This Teenage Grunge-Punk Trio Is Cooler Than You'll Ever Be

Photos by Brantley Gutierrez

The first time I saw Residual Kid, I was slightly terrified. The trio had just taken the stage at Baby's All Right in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, the rhythm section's tiny frames topped with Cobain-esque, don't-give-a-fuck mops of hair. The singer had a young Thurston Moore kind of lankiness to him, with squealing guitar tones to match. After a heavy wail of feedback, they busted into a song that perfectly fit their appearance with a punked-out, early 90s grunginess, but with even more energy. The twenty-somethings in the crowd all shot each other stunned looks.

"Oh shit," I remember saying to one of my bandmates. "We have to follow these guys?"

It's not just that they were an exceptionally tight band channeling allh the right influences. It's that each member of our band, a five-piece psych rock outfit from Philadelphia, was literally twice their average age. And nowhere near as cool.

The crowd in Brooklyn that night wasn't the first to be wowed by Residual Kid. The Austin, Texas natives have been at it for awhile, gigging throughout their music-saturated hometown and embarking on a small tour here and there.

Somewhere along the way, they caught the attention of Seymour Stein. Earlier this month, the 72-year-old Sire Records founder and Warner Bros exec sent a record contract to Residual Kid. Yes, the same guy that signed The Ramones, Madonna, and The Talking Heads took one look at these dudes and thought they were worth a roll of the dice in a business whose future seems perpetually uncertain. Residual Kid's first release as major label artists is expected next year.

"I was swept off my feet the first time I saw Residual Kid in Austin," says Stein, noting that the packed crowd was comprised entirely of adults. "The most refreshing new band I've seen at SXSW in several years."

This is pretty much the standard, unavoidable first impression anyone gets when they see the band: First, that they're young—Singer and guitarist Deven Ivy is 16, while brothers Max (bass) and Ben (drums) Redman are 14 and 16, respectively. But whatever novelty exists in the fact that these kids are fresh out of middle school melts away the moment they start playing.

"My first thought was, 'I can't believe how good this is,'" says the band's manager Bart Dahl about the first time he saw the band in 2013. "They played with incredible ease that was hard to wrap my head around. I was like, 'Are they playing covers that I've never heard?'"

While the band has been known to throw in a cover from time to time—at Baby's All Right, they ripped through Sonic Youth's "100%" with near perfection—what Dahl was hearing that night at the band's first official SXSW showcase were originals. They just happen to draw heavily from influences beloved by Dahl, even if most of those records were recorded before the band members were born.

"They didn't live through it," says Dahl. "But these guys get it."

The third reaction one has upon seeing Residual Kid—after "Wow, this band is young" and "Shit, this band is good"—is probably something along the lines of: "OK, what's the deal? Is this some kind of child beauty pageant scenario for cool teenage boys?"

Not quite. While the band members' parents are all very supportive—"They're super-chill," Ivy assures me—the project is very much of the guys' own initiative. After meeting at the average age of 12 as students at the Austin School of Music in 2009, it didn't take long for Ivy and the Redman brothers to form an actual band.

"We were doing some pretty cool stuff like 'Rock You Like A Hurricane,'" says Ivy. "It was tight. We decided to stay together after rock camp."

They gained some members, lost some members and eventually settled on the current line-up and moniker by the beginning of 2012.

By that point, Residual Kid was already playing to bigger and bigger crowds in Austin and piling up local street cred along the way. In 2010, they joined the band Dead Confederate on stage at sold-out show at the Mohawk in downtown Austin. Before long, they were playing Austin's "Free Week" in which local acts perform across town with no cover, not to mention Fun Fun Fun Fest and a slew of other shows leading up to their SXSW debut early last year.

Along the way, the band has climbed the ranks of the Austin music scene both on the merit of their own talent and, crucially, via connections made through the city's dense and close-knit scene. They've met bands through their former guitar instructors, show promoters that happen to be former colleagues of one of their parents. And the next thing you know, they're recording tracks with J. Mascis in the woods of Amherst, Massachusetts (that happened in January of this year).

