Kevn Kinney

"The guys in my band play with their eyes closed, like I do-I'm just in this other place," says Kevn Kinney with a rasp that's the texture of coarse sandpaper, the result of 18 years on the road. "You can tell when a band really means it. We get on stage and we just dig it." The longtime leader of Drivin' n' Cryin' and sometime solo artist is referring to bassist Bryan Howard (Slackdaddy), drummer Dave V. Johnson (Kathleen Turner Overdrive) and east coast guitar-slinger Gibb Droll (that's his given name, folks), who've joined Kinney in his new band, the Sun Tangled Angel Revival (S.T.A.R. for short). These veteran musicians, augmented by Joey Huffman on the Hammond B3, Widespread Panic bassist Dave Schools and pedal steel player Adam Musick (all of whom play with their eyes closed as well), have poured their hearts, souls and prodigious chops into Kevn Kinney's Sun Tangled Angel Revival, the band's debut album. According to Kinney, who's released seven rock albums with Drivin' n' Cryin' and four folk-based records on his own, the new record functions as "a reflection on my past," starting with his middle-class blue-collar upbringing in Milwaukee, and continuing through his 1981 emigration to Atlanta, where he worked construction before morphing into a fulltime rock 'n' roller. Kevn Kinney's Sun Tangled Angel Revival is perhaps the most overt and expansive manifestation thus far of what Kinney says has been the underlying function of every one of his albums. "They're all handbooks for living in the underground," he explains. "My songs are about hangin' in there and realizing the way the world is, but knowing you're not alone. Now, more than ever, I think it's important to be who you really are."