Splashing Around with Simple Kid...

So you got the Simple Kid moniker from a traveling mate you stumbled across? Weeeelllllll, I tell people that; it’s actually not true. I don’t know why, I was just in a phase of telling lies all of the time. My life seemed more interesting. I did actually—the guy I met—it’s true I did meet this guy and he was amazing, but he never actually called me Simple Kid, I just kind of liked the idea that he did. He was an amazing character, though.

He spent time traveling (and, apparently, bullshitting) his way up and down the coast of California in search of something different.

Why California? I just wanted to get away from everything, basically. I was just pissed off at my life, basically. And that was the most far away you could get, really.

After his former band, The Young Offenders, a heavier, glam-rock collection,* split up, he found himself wallowing in the ‘same-old-shit-different-day’, prompting his flight to these United States.

“I was just in this scene - I had been in a previous band and, you know, I was young- a lot younger at the time. I was in this quite cliquey group and we talked about music all day, took the same things - and sort of - we all got backstage passes at every gig in town, we all knew everybody. I was really bored. It was really weird being really bored with music. I just kind of got into a bit of a rut really.”

As he recanted his travels between sips of Sprite, he spoke of those whom he encountered while scouring the beaches of California for areas that would provide suitable slumber for an evening or two. There were many people with many different outlooks, divergent viewpoints, and little to no knowledge of music.

“I met loads of people who didn’t really, like, know anything about music but they liked what they heard on the radio and they liked certain songs and that was amazing for me at the time to kind of reconnect that ‘music affects people,’” he said, with full knowledge that the words which escaped his lips were dripping with rock and roll cliché. “People can love a song, they don’t even know who sings it but they just love that song. It’s as valid as anyone who knows everything about music, you know. It was very refreshing sitting with people who tell you how much they love a certain song and I’d think, ‘yeah, yeah, I love that song, too.’”

Simple Kid’s music is deeply rooted in pop. Beginning with his days as the lead singer of The Young Offenders, McFeely was attached to pop whether he liked it or not. The Young Offenders had their fifteen minutes when they performed on TFI Friday (Britain’s equivalent of TRL - sans Carson Daly). Ironically, it was shortly after this performance when he took flight from the dense fog of London with his sights set on the bright sunlight of California.

Somewhere on the west coast, McFeely transformed into Simple Kid, and with that transformation came longer hair, scrappier duds and a laid-back outlook on music and life, generally. In his words, “I came back a raging hippie.” To describe the Kid as a hippie is inaccurate. In appearance, he certainly resembles what is conventionally labeled ‘hippie’; his music and his attitude differ from those of conventional hippies, though.

In his live set, he stands on the stage with options; he plays the banjo, the acoustic and electric guitars, and pours the beats from his laptop (on which he spilled a half bottle of Miller Lite at the Tower Theater). That night, he entertained upwards of 150 guests with a six song set (as he admitted, “it kind of sucks, you know [playing only thirty minute sets], because by the end of it you’re just kind of getting into it and you’re ready for more.”) which included ‘Lil’ King Kong’, ‘The Commuter’, ‘The Ballad of Elton John’, ‘It Ain’t Easy Being Green’, ‘Self-help Book’, and the first single from 2, ‘Serotonin.’

‘The Ballad of Elton John’ is a tongue-in-cheek poke at celebrity and all that it entails. Even going as far as to say that celebrity will “suck out your MoJo like happened to Elton.”

The highlight of the set was, by far, the duet with Kermit the Frog. Projected onto a white, pull-down screen, Kermie traded verses and harmonies with Simple Kid to overwhelming reception.

The last I saw of McFeely was when I left his dressing room about an hour before he was to take the stage. His two week tour in the states was nearing completion. As a result, he would travel home to his family (McFeely has an infant daughter, Piper, whom he helps raise with his girlfriend in London) and his studio for two weeks to begin cutting and mastering tracks that sound nothing like Beck.

As Simp puts it on ‘The Ballad of Elton John’, “Celebrities go home, go home to your mama” because someday this simple kid, as he says on ‘Serotonin’, is going to make a big splash. Ciaran McFeely may not want to be a celebrity, but he may not have any say whether he makes a big splash. As far as he’s concerned, he already has.

*McFeely admits to formerly being a huge T. Rex fan. Now, when asked whether he likes T. Rex he explains, “I..don’t rea- when you know a band so well…I haven’t really listened to them in years, but from the ages of about 8 to 23 or something I used to just listen to T. Rex all of the time.”

Photo by author.