With Record Store Day on April 21 just around the corner, local alternative pop band Fresh Kill will play songs from their yet-to-be-released album at 6 p.m. April 21 at Landlocked Music, a local record store on North Walnut Street.
The Call and Response House Band, a jazz band organized by local musician Ben Lumsdaine, will play, as well as Superstar Cruiser, an ambient music band comprised ofJulia Davis and Glenn Myers from Bloomington.
Jess Man and Emma Johnson, who are friends and IU alumni, created the band Fresh Kill one year ago. Man played the acoustic guitar while Johnson wrote lyrics.
“The band started really playfully," Johnson said. "We wrote our first song on my front porch."
In March 2017, one year after writing that song with Man, Johnson began taking drum lessons.
Johnson said they revisited the project once the drums were in the mix and played their first show in June 2017 with bassist Julia Davis.
Man said the name Fresh Kill comes from her friend’s response to a photo taken after Man’s cat killed a cockroach but still looked satisfied and relaxed.
“My friend said the cat had the fresh kill chill, and that is where the name came from,” Man said.
KC Cifizzari, the current bassist of Fresh Kill and an IU junior majoring in biology, joined the band in the fall of 2017. Johnson said she feels lucky to have Cifizzari in the band.
In the beginning, Johnson wrote the lyrics while Man and Cifizzari added guitar and bass, but Man said she is now beginning to write some of her own songs for the band to play.
Three months ago, Brian Berger, co-founder of local music label 1212 Records, asked Man if Fresh Kill would like to sign with 1212, Man said.
“I asked what it meant to join the music label, and Brian said that the label would do all of the stuff that we would have had to do, like PR, mastering and putting songs on Spotify,” Man said.
Fresh Kill joined the label and just finished recording their debut album at the Noisey Chairs recording studio in Smithville, Indiana with sound engineers Jared Coyle and Greg Moore. Man said the band is still considering names for the new album, which will be released July 2018.
Johnson said the theme of anger for not being taken seriously is present in the album, along with multiple songs expressing a desire to escape something such as a town or a social scene.
Once the album drops in July, Fresh Kill plans to go on a mini-tour, or a short tour to nearby cities such as Indianapolis, Chicago and Louisville, Kentucky.
“We all have jobs, so we are not going to go to far this time,” Cifizzari said.
