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Press

January 2005 interview in the Weekly Dig
By Michael Brodeur. Issue 7.01
Wed, January 05, 2005

Self-contained and Really Heavy
Indie townies who care not for their delicate little ear bones are certainly familiar with Kevin Micka's full-band project The Common Cold. Their distinctive grinding of reliable post-rocky song-mapping against old-skooly, loose-cannon chimp rock has made them local faves over the years, and this approach to organized noise serves as a unique premise for Micka's beautifully spiraling departures as Animal Hospital.
The morning after Christmas brings a nasty snowstorm-the first big dumping of the season-and it's just enough to make me wimp out on trekking 9-to-39-style out to J.P. to see Micka off as he departs for his second national Animal Hospital tour. Adding to this feeling of wimpiness is hearing Micka discuss this tour's hectic schedule in detail.
Over the next four blurry weeks, he will see three corners of the country (nuts to you, Florida), a wide variety of basements and, hopefully, some repeat attendees anxious to get another look at his unique twist on one-man-bandmanship.

So where's the first stop?
Oh, man, St. Louis.
Whoa. What's that, like, 18 hours?
Yeah, something like that. I used to know all these people in Columbus, but they all moved. I'm toying with the idea of just driving the whole thing.
Are you traveling alone?
I was preparing myself to go alone, but I kind of started to chicken out this past week. I didn't expect anyone to be able to make it-but my upstairs neighbor Rob is going to come along for two weeks. I've known him for about a year; he's a cool guy. He committed to coming, like, 24 hours ago. From California on, it looks like I might be by myself.
What do you take with you?
Half a full band's amount of equipment. Guitar amp, half my drums, a box of pedals, a mixer-it's self-contained and really heavy. In comparison to The Common Cold, it's like everything but the bass amp.
That's a lot of shit.
Yeah, I've been trying to think of ways to reconfigure things.
So do you call yourself a “one man band”?
I think I'm getting more used to that term. The last week of the tour, I'm booking all by myself, and in some ways, it helps to make it all sound more appealing-so I've been using the term a bit more. Obviously, it would be better if people were more interested in the music than in some sort of shtick, but I thought at the very least the pedal nerd people would be into it.
Can you give our readers who aren't pedal nerds an idea of how the Hospital works?
Sure, I had to explain this to all these family people last night; it's hard for me to make it sound not too technical. There's a looping pedal that records what I do. I might start a song at my drums (which are miked), I play a measure or so, and then I'd have a guitar that I pick up and layer a guitar track on it. Then I continually layer things, and it all goes into a mixer that I control. I've spent so much time on all of the technicalities, I'm excited to actually relax and work more on the creative side of things.
What gave you the idea for Animal Hospital?
In the beginning days of The Common Cold, we had talked about it. I had always thought of looping the drums (mainly so I could play guitar-I've just played guitar longer). We never really seemed loaded with commercial potential, so we always wanted to try out whatever ideas we could. This one was always there but never materialized. This past summer, I gave myself a deadline and booked a trip. It took a couple months to work out the details, but surprisingly, it's come out just as I expected it to.
What about next year?
I'll probably tour off and on; as long as I can afford it and it doesn't depress me-usually by the third or fourth tour, if things haven't improved, it's kind of trying on your ego. Neptune just got back from Europe; they booked their own tour and drove themselves. Makes me think I should try to do that. Before I'm 30, maybe. So that gives me about a year. Even if it was just a week's vacation with a few shows booked in there. In a way, I have grand plans, since I don't have to wait on anything. Well, except financial things. And girlfriend things.
Ha. That's a good ending.
Well, as long as it doesn't sound bad.