff that diverges to make it interesting.

You recently performed with David Lindley, someone who doesn’t receive the full accolades he deserves. How did that come about?

I’ve probably been digging his stuff without knowing it was him for a long time. Thirty years after [The Youngbloods’] “Darkness, Darkness” came out, which I thought was a cool tune, I realized it was him playing the fiddle on the beginning of it, which was so spooky. I think he got everyone’s attention on Jackson Browne’s “Running on Empty” with the steel guitar stuff that he was playing. It was extraordinary. Nobody knew what to make of that—“How the hell is he doing that? I wish I had thought of that”—it was so good.

He had his own band El Rayo-X. I used to go see them all the time, and seeing him in that band is what got me into trying to play the steel, trying to play the Hawaiian guitar, because he played great Hawaiian guitar and he still does. The way he handled that material was his own take on blending American music with ethnic music and the quirky pop thing with the world music—all that jazz. I love that. He’s just a fantastic guitar player completely out of the mold of the standard guitar hero.

There had been a couple of times where people said to me, “Hey, do you want to do a gig with David Lindley?” and I’d be like, “I don’t want to play with that guy.” I love him, the last thing on earth I’d want to do is to defile that cat’s raga. Then it came up again, and I was too busy to object or something, so we went ahead and did it.

We took the “rehearsal is for cowards” approach. It was just me and him. We collided onstage and it was really wonderful. I brought seven guitars. I didn’t know what was going to work, but we listened to a couple of the instruments together and realized we had a good pairing between my fretless resonator guitar and his microtonally fretted bouzouki. So we stuck there for a couple of tunes and I played some lap steel, which he got a huge kick out of because I was doing sort of a Freddie Roulette-style routine and Freddie was the guy who got Dave into guitar. He didn’t know I was doing that kind of slant-bar stuff. We had a ton of fun and it was really wonderful. I’m glad we finally got a chance to do that.

Circling back to the initial question, what led you to return to Northern California?

I never intended to stay on the East Coast anywhere near as long as I had. I was thinking I was moving back to try it out for a couple of years. We were there for the longest time, raising beautiful children and enjoying our garden, enjoying being on a dead-end street in a town with 500 people in it— super-low drama, just chilling with the kids. But the winters grew increasingly harsh. I was feeling increasingly isolated. I did not have the creative commons that I had in California. And even though the schools there were very good, I thought, “Let’s get into the middle-school thing somewhere else. We’ll get out of these winters and try that for a little bit.” So for the kids, for the school, for the weather, and to have more connections with musical and technical stuff, we decided to make the move. We’ll stick it out here for a little while and then who knows, maybe Switzerland?