Indeed, while seeing the band play in New York, it's easy to think, "How the fuck is this even possible?" When you seen them play in Austin, the whole thing makes a lot more sense.

"It's apparent that living and growing up in Austin has been a tremendous benefit and that they've been mentored by some of the best in the city both on their musicianship and songwriting skills," says Stein.

From day one, Residual Kid has been embraced by their (typically much older) peers in the relevant punk, noise rock, psychedelic and metal scenes in Austin—and all the appropriate sub-genres thereof. This is just what it's like there.

To be sure, Residual Kid are quintessential Austinites in a few key ways: their laid back attitude, their obsessively deep knowledge of music, even their love/hate relationship with SXSW.

"It's overrated," says Ben Redman. "There are so many shows going on that the big guys don't always come to your show."

As true as is this is for most bands at the mega-festival/brand orgy, Residual Kid has obviously fared better than the vast majority of band who show up to lug their gear through downtown Austin in mid-March. "South By has helped us a lot with getting connections," Redman acknowledges. "But I dunno."

***

A month after the Baby's All Right show, I find myself sitting in the back of Empire Control Room in downtown Austin, shooting the shit with three decidedly teenage boys. Later that mid-July night, the band is slated to play a show that will double as Deven's sixteenth birthday party. But in the meantime, they're engaging in what seem like favorite pastimes: Talking about music, skateboarding… talking about skateboarding.

They start by rattling off a list of (mostly pretty obvious) influences: Nirvana, Sonic Youth, AC/DC, Black Sabbath. "13 is definitely the best Black Sabbath album," jokes Ben Redman with a smart-ass grin on his face. "That's how we got started."

For Residual Kid, the gig routine comes naturally: show up, unload their gear, soundcheck and skate. While the other bands are lining up at the bar, socializing or quietly chilling out in a greenroom, Residual Kid is out front one-upping each other with skate tricks.

At this point, the band lifestyle fits perfectly in their day-to-day routines. After all, music is all they've known since before puberty. The only occasional tension comes from balancing band life with school. Conveniently, the Redmans are homeschooled and thus have pretty flexible schedules. But Ivy, a junior at Austin High School, isn't so fortunate.

"I miss a lot of school," says Ivy. "I think most of the time they're pretty understanding. But I cut it pretty close last year. When I'm in school, I just have to get as much done as I can."

To date, the band has played primarily in and around Austin, usually booking shows on weekends. Now that they're major label artists, that's probably about to change, but Ivy is determined to finish out his senior year at Austin High.

It's clear that when they get together, the members of Residual Kid are prone to chatting about music. They share similar and extensive tastes—not to mention near-encyclopedic knowledge of the history of famous bands they admire and local bands they know.

Unsurprisingly, the conversation follows something resembling trajectory of a 15-year-old's attention span. They're in the middle of telling me about the experience of recording with J. Mascis—"It was just really cool," says Ivy, not even totally sure how they came to meet him—when they get sidetracked by what must be a common sort of conversation.

"See look, you could have a long quarter pipe right there," says Ivy, pointing at a garage door behind the venue. Immediately, the other two chime in, trading ideas about what kinds of skateboarding apparatuses you could construct in the space before them and how sick it would be.

After tonight's all ages show at Empire Control Room, the band will pack up their parents' vans and embark on their first real tour—to Denver and back for about a week. Ivy is traveling separately and planning to go snowboarding in the sand dunes of New Mexico, while the Redmans are leaving a day early to go see Soundgarden and Nine Inch Nails at Red Rocks Stadium.

"Death Grips was supposed to play that show," Ben Redman points out, bemoaning the group's recent demise. "I wish we could be like Death Grips. Just cancel a tour. So punk."

John Paul Titlow was not this cool at 16. Follow him on Twitter - @johnpaul