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The American Dream
Little Rock's most ambitious band eyes national success
words: Emily Witt
pic: Kat Wilson
The afternoon in June 2005 when we drove to Scott, Arkansas, to see the sod farm where the American Princes made themselves into a serious band seems like a very long time ago now. Since then the days have gotten progressively shorter, then longer; this magazine has gone digital; this writer has moved to Miami; and the band itself has gone on two tours, re-released one album, recorded and released another, and played innumerable shows in and around Little Rock. But it was a memorable trip.
Princes guitarist and singer Collins Kilgore drove, talking most of the way about a website that he and David Slade, American Princes lead guitarist and singer, discussed in one of their first ever discussions. Slade slumped in the backseat making a phone call to his grandmother.
“It was very detailed,” said Kilgore. “You knew it was a marine biologist or something.”
“Grandma?” Slade inquired into his phone.
“It was just a joke, but it was clearly someone who knew a lot about dolphins.”
“Grandma, it's David. Did I wake you up?”
“It, like, explained, in detail, why you can't have anal sex with male dolphins.”
“I'm sorry. I didn't mean to wake you up.”
“I think it was called dolphin-sex-dot-org.”
“We'll be there in five minutes.”
Slade was calling his grandmother because we were on our way to visit her. When the American Princes—after only a few months of existence—uprooted themselves from New York City and relocated to Arkansas in December 2002, they moved in with David's grandmother, Naomi May. She lives on an old sod farm in a wooden house painted yellow, out in the expanse of sky and flatness known as Scott. They were three: David Slade, Matt Quin, and John Beachboard. Collins Kilgore was still a student at Hendrix at the time. It was only after the fledgling Princes played a January show at his house in Conway, (and over conversations about marine mammal intercourse) that he befriended his way into the band.
That first winter in Arkansas, the Princes practiced in a small shed adjacent to Naomi May's greenhouse, garnering warmth from a space heater and the occasional cigarette. For Kilgore, rehearsal involved an appalling commute from Conway, so he often spent the night on the farm. He and Slade slept in a room with twin four-posters adorned with lacy coverlets, and zombie-eyed dolls. Quin's bed was queen-sized with a white metal frame. Both rooms clearly wished their inhabitants were 1950s-belles in curlers.
On the day of our visit more than two years later, Naomi May's farm seemed to hold its dusty, silent breath. The shed where the band had practiced had the ill-ventilated closeness of a rarely entered attic and contained only a rocking horse, some oddly shaped gourds, and a kite. The décor of the house itself—the yellow pitcher shaped like a pig, the nasturtiums, the built-in bookshelves featuring titles like The Garden Book and The Dawn of Civilization, a needlepoint pillow carefully dated 1973—all seemed to discourage loud noises and abrupt movement. It seemed implausible that for a time, four rowdy young men had consumed nightly 30-packs of Miller Lite on the farm, even in the shed. After our arrival and a tour of May's extensive garden, we sat down on antique couches in the living room. A cardinal alighted on the windowsill.
“My heart goes out to him,” said the round and rickety May, looking the bird in the eye. “He's so dumb.” She sat on an ornate loveseat, her hair a snowy white. “Did Matt tell you about the first time he heard a cow in heat? He came in and said, ‘something terrible's going on.'”
Quin is from New Haven, Connecticut. He moved to Arkansas site unseen.
“What does it sound like?” asked Kilgore.
“Like a ghastly scream,” she replied.
***
Little Rock takes the American Princes for granted. If Arkansas' bands were still in high school, Sugar and the Raw would wear hemp necklaces and baseball caps and Tel Aviv would be the angst-ridden kids with sharp-angled haircuts who sneak cigarettes in stairwells. Stacy Mack and Collin Miles would eat lunch outside with their acoustic guitars and Grand Serenade would be freshmen. Some of the cooler teachers would play in The Boondogs, and W/O would always know whose parents were out of town.
But the American Princes would be dressed in neat sweaters; they would talk about girls with their mothers; they would get good grades in A.P. science and apply to reputable colleges. They would be low on the social totem but not particularly concerned about it, because the Princes are ambitious about music in a careerist way, in a mainstream way, in a way that's not edgy, self-destructive, booze-saturated, or sexually irresponsible. The American Princes are not a candle in the wind. The American Princes are a log, which smolders.
(To whit: Collins Kilgore was very pleased when a writer for the Nashville Scene referred to the band as “modern rock traditionalists.” A person with flashier ambitions would have been mortified.)
