Kite Party is a young band with an old soul reverberating the streets of their hometown in Philadelphia. Their new album, Baseball Season, is a meditation on love, loss, and the daily struggles of being in a band whose name is perpetually misread as Katy Perry. Baseball Season was released in July of 2011 and the band has been playing scattered dates in support of the record since its release. 
Responses From: André Pagani

How did the band come together? How have you grown since you guys started?
The first version of Kite Party started a long time ago (2008) in Northeastern Pennsylvania with Justin Fox, Russell Edling, Tim Jordan, and former drummer Pete Knepper. Russell, Justin, and Pete had been in a band that had broken up, and, after a period of about three months, began playing together again with Tim.
We were interested in using more than the standard two guitar/bass/drums set-up from the moment we started the band, but that proved to be very difficult with only four members — bass or keyboard had to be sacrificed every time that we wanted to use two guitars, a guitar or bass had to be sacrificed every time we wanted to use keyboard, a bass or guitar or keyboard would have to be sacrificed every time we wanted to use an auxiliary percussion, etc. It began to get extremely limiting, leading to Andre Pagani joining the band in mid-2010 in order to fill some of the space.  It worked out really well.
In the two years between the start of Kite Party and the addition of Andre, we had all moved to Philadelphia from the small town that we had grown up in. We had gone on our first couple tours. We had released our first two EPs. We were in the midst of a frustrating/exciting writing period that would eventually lead to the songs on our new record, Baseball Season.  The recording of that album happened intermittently between June 2010 and March 2011, with the release in July 2011. It was around this time that Pete departed and Pat Conaboy joined. We went on a three-week tour with tigers jaw a few weeks later.
I think that we grew a lot through all of this. We all got older. Some of us joined other bands. Some of us recorded a lot of stuff alone. We played together all the time. We made new friends. We watched lots of cerebral social & cultural documentaries…..These things all educated our contributions to the band and we grew to be big and strong.
 
What do you have to offer that other bands don’t? What sets you apart from a lot of the other newer bands out there today?
It’s so hard to answer this question without sounding like an asshole, but I at least know in my heart that we aren’t a band that sounds exactly like a particular band or label or can be compared universally to a specific era in music. We make music that sounds like Russell/Andre/Tim/Justin/Pat, and I know that there are a lot of bands that don’t do that as intently as we do. Our creative process is extremely democratic with all of us engaged and contributing and disagreeing and writing each others’ parts for one another with equal status. I think that that shines through and makes us sound a little bit weirder than your typical punk or indie band or whatever.
 
How is the live show compared to the general sound of material that’s been released?
As with a lot of bands, I think that our live show is more aggressive than our records. Since we often play in venues with compromised sound systems (read: basements), a lot of the nuance-y sounds that we have the ability to put on the albums are lost. In its place, however, can be a lot of the bang-on-your-guitar kind of stuff that makes playing loud music fun and exciting. They’re both different ways of going about the same thing, but this much has been proven – we break a lot more strings at shows.
 
More times than not, influences tend to bleed through. What bands are currently inspiring the music that you’re making?
Three Man Cannon is the only band that matters.
 
What would you say the band has already accomplished and what do you have your eyes set on next?
We released a record that we are all honestly proud of, and I think that that is a really big accomplishment. We also got invited to Fest 10 and went on a really successful tour, and those are both huge to us. The next goals involve more good tours, more invitations to sweet festivals and shows, and the writing of songs that we are even more proud of than these.
 
Thus far, what’s a favorite memory or something quirky that’s taken place with the band (in-studio, onstage, or elsewhere)?
1. In 2009 (or so), we played at a middle school that Russell’s sister worked at. We played three consecutive lunch halls (periods 4, 5, 6) to 6^th, 7^th, and 8^th graders, respectively. On the way home, I (Justin) fell asleep in the van and Pete poured water on my crotch. I woke up immediately and told everyone that I just wet my pants. They didn’t tell me what actually happened for about a year, after I had told dozens of people (including my mom) that I had pissed my pants in the van on the way back from playing three shows to middle schoolers.
2. We played to three people in Ithaca, NY in July ‘11. Those three people, though, showed up because they mistakenly thought that it was the third Thursday of the month rather than the second. Dubstep night, of course, was on the third Thursday of the night. They asked us to turn down after the first song and took us back to their house to give us baked goods afterwards. I still don’t actually know if I believe that that happened.
3. We beat Red Jumpsuit Apparatus in a game of Quizzo. The score was 86-0.
 
Is there anything in particular that you’d like people to take away from listening to your music?
I personally don’t have any particular thing that I would like to see people take away from us. I get a lot of different things out of different bands, and I like it when the presentation is such that I can draw my own conclusions about what the music means to me. I would hope to offer that to other people. In general terms, though, I would just hope that people hear us as an engaging band with a sound that isn’t immediately familiar or overdone. And that our songs take them to a magical place where nothing hurts and the rivers are made of whiskey.

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