Kirby Krackle is a Seattle-based nerd rock duo comprised of two lifelong comic book junkies, Kyle Stevens and Jim Demonakos, who create songs dedicated to their addiction. They have performed their unique style of pop rock at comic book conventions from New York to San Diego, Toronto to Seattle and numerous places and venues in between. The band has released two albums, their self-titled debut in 2009 and their last album, E for Everyone, a year later. The group is getting ready to celebrate the release of their latest album, Super Powered Love, later this year.
Stevens is a prolific and accomplished musician. Since the age of 13, he has been reading comics, writing and recording music professionally. Stevens has written and recorded several albums as the frontman for his band Laymans Terms and also does studio work, writing and producing an album by Farscape actress Gigi Edgeley. "We don't ever want to grow up, we want to have fun!" Stevens said. "It's hard to believe we are making money and have a career doing what we love to do."
In addition to playing in Kirby Krackle, Jim Demonakos founded The Comic Stop, a chain of comic book stores in the Pacific Northwest. He's also a freelance editor, writer and consultant. Kyle and Jim decided to make comic book music because they read them, sell them and, of course, love them.
They are not the first band to create music about comic books: Black Sabbath has done "Iron Man" and Paul McCartney did "Magneto and the Titanium Man," but they might be the only band to sing exclusively superhero-related songs dealing with superheroes and how they cope with being a hero and also having a regular social life.
The band released a video for the song, "On and On" in July 2010. Soon after they released animated videos for "Up Up, Down Down," "Zombie Apocalypse" and "Secret Identity."
Their songs "Ring Capacity" and "Vault 101" were released on the XBOX 360 Rock Band Network in 2010 and as a special gift to email subscribers, the band released a special Christmas track, "Vigilante Christmas."
Kirby Krackle is a band that, by mixing their passions of music and comics, has been able to go from playing bars of 20 people to performing at conventions of hundreds to thousands. Maybe we all should learn from this example.
