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Arts & Music

Gimme Five! Shayne Miel of The Future Kings of Nowhere

For two years there, the Future Kings of Nowhere were preoccupied with new wives, new businesses, and bad diagnoses, to say the least. Lead singer, Shayne Miel’s return to Durham and recovery from Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma would be enough to celebrate, but reforming the band after such a raucous couple of years has its glory too. The Kings are back to bring their acoustic punk to the masses. Miel and a gang of collaborators who have been with him from the beginning have already recorded a new EP, Pirates (out now) and a full length (due later this year) to get the ball rolling again.

So sure, these pop punk royals have their warpath laid out for them, but can their fearless leader handle the hardest questions in faux business? See for yourself after the jump.

1. If your music were a city, which would it be?
I’m not sure. It would be some place that most people have never heard of, but has a really good sandwich shop and a theater that only shows old movies.

2. What made you you decide it was time to start sharing music again?
Because I could. We tried to keep practicing and recording when I was sick, but it got too hard. I was in the hospital more often than not, and was too weak even when I was home. My voice got pretty messed up from the treatment too. But the recovery came quickly once they stopped pumping me full of poison. I was starting to feel well enough to play, so I met up with the rest of the band and proposed the idea of starting up again. We booked a show that gave us about 5 months to get ready (Motorco, last May) and began practicing.

3. Describe your typical band practice.
It usually starts with one person calling to say they’re running late, which is fine because it takes us at least 30 minutes to get all the equipment set up. We practice in (drummer) Mike’s living room and have to break everything back down after each practice. Then we screw around until the last person shows up. This usually involves some sort of ridiculous “jam”. Once everyone is there we start working through some subset of our songs. As we get closer to a show, we narrow it down to just the songs on the setlist. We run through everything once or twice until we’re about out of time, then break everything down and hang out for a little while. This is the real point of practice since we’re all so busy we don’t often get to see each other outside of these pre-planned times.

4. Who/what might be a few inspirations or influences that would really surprise people?
Surprising (maybe?): I’m a lyrics freak, so I love good hip-hop. Mike likes metal. Dan (bass) likes the band Night Ranger. Mike and Allison (keys) and I used to play together in a ska-punk band.

Not surprising at all: We all grew up listening to punk. Dan and I love old country and any new music with good lyrics. We’re also all heavily influenced by all of the brilliant music that happens in this area.

5. What did you dream of being when you were a kid? (How ’d that turn out?)
When I was a young kid, I wanted to be an architect. It seemed like the perfect blend of math and art. Then in 7th grade I discovered computer programming and decided I wanted to grow up and make machines that can think. I also started playing music around that time.

Today, I write software that reads essays written by students and gives them feedback so that they can learn to write better. And I’m a musician in my spare time. I’m saving architecture for my mid-life crisis career change.

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Click on over to download The Future Kings of Nowhere’s new EP, Pirates, out now on Churchkey Records. And, by all means, give Shayne a high five when you see him!