 "Photo: Courtesy Photo")
Last week, members of local band The Kickback received a record deal contract via e-mail, making their years of hard work pay off in a big way.
For vocalist senior Billy Yost, this comes with a sense of vindication.
“It’s nice to have someone validate everything you’ve been working for and put their money where their mouth is,” he said.
Yost first formed The Kickback as a freshman at USD. The band line-up changed as members graduated, and Yost is the last of the founding members. With him now are his older brother Danny on drums, senior Cody Raterman on guitar and Zachariah Verdoorn on bass.
Forming The Kickback has been an enjoyable aspect of his time at USD, Yost said.
“The college experience is supposed to be about kicking your real dreams under the bed, and going for the realistic goal,” Yost said. “It was the opposite for me. Music makes me tick and it’s nice to know that I do have a purpose, that I was made to play music.”
<table align="right" width="50%" cellpadding="10" cellspacing="5"
bgcolor="#D8D8D8"><tr align="left"><td id="left"><h3>The Kickback Live in Sioux Falls</h3>The Kickback opened for Plain White T's Tuesday night in Sioux Falls. The Volante's Jessica Kokesh was on hand. <a href="http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#/group.php?gid=25502798353">See Video at our Facebook page</a>.</td></tr></table>
Verdoorn said he jumped on the chance to join the band when they were in need of a bass player and since he joined, doors have opened for them.
The Kickback had a two-month tour this summer where they hit up the music scenes in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee and Kentucky, among other states. They nearly sold out their first pressing of 1,000 copies of their EP (extended play) “A New History” while on tour.
Verdoorn said the people they met on tour were gracious to the band.
“We had people opening doors to feed us, to take us out to movies and keep us entertained,” he said. “We usually had a blast. It was really fun to hang out with other bands.”
To Verdoorn, the hardest part of touring was traveling and then waiting to play.
“There’s 24 hours in a day and we spend two hours playing,” he said. “You have 22 hours to do nothing, especially if we’re playing close to home.”
Yost said touring was a long and stressful process.
“I’ll tour until I die, but it’s not the rock ‘n’ roll craziness everyone makes it out to be,” he said. “At least at our level now, anyway.”
The Kickback plans to go on tour again in January and is hosting a “name the tour” contest on their MySpace page, MySpace.com/TheKickback. By then, the band will have their new EP “Great Self Love” in stores, distributed by NS5 Records.
NS5 Records is owned by Norwood Fisher, bassist of the rock band Fishbone, whom The Kickback has opened for several times.
Fisher said he was initially impressed with the other band The Kickback members played in, The Brickhouse Boys, and although The Brickhouse Boys disbanded later, he told them to keep in contact.
While out west for a brief winter tour last year, The Kickback stopped to see Fisher and dropped off “A New History” for him to listen to.
In a phone interview, Fisher said he liked the energy and intensity of The Kickback’s stage show.
“They’re musically aggressive and smart. The aggressiveness of the stage show grabbed me initially; they exploded off the stage,” Fisher said.
Fisher also praised Yost’s songwriting as being “classic.”
“One song might not be good art, but another might be awesome art,” he said.
Fisher said he doesn’t have a band that sounds like The Kickback on his label. Verdoorn describes the band’s sound as “new rock,” but said the sound has been constantly changing.
“In the past, we had poppier songs, more influenced by Blink 182,” he said. “Everyone in the band is growing and maturing with age.”
Verdoorn credits their fans in Vermillion for sticking with them throughout all their changes, and for local venues like Maya Jane’s for developing Vermillion’s music scene.
Yost said the fan base in Vermillion is a bit odd because they lose a fourth of their fans to graduation every year, but thinks the number of fans will only continue to grow.
“The last show we had here was absolutely insane,” Yost said. “The fans we lose take us with them and introduce us around the country.”
The Kickback also opened for the Plain White T’s yesterday at their show in Sioux Falls.
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