Kevin Tihista hasn’t slept for two days. A pensive, doleful-looking 36-year-old, he appears drawn and tired as he sips a beer at a quiet bar near his Roscoe Village apartment. “I’ve been up all night working,” he explains. “Writing.”
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Since 2000 he’s released three solo albums credited to Kevin Tihista’s Red Terror, including his most recent, Wake Up Captain (Parasol). With each disc he’s proven himself an expert composer of gossamer pop inspired by the melancholy hits of 70s FM radio, but those albums barely scratch the surface of his collected output: by his own estimate he has a backlog of nearly 600 songs. And he’s only recently sped up the process of releasing them. This week he begins a monthlong residency at Schubas, performing every Monday through January 31, and there he’ll be selling Home Demons, a 14-track collection of mostly home recordings. Parasol will officially release the album later this year, and British label Broken Horse will put out an edition with seven more tracks. Home Demons, Tihista says, will be the first in a multivolume series of limited-edition discs culled from his trove of demos and unreleased material.
Tihista was raised in Santa Cruz, California, the youngest of three children in a musical family; his mother was a well-known local jazz singer and his grandfather led a big band in the 40s. In the mid-80s Tihista was a fledgling adolescent metalhead when his brother gave him a copy of the Smiths’ Meat Is Murder. That same day he tore down his Motley Crue posters. His parents divorced while he was in his teens, and his mother and stepfather frequently moved around the Bay Area; he attended four different high schools in as many years and dropped out of the last. “By the time I was a senior I was like, ‘Fuck it, I don’t know anyone. I’m a loser.’ So I quit,” he says.
In the meantime Tihista continues to stockpile songs, though he’s uncertain when he’ll begin work on his next studio album. “I have no clue,” he says. “I just write them, demo them, and put them in this big pile. And whenever it’s time to make the next record I’ll just pick out some songs to record. But once I get into the studio I really go into overdrive, and I’ll write even more freakishly than I do now. I’ll replace old songs with new ones and it’s crazy, it’s . . .”
Where: Schubas, 3159 N. Southport
Earlier this week local promoter MP Shows severed ties with its flagship venue, the Logan Square Auditorium, canceling all shows at the space. A handful of those shows will go to MP’s other club, the Bottom Lounge.
