The Kyle Sowashes wish the world would finally ‘Start Making Sense’

Twenty years ago, after amicably stepping away from his previous band, Tom Foolery and the Mistakes, Kyle Sowash decided to record an album entirely on his own. “And so, I made an album at Columbus Discount Studios where I played all of the instruments,” Sowash said in a mid-September interview. “And since it was me all by myself, I was like, what should I call it? The Kyle Sowashes.”

What began as a solo project quickly expanded, with Sowash initially recruiting a rotating cast of musician friends to help him bring his songs to the stage. Six or seven months in, however, he realized the folly of this approach, which required him to teach the same batch of songs to a continually shifting roster of players, turning every concert something of a high-wire act. 

“I realized we weren’t getting any better because I had to keep teaching different bands the same 10 songs over and over again,” said Sowash, who pointed to one disastrous house show in Dayton where the bassist clearly didn’t know any of the songs as a pronounced turning point. “It was like, maybe I should stick with people who know the material.”

It helped, of course, that Sowash was quickly able to recruit musicians from some of his favorite regional bands, including drummer Dan Bandman (84 Nash, The Drawing Board) and guitarist Justin Hemminger (Treysuno, Speed Governor). For the first half of the band’s existence, this trio performed alongside a rotating cast of bass players that included Brian Freshour and the late Brett Helling, among others, with Nick La Russo stepping in to solidify the lineup about a decade ago.

In spite of these fluctuations, the band’s motivations have remained consistent from day one, with Sowash describing the project as an excuse to get together routinely with friends, with the bonus of getting to dine at coveted restaurants while out on tour. Indeed, there are points in conversation with the Sowashes that played like a series of outtakes from “Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives,” with the band members recounting visits to Hot Doug’s in Chicago (RIP) and an aborted trip to Franklin Barbecue in Austin (“We got to a point in line where they were like, ‘It’s three hours from here,’ and we bailed,” Bandman said) followed by bang-bang visits to a pair of Texas barbecue joints: Stiles Switch BBQ and Louie Mueller Barbecue.

“As we’ve gotten older, we’ve learned to travel with a gigantic container of Tums,” said Sowash, who will join his bandmates at Rumba Cafe on Friday and Saturday, Sept. 26 and 27, the dual concerts marking both the 20-year anniversary of the band and the release of its new album, Start Making Sense, which surfaces via Anyway Records on Friday, Oct. 3.

The Kyle Sowashes’ music has remained remarkably consistent in its two decades of existence, the band routinely delivering scrappy, hook-filled guitar rock albums that have hardened some in more recent years. “I think I was a bit more carefree when the band started,” said Sowash, who allowed that Start Making Sense has a comparatively jaded perspective shaped by everything from the lack of humanity he viewed on display in the early years of the Covid pandemic (“The Least That You Can Do”) to the social and political realities that have exerted increased downward force on wide swaths of the public (“How Could You Not See It”). “The songs are a little darker and a lot more cynical. … They still have the essence of a fun song, but when you listen to the lyrics, it’s like, well, the world’s got a lot of problems.”

The album isn’t without moments of levity, however, whether the musicians are joking that the Cleveland Browns only route to the Super Bowl involves joining fans in attendance (painful but accurate) or turning out a semi-sincere tune about the rift between Aerosmith and original drummer Joey Kramer (the aptly titled “Song for Joey Kramer”). And even at its most cynical and despondent, there’s never any give in the music, which is shot through with the idea of remaining engaged in the fight even when the surrounding darkness threatens to overwhelm.

“The reason you’re upset is because you care,” La Russo said. “In the time between songs, we had a lot of conversations, and … we all had this common feeling where we were down but not ready to be out. And it was comforting to address those feelings, lending whatever small voice we have to the conversation, and putting it all out into the ether.”

The Sowashes began recording sessions for Start Making Sense in the early days of the pandemic and continued with them for years, interrupted by periods of mourning (Sowash’s mom died of Covid prior to the arrival of a vaccine) and personal turmoil, with Hemminger experiencing a series of mental health hurdles that for a time sapped even his enjoyment for making music. “I was getting burned out at work and trying to hold everything together, and that couple of hours a week we would practice or record, which was supposed to be the highlight of my week, started to feel like an obligation, and it added more stress to the pile,” said Hemminger, who eventually started therapy and took an extended sabbatical from work as a means of getting his bearings back. “Honestly, I’m grateful these guys put up with years of me trying to figure my shit out, and things are going great now.”

Not that there was ever any question the other Sowashes would stick beside their bandmate through those times, no matter how tumultuous, being that the group’s entire existence is rooted in the offstage bond between the four. “For me, being in a band is just about getting together with my friends and drinking beer,” Sowash said. “And if we get to make music, yeah, that’s great. But sometimes you just need to eat hot dogs in the backyard.”

Correction: The article initially stated that the first Kyle Sowashes album was recorded for Columbus Discount Records. It was actually recorded at Columbus Discount Studios and later released via the Dayton-based label Bettawreckonize Media.