Reunited San Francisco band Kingdom First plays Bay Area shows
Reunited late '90s SF favorites Kingdom First headline the Bottom of the Hill in SF Thursday before playing a pair of shows supporting punky vets the Freak Accident in Sacramento and Petaluma.
Though they only had a brief existence in the late '90s and early 2000s, the band featuring former Alice Donut guitarist Richard Marshall, singer Matthew Jervis (The Clarke Nova), guitarist Chris Carroll (Stimmies), bassist Dave Baldini (Swirl Happy) and drummer Christian Stark (Decal) established a reputation for hard-hitting live performances around San Francisco. The group recorded a single bracing album with noted producer/engineer Alex Newport before splitting up. After several members came together to perform punk classics by the Damned and the Saints at a memorial concert in 2022, the positive response spurred the members to pursue a full-blown reunion.
The group played a blistering set for a Noise Pop tribute concert for acclaimed photographer Peter Ellenby last February proved the quintet could still deliver onstage. Kingdom First brought another Portland, OR-based musician into their ranks with the addition of Nasalrod guitarist Mustin Douch. Since then, they supported the Art Gray Noizz Quintet at the Kilowatt last summer and paid a visit to Marshall's stomping grounds in Portland. This Thursday, the band kicks off its busiest week since coming back together, playing three shows in the Bay Area before their Too Late To Go Straight Tour takes them up to the Northwest for three additional shows in Oregon and Washington that kicks off at the Bottom of the Hill Thursday night with the band's headlining show in San Francisco in decades.
Kingdom first will be joined by SF supergroup Desslok. A pandemic project that includes former members of beloved SF band Zen Guerilla Rich Millman (also a member of psych favorites Carlton Melton) on guitar and keys and Carl Horne on bass and ex-Acid King drummer Joey Osborne (who has played with Altamont and Frisco), Desslok is fronted by Bob Hannam on vocals and synths. While a relative newcomer to performing outside of being a member of SF Ace Frehley tribute act Frehley's Vomet (he also co-directed the 2016 documentary "The Colossus of Destiny: A Melvins Tale"), last year Hannam sang a pair of Small Faces covers on the first release by Cabbages N' Mash, a band with Melvins drummer Crover on guitar, Toshi Kasai on keyboards and a rhythm section featuring Blondie drummer Clem Burke and original Sex Pistols bassist Glen Matlock.
Desslok delivers a dystopian post-punk sound that takes cues from classic Killing Joke and early Gary Numan/Tubeway Army (they've covered deep cuts by both bands live) with nods to pioneering space-rockers Hawkwind. The quartet has played a number of San Francisco shows and earlier this year tracked an album's worth of material at San Francisco's El Studio. While still looking for a label home to release their proper debut, last year the quartet put out its first corrosive single "What's the Use?" backed with a cover of the Hawkwind nugget "Ejection" that is available now digitally and on seven-inch single.
Opening the Bottom of the Hill show Thursday night will be Oakland power trio Slow Phase. Another crew of seasoned players, the threesome features guitarist Dmitri Mavra -- the creative mind behind stoner-rock band Skunk and acclaimed psychedelic doom studio project Dungeon Weed -- along with explosive drummer/vocalist Richard Stuverud, who played with Northwest punk heroes the Fastbacks and filled in behind the kit for Pearl Jam at several arena shows in 2022 (he has a long history with bassist Jeff Ament, having played in multiple groups with him). The drummer has also issued a pair of solo albums and recently performed live with Bad Scene, a band featuring Fastbacks guitarist Kurt Bloch and his brother Al. Bassist/vocalist Anthony Pulsipher (Radio Haiku, Spidermeow, REQ'D) rounds out the threesome. The band plays fuzzed-out hard rock that nods to the sounds of Mountain, the James Gang and Grand Funk Railroad. DJ Classic Bar Music -- aka musician Erin McDermott, who runs McDermott Guitars and the Classic Bar Music record label -- plays vinyl before and between bands.
Kingdom First will also be playing a pair of shows in Sacramento and Petaluma with local heroes the Freak Accident. The group is the long-running side project/solo band of Victims Family guitarist and founder Ralph Spight. While the musician has been dealing out a complex style of punk rock since first coming together with bassist Larry Boothroyd in Santa Rosa during the early '80s to start Victims Family (not to mention subsequent related bands Saturn's Flea Collar and Hellworms), the Freak Accident didn't come together as an alternative outlet for some of Spight's other music until the early 2000s.
Mixing elements of more traditional pop and rock songwriting with surf, punk and even Tom Wait-ish tango influences while always exhibiting the songwriter's surrealist barbed-wire wit and outlandish guitar pyrotechnics, the initial recording by the band for its self-titled 2004 debut on Alternative Tentacles was essentially just Spight singing and playing guitar, bass and keyboards with a variety of guests including fellow member of Jello Biafra's Guantanamo School of Medicine Jon Weiss on drums, fellow six-string virtuoso Eric McFadden and punk horn player Ed Ivey.
Since that first effort, Spight has put together a full band with another player from the GSM Kimo Ball (Mol Triffid, Plainfield, Griddle) on bass that would release several albums and EPs, included an instrumental surf tribute to Joy Division entitled Tropical Depression in 2016 that featured onetime Victims Family drummer Eric Strand. More recently, the Freak Accident has issued it's ripping third album Misfortune Teller as well as a lost set of songs recorded with an early line-up of the band back in 2009.
The band's latest acclaimed album Outer Space Is Boring features the current line-up of Spight with bassist Henry Austin Lannan (Othered, KnightressM1) and local drumming institution Stark Raving Brad (The Hellbillys, The Mutaytor, Marginal Prophets, Undercover S.K.A. and many others) and came out via the guitarists own Nerve Center Recordings imprint last year. On Friday night, the Freak Accident and Kingdom First play Cafe Colonial in Sacramento with local garage/psych band Demond Wrangler before heading to the Phoenix Theater in Petaluma Saturday, where they will top the bill at a show with Reno rockers Pussy Velour and Santa Rosa alt-rock crew ulyssescfm.
Kingdom First with Desslock and Slow Phase
Thursday, Feb. 22, 8 p.m. $13-$15
Bottom of the Hill
The Freak Accident and Kingdom First
Friday, Feb. 23, 8 p.m. $12
Cafe Colonial
Saturday, Feb. 24, 8 p.m. $12
Phoenix Theater
