By ERIC R. DANTON
April 18, 2010
Although it’s true that the members of Kicking Daisies are kids in a band, they are not content to be just a kid band.
“We’re so much more real than that,” bassist Carly Kalafus says.
She and her three bandmates, all teenagers, are off to a good start. Since coming together late in 2008 to play what one calls “heavy pop-rock,” they’ve attracted the right kind of attention in the music industry, teaming with a hit-making songwriter to help round out the track list for the album they are recording with a Grammy-winning producer.
Now Carly, 14; drummer/singer Caitlin Kalafus (Carly’s sister), 17; guitarist Ben Spremulli, 13; and singer/guitarist Duran Visek, 14; are missing just one piece: the record deal.
They’re working on that, playing showcases in New York and Los Angeles for the kinds of people who can deliver such things, and spending long hours in rehearsal when they’re not performing. (Upcoming shows include one Saturday at the Daffodil Festival in Meriden, and the Bamboozle Fest May 1 in New Jersey.)
Before three-quarters of them can drive a car legally, the musicians are on the cusp of achieving a dream that eludes performers twice their age and older, and starting the band wasn’t even their idea.
Kicking Daisies wasn’t manufactured, exactly, but the foursome didn’t come together the way most young bands do, with school friends playing rickety covers in somebody’s basement for fun or talent-show glory.
In fact, none of the musicians had ever met before November 2008. Carly, then a gymnast, had yet to pick up a bass. Caitlin played drums in clubs with her father, Chris Kalafus, a middle-school music teacher and guitarist in Milford. Ben, a Bethel native, played guitar in a metal band, and Duran lived near Fort Myers, Fla., where he received an intriguing invitation.
“I got a phone call from this dude who said, ‘Hey, want to start a band with a dude in Connecticut?'” Duran says during an interview on the Kalafuses’ front porch in Milford, where Kicking Daisies rehearses in a cramped room in the basement.
The dude calling was Rich Herzfeld, owner of restaurant Chef’s Table in Fairfield. Herzfeld had seen Ben’s metal band, Cats in Arms, perform at a local farmer’s market. Impressed by how well the guitarist held his own with older musicians, he invited the trio to play at his restaurant. Herzfeld tipped off a customer about the young guitar shredder, who was then 12 and had been playing for just two years after waking up one morning with the feeling that he needed to learn guitar.
“Instead of sleeping, I would play guitar for like six hours a day,” Ben says.
Mike Mangini was the customer Herzfeld contacted. Not only was Mangini a regular at Chef’s Table, he’s also a Grammy-winning producer who helped steer debut records from the Jonas Brothers and Joss Stone. He was impressed with Ben, too, and suggested Herzfeld assemble a new band around the guitarist, with younger musicians.
Herzfeld recruited Duran and Caitlin based on YouTube videos. Duran flew up to meet the others the weekend before Election Day, and Herzfeld and Mangini put him in a room with Ben and Caitlin to see how they played together.
“We clicked,” Duran says. In fact, they wrote their first song that weekend.
Caitlin, older than the others, was skeptical at first, but not for long.
“The chemistry was awesome,” she says. “All my life, I’ve been playing with adults, and you think kids don’t know what they’re doing.”
What started as a few hours of playing turned into a four-day jam-fest.
“I skipped school that following Monday, and we jammed all day,” she says. “The next day was Election Day, and we played all day long again.”
Mangini, who liked the idea of having a girl play drums, also liked putting a girl on bass. Caitlin suggested her sister, who had just decided she didn’t want to do gymnastics anymore.
Initially, Carly refused.
“I was like, ‘This is your thing,'” she says.
A little sisterly prodding brought her around, and she proved to be a natural.
“It took me five to 10 minutes to learn the first song,” Carly says.
Duran, convinced the foursome was on to something, persuaded his parents to let him move to Connecticut. He arrived in January 2009, staying first with the other band members before finding lodging in Fairfield.
“I had to convince my mom,” Duran says. “I was like, ‘Please, Mom, this is what I need.'”
He, like the others, is home-schooled as they focus on Kicking Daisies.
“That was a tough choice, especially with me being a teacher, but it’s working out well,” Chris Kalafus says of the decision to pull his daughters out of public school. “We sat down as a family and talked about it and decided, let’s go for it.”
Although Mangini was intrigued, he kept his distance at first so the band could find its own way.
“It’s got to be real, it’s got to come from them,” he says at a Kicking Daisies showcase in New York earlier this year, where the band played a handful of lively pop songs with exuberant energy and flash to a room full of music-biz types. “I said, ‘I’m going to be involved very little to start. I want you to figure out what you want to play, write your own songs.’ I really, for the first two months, steered clear of the whole thing.”
Once the musicians demonstrated they were serious, Mangini become more active, spending time with them in his recording studio and helping the band shape its aesthetic. Mostly, he says, he serves as a sort of guide.
“They write their own songs. They choose what they’re going to wear. I just fine tune it,” he says. “My thinking was, I don’t have any interest in being [Backstreet Boys svengali] Lou Pearlman. I don’t have any interest in putting bands together artificially.”
All four band members help with songwriting. Caitlin writes the outlines, coming up with chords and working with Carly on lyrics, and Duran and Ben flesh out the arrangements.
“It’s like building off of ideas,” Caitlin says.
They’ve also collaborated with songwriters like Peter Zizzo, who discovered Avril Lavigne and Vanessa Carlton and has written songs for Cline Dion, Jennifer Lopez and Jason Mraz.
“This is a band I want to stay as involved with as they’ll let me,” Zizzo says at the New York showcase. “A lot feels right about this to me. I’m pretty good at knowing when something is not a waste of time, and I’m pretty sure these kids are going to be big stars.”
That sounds fine to Kicking Daisies, but they talk about their music as if they’re in it not for quick stardom, but for the long term.
“We have such freedom to go outside the box that I want to be known for that someday,” Caitlin says.
Just as important for these four is the bonds they’ve formed after knowing each other a relatively short time.
“We’re all best friends,” Carly says. “Even on days when we don’t have rehearsal, we call each other to hang out.”
KICKING DAISIES performs locally April 23 at 7 p.m. at the Jonathan Law High School Taste of Milford Festival, 20 Lansdale Ave.; April 24 from 5:15 to 6:30 p.m. at the Meriden Daffodil Festival in Hubbard Park, 142 East Main St., Meriden; June 5 at Brentapalooza (runs 1-7 p.m.) at Bluefish Stadium, 500 Main St., Bridgeport; and June 18 at the Daniel Street Cafe “End of School Blowout,” 21 Daniel St., Milford, which runs noon to 4 p.m. Information: www.kickingdaisies.com