luvjOi
Nov. 18 at 12th & Porter
A year ago, Kenny Alphin was sitting in Los Angeles, on Melrose, on top of the world. His exultant performances in Nashville clubs under the moniker Big Kenny had garnered the attention of the Disney-owned record label Hollywood Records, which planned to release Big Kenny’s debut album Live a Little as soon as the company and the artist could build a little momentum. “The label really needed a big act so bad that they promised to put the push behind it,” Alphin recalls. “They put it in writing.”
Alphin is now back home in Tennessee and still in good spirits, even though his album never did come out. Pushed back from a fall ’99 release to the early months of ’00, Live a Little was eventually bumped indefinitely, and Alphin reached a legal agreement with Hollywood that left him financially compensated, albeit without a label. But Alphin has regrouped—literally. Earlier this year, he started working with a new set of musicians, and he dropped the Big Kenny name in favor of the more band-oriented luvjOi. He’s back to packing local clubs (as he hopes to do this Saturday at 12th and Porter) and he’s got an eponymous CD that he’s distributing himself.
The quick rebound is just part of the Kenny mystique—the relentless pursuit of positivity that makes his concerts as much self-help seminar as rock show. Alphin invests a great deal in his persona as the benevolent philosopher-king, sincere and visionary. Even reflecting on the fiasco with Hollywood Records, he takes great pains to point out that he’s still friends with everybody he met. “And I have a little grasp of their secrets now,” Alphin says. “I don’t regret a lick of it, man.”
But for a moment, the bitterness he tries to avoid bubbles up, as he points out that Hollywood still controls the songs that were to have comprised Live a Little. “They have ’em for five years,” Alphin sighs. “It takes five years to get ’em back. Luckily, I’m an overly prolific songwriter. I have a lot of shit to say.”
After his major-label disappointment, Alphin says he’s stronger and more focused than ever before. He has now assembled a team behind him, including the first manager he’s ever had, Mark Oswald of TBA Entertainment, and a legal team headed by Kid Rock attorney Tommy Valentino. There’s also guitarist Adam Schoenfeld, a 25-year-old New Jersey native whom Alphin claims has inspired him to rediscover the merits of traditional rock ’n’ roll, as opposed to the operatic pop of his Big Kenny days. The cause is further aided by bassist Justin Tocket, drummer Larry Babb, and Alphin’s friend and frequent cowriter John Rich, who first suggested the name of the new band.
The moniker “luvjOi” encompasses “what we’re all about,” Alphin says. As for why the spelling is so unusual, he plays coy. He’s similarly reticent about the band’s motto: “Lick this go numb.” Asked for a hint, Alphin suggests writing the motto on a piece of paper and adding beneath it the words “bulk sonic might.” The two phrases are anagrammatic; Alphin suggests that there are further puzzles to be solved. “I’ve hidden things on the record that I’m not ready to tell folks yet. Even in the packaging.”
The music inside that package is danceable and anthemic, best exemplified by the single “Discoball,” which is currently garnering airplay on local radio. The song doesn’t have an especially hummable melody or unstoppable guitar riff, but the band rocks so hard and keeps pushing the chant of the chorus—“We all want to free-fall under the disco ball”—that it becomes almost impossible not to chant along. The rest of the album alternates between toe-tapping grinders reminiscent of the ’90s Eurotrash incarnation of U2 and sweetly riff-driven classic-rock fist-pumpers like “Hurting Man” and “Worth the Time,” which revisit some of the bolder strokes of Alphin’s Big Kenny era.
The man guiding the twentyish members of luvjOi is 36 years old, but he defends his potency as a rock ’n’ roller. “If I find someone who can rock harder,” he boasts, “I’ll move on.” In fact, he’s thinking about a contest, in which younger bands compete against him onstage. The game: Remove Kenny If You Can.
That confidence comes from Alphin’s pre-Nashville days growing up on a rural Virginia farm. “I’ve definitely been a pretty positive person all my life,” he says. “And the bulk of that comes from my father. I’ve always had the ability to look at the world and pick the good things.” Eight years ago, his optimism was sorely tested. Alphin started a construction company that grew into a multimillion-dollar business by the time he was 25. At 28, he’d lost it all in the S&L crisis, when his lender closed and he had to lay off 75 employees. It was, Alphin says, “like having piano wire strapped around my balls.”
He rebuilt a smaller empire, and by the time he turned 30, Alphin decided to leave behind the stress of being a businessman to pursue a whim. “I locked the door to my house with my stuff still in it, and I haven’t been back,” he says. He moved to Nashville, where he worked full-time learning the craft of writing songs. He eventually landed a publishing deal with Famous Music to support himself while he developed the complex suite that would become Live a Little. “I love a great melody,” Alphin says, “And I love when they say something.” The budding frontman worked his sunny outlook into his lyrics.
To back those words, Alphin now has a band that he contends “can go anywhere [with a song] onstage.” Lately, they’ve been doing nearly three-hour shows, blending Big Kenny material with luvjOi songs and a healthy sampling of covers that includes the likes of “I Melt With You” and “You Spin Me ’Round (Like a Record).” The performances feature visual spectacle—dancers and spectacular lighting—and they’re buoyed by Alphin’s attempts to touch people, as when he stops the show and asks everyone in the crowd to introduce themselves to the stranger beside them. “You come to a luvjOi show,” Alphin swears, “you’ll leave knowing more people.
“We’re on a mission to make people focus a little bit more on the good things in life,” he continues. “The opposite of all the love in the world is fear. I’ve been waiting for a long time to get all the fear out of my life. Now I tell people to take all that anger and hate and give it to one person. Give it to me. I’ll throw it away. Now take that same love you had all your life and give it to everybody.”
Alphin’s gospel has spread to young folks like filmmaker Matt “Steady” Dyer, who’s been shooting luvjOi shows and rehearsals for posterity. In addition to this ongoing project, Alphin has helped develop a technically dazzling Web site, lickthisgonumb.com. And while he’s essentially running his own indie label for the distribution of his CD, he’s also writing inspirational essays that he e-mails en masse to fans and well-wishers, along with developing an indie film script and a pilot for a TV show.
How does he afford all this industriousness? “The one thing Disney did was give me a chunk of money,” Alphin admits. He’s using the biggest portion of that chunk for the grandest project of all: The Million CD Giveaway. luvjOi’s album can be purchased at Tower or from the band’s Web site, but a would-be customer can also get his hands on the disc by going to a luvjOi concert, where the CD is free with admission. And that’s not the end of Alphin’s radical marketing plans. He’s currently trying to work deals with corporate sponsors to have luvjOi play for conventions and company gatherings. Alphin is confident that one of his plans will reap a reward, but he’s not sweating it yet. “Sooner or later,” he shrugs, “somebody will pay me.”
In the meantime, his groundbreaking largesse continues, inspired by gigs Alphin played as Big Kenny earlier this year, and the frustration he felt when fans would ask afterward how they could buy the songs they heard. Happy settlement with Hollywood or not, Alphin remains annoyed that he has a whole album that he can’t sell to his audience. With luvjOi, he says, the plan is simple: “I want to give it away before anyone can mess it up.”
