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Attitude Adjustment
Wednesday, December 24th 2003
By Anastasia Pantsios
49 Cover Image
Kevin McMahon
Leading his Peppermen into new — and old — territory.
Kevin McMahon's personality is an unsettling mixture of cynicism and idealism. The former is not surprising, considering the ups and downs of his nearly 30-year music-making career. The idealism is more surprising, but it's what seems to impel his continuing urge to make music, despite the circumstances. And the circumstances have been various, to say the least. The music industry has never been kind to artists like McMahon, restless explorers of their own talent who refuse to stay in one place long enough to be pigeon-holed.

That McMahon is still making music at all is a triumph of passion and drive over setbacks and burnout. He formed Lucky Pierre in the mid-'70s, releasing his first single, “Fans and Cameras”/”Idlewild,” in 1979. A fertile period for the local music scene was beginning, as new wave opened ears and opened doors in local clubs and radio for local bands. Lucky Pierre established a beachhead at Lakewood's Phantasy Niteclub, becoming one of the area's most praised and respected groups.

But you can't eat praise. In the mid-'80s, frustrated with the band's lack of progress, McMahon moved to San Francisco. He returned briefly in 1988 to try to revive the group with a lineup that included Nine Inch Nails' Trent Reznor. That fizzled, although he released one last four-song EP before vanishing from the radar.

He suddenly resurfaced in 1995 as Prick, with a self-titled album on Reznor's Nothing/Interscope Records. In fact, the relentlessly productive McMahon had been woodshedding on the West Coast, expanding his prodigious repertoire. The Prick album added a NIN-ish industrial edge to his Bowie-influenced new wave/glam stylings. Still, despite opening for Bowie and NIN, Prick didn't take off. A second album, which McMahon had started with producer Warne Livsey in London, was never released.

“The contract was for two records with Interscope,” he says now. “My obligation was mainly from my relationship with Trent and John [Malm, Reznor's ex-manager], and I didn't want to just bail on them. So I kept trying to hang with it.”

McMahon ended up moving back to Cleveland about five years ago.

“My brother, who writes for the Chicago Tribune , is stationed in Russia, and my other brother lives in Seattle and another one lives in Chicago, and that was a Christmas that everybody was going to try to get in,” he says. “Nothing Records started having their own problems and I was lowest on the pole, so I just kind of stayed here. I could do stuff at a slower pace. I wasn't getting charged an enormous amount of money for rent just to live. I would just like to be able to write and not be bothered. If I have enough songs to put something out, I'll put it out.”

He ended up doing that in late 2002, when he self-released The Wreckard as Prick. It included tracks he'd worked on for the second Interscope album, both demos and finished tracks.

“The energy overrode the exactitude of the performance,” he says. “If something was a little out of tune, that didn't matter too much to me. But it's a major criminal offense to most producers and record companies. It sounds like it's incomplete and they don't know where you're going with it.”

McMahon assembled a new Prick line-up that includes old-time friend and bassist Tom Lash of Lucky Pierre, guitarist Greg Zydyk and ex-Exotic Birds/Stabbing Westward drummer Andy Kubiszewski. He's also done some Lucky Pierre “reunion” shows to play his old material for the old fans.

While a scheduled show with Prick opening for Marilyn Manson at the Agora has fallen through because Manson cancelled his whole tour, McMahon is doing a show at the Symposium this Friday with his new version of Lucky Pierre, which he has re-dubbed the Peppermen. It includes longtime Lucky Pierre drummer Dave Zima, Rick Christysen, guitarist from the 1988 Lucky Pierre lineup, and bassist Dave Kompier.

The name change, he says, is because “If it's Lucky Pierre, I think people will expect the same players and the same songs. I don't want it to turn into a Michael Stanley kind of situation. Just because somebody's been around awhile doesn't mean they have to always resort to their old songs. I'll play a couple because I think they're OK songs and somebody wants to hear them, but the main reason I keep doing music is to do new music, to write better songs. I'd like to do this kind of thing as a more regular thing because I miss not being able to do new songs out live.”

McMahon has also turned his apartment into a recording studio where he works constantly on new material, as well as revamping older songs. With the boundaries of his various ensembles so porous and the personnel so flexible, he says he's finally thinking about releasing his material under his own name, which is long overdue. He'd like to expand his sonic palette, working with horn players, string players and female vocalists. He's completed three tracks he's thinking of putting out in some fashion, including “Johnny Goes to Paris,” which harks back to the new wave era and has a Men without Hats vibe to its sly lyrics and bouncy beat, “Seamus Running,” recorded recently at his house, and the ruefully autobiographical “Shitty Attitude.”

“I'm kind of considering how the format is going, how music is accessible,” he says. “I like the idea of singles. I like the radio being on and hearing singles, jumping around because that's pretty much the way my emotional state is. I don't like to write just a certain sound. I'm thinking I might try to sell it on the Web site [www.prickmusic.com], but I'm going to do it at home, going straight from the master, writing on it and send it out.”