So they plod, strong adherents to a gradual slope. In 2003, after five months on her farm, Naomi May kicked them out. Something about cigarettes, it seems. Beachboard, Quin, and Slade—who already worked at U.S. Pizza together—moved in together as well, in a house on Pulaski.
In the fall they released We Are the People on Max Records. The following year, Beachboard and the Princes had a falling out and Luke Hunsicker replaced him on bass. In September 2004, the band released album number two, Little Spaces.
The most exciting advancement for the band, however, was last year's signing with Yep Roc, a North Carolina-based label whose big star is Billy Bragg. Last summer Yep Rock released Little Spaces again. The Princes toured nationally that fall and joined Lucero on tour over the winter. At this year's SXSW in Austin, Texas, the band played immediately following Bragg's set. On April 4, their third album, Less and Less, was released. ***
At Naomi May's house, after looking at his former bedroom and practice space, Slade prepared us a tray of well-spiked Bloody Marys while his grandmother brandished her new toy, a claw-like apparatus called the Nifty Nabber. She used it for cans on high shelves. We moved from the living room into a cobwebby drawing room of sorts to talk more.
“When he performs he's a different person,” doted May. “Normally he's this nice, sweet Yalie.”
Slade shyly mumbled something about the total immersion of performance.
“Something just comes out in you,” she said, looking at him fondly. “For you it's a big deal.”
As a large percentage of Little Rock residents between the ages of 16 and 40 can attest, David Slade does indeed engage in a sort of musical aerobics class on stage, which makes a few of the more reserved Little Rockers embarrassed somehow. His thrashing irks cynical viewers, for whom repetitive viewings have made the performance feel somehow less sincere. But in a way it's precisely the Yale grad in Slade that comes out on stage—the mark of his ambition.
The same techniques that set off alarms in some Little Rockers' bullshit detectors have advanced the band nationally—techniques like playing up the ole we-left-NYC-for-a-red-state card, like the jumping around on stage, like taking a writer who is going to profile them out to see the sod farm. Publicists love stories about sod farm beginnings, and enterprising bands love publicity. (Doubt it? Think about how often you have heard “Tennessee preacher's sons” in conjunction with the Kings of Leon.)
As Kilgore puts it, “There's an idealized version of the industry, but 99 percent of working bands have to be active and smart and really hard workers. It's how the game is played. But it's tough living in Little Rock; you need to meet people who know people. There really are a handful of tastemakers.”
He does not mean that it's not about the music (although as any MTV viewer will testify, a lot of music is not, really, about the music), but the American Princes are looking to capitalize on the concept of Arkansas as it's perceived by others, by the Northeast, by those who have never known it and never will. Call it the Bill Clinton way—it has served the band well thus far, as has the so-called modern rock traditionalism.
For now, grandiosity is only speculation.
“The thought that this is something that we could quit our day jobs on seems so far away,” said Kilgore recently in a phone interview. “Sometimes I think we're too pedestrian, sometimes I think we're not pedestrian enough.” ***
I haven't seen the American Princes in concert since right before I moved to Florida back in June. They opened at Sticky Fingerz for a New Jersey band called Spiraling whose lead singer channeled David Copperfield (the magician not the Dickens character) in both looks and in his flamboyant flourishes on the Moog. Spiraling was awful, actually. The American Princes, however, played very well, to a room—unlike their shows at Vino's or Whitewater Tavern—full of strangers.
“This is our first show,” bullshitted Slade, before the set began. “So be nice to us.”
With Sticky Fingerz's silly track lighting blinking overhead, the band launched into their songs with fervor. A woman in a shirt with bell-bottomed sleeves made her way to the front and shimmied. Hunsicker's cigarette had a precarious inch-long ash by the second song. Slade flailed characteristically. Quin pounded on the drums with businesslike determination.
At the time I remember thinking how odd it is that one so often judges a local band not just with the question of “Do I like this?” but also with the thought “Will they someday be famous?” It's hard not to think that way, particularly when the Princes seem to be asking themselves about fame all the time. No local band's ambition is quite so evident.
Unfortunately success takes more than sheer will. The Princes may shake hands, add MySpace friends, and cover the country in tours. They may introduce themselves to every indie rock band that passes through Arkansas, and open for every act that will have them, but their efforts are a drop in the bucket if their label and promotional team decide not to exert themselves similarly. A little good luck never hurt anybody either.
What their ambition does guarantee, for the layperson on a weeknight at a crappy bar downtown, is a damn fine performance.
Emily Witt is a writer in Miami, Florida. She lives under palm trees but pines for Little Rock. Write her at emily.witt@gmail.com.
 
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