Kenny Carkeet: Fitness band is all about freedom and fun

When Kenny Carkeet (AWOLNATION) and Max Collins (Eve6) formed Fitness, it was with freedom in mind. We chatted with Carkeet about limitations of the industry, recording music strictly for fun, and social media.

Fitness’ debut EP Aggroculture is an exploration in musical freedom. The two-person band is comprised of Kenny Carkeet (former keyboardist of AWOLNATION) and Max Collins (vocalist of Eve6). Together, these two artists have married their individual musical stylings to form a sound that is incredibly unique.

Fitness’ music is best described as aggressive synthpop with alternative rock melodies. No two tracks on the Aggroculture EP are the same, though the EP has a surprising cohesiveness in spite of that. The record is very anti-establishment, which is particularly noticeable in the music video for single “Feel the Weight.”

Kenny Carkeet chatted with us about how freeing it is to record music for no one but himself and Collins. He also addressed why Fitness’ debut release date has been pushed back again, and spoke to the power (and lack thereof) of communicating with fans on social media.

How did you and Max [Collins, of Eve6] start working together?

KC: We met at a festival because our bands were playing together. We played a few festivals together, actually, and then somehow Max and I became good buddies through that. We both live in L.A., so when we came home we started writing together and working on stuff. Then when we realized each other’s talents, we started bringing each other in on projects.

What individual influences do you each bring to the table?

KC: Eve6 and AWOLNATION are honestly not that far part. Being 30-somethings, we’re all children of late ’90s alternative. I don’t think they’re that far off. We do mix the two; I feel like we really do that. I take what I learn in my eight or nine years in AWOL, which is always trying to do something new, deleting things when I don’t like them and trying again, all against this aggressive synthpop. All the time, something new.

In my opinion, Max is one of the best lyricists and melody writers on the planet. Lots of people will say that, too, that he’s their absolute favorite. When you take these classic melodies and put them on top of this weird, aggressive, guitar-driven music, it makes this weird balance. I feel like we’re such good yin and yangs to each other. I pride myself at being pretty good at writing music and playing different instruments and tuning in the track. Max does all of the top line. We bring very different things to the table but it makes us work very quickly and very well together.

Max’s lyrics are just incredible. Sometimes, he’ll sing something into the mic and I’m like, “I can’t believe you just sang that lyric.” That happened yesterday, actually. Yesterday, we were working on this new song and I was only kind of paying attention. I was really listening last night and I was like, “These lyrics are unbelievable.” So yeah, [our sound is] a weird marriage between the two bands but it’s also very similar.

Why “Fitness”?

KC: It’s the worst-best name on the planet. Our publicist hates it. When you’re young or even, not just when you’re young, but currently, you come up with band names with your friends. I was in my 20s when I came up with the name Wicked Fitness. I thought that would just be the best band name. When it came time to pick a band name, we dropped “wicked” and went with Fitness. We figured it would be hard to brand and stuff but decided to go for it. It’s hard to search, which kind of fits into what we’re doing. I like it. F**k it. whatever.

There seems to be a very anti-capitalist, anti-establishment message on the Aggroculture EP. Where does that come from?

KC: Max and I are both songwriters for hire, by trade, by day job. There are always these boundaries and barriers and guidelines for all these songs: it has to be this long and this wide and there has to be a chorus in the first minute. New and upcoming bands are always worried about what the label will say. They’ll write 30 songs they think are the best representation of who they are artistically, but the label will say, “No, keep working.” So they have to try again. It’s so frustrating.

So personally, I locked myself in a room and made songs just for me and one of those was the beat for “Get Dead.” Max came in and loved the music and said, “Dude, let me sing on this.” It was really cool, and before we knew it, people were really starting to gravitate toward it. My natural inhibitions told me to do the normal formulaic things. We would write our songs and be like, “Can we do that?” And then, “No one else is f**king here, so why can’t we?”

We don’t aim for the anti. We’re just making what we think is cool, without even the aspect of what an audience or our fans would like. If you like it, come along for the journey. If you don’t, that’s cool. I want to make music that I love, that makes me happy, that makes Max happy. It comes off as arrogant positivity — that’s what we call it — but comes from a really heartfelt place of wanting to make the music we want to make.

Where did the inspiration for Aggroculture come from?

KC: Max came up with that beautiful name and everyone we tell it to is like, “Wow, that’s a hell of a name.” It plays on that aggro nature of “We gotta be cool.” We live for hearts and nice comments. Labels live for spins and radio ads. It’s this aggressive culture of trying to be cool and nice and sweet and like, enough is enough. It feels like honesty has left the table for music. Everything is so f**king fabricated and formulated and analytical. If I put my face or use this hashtag it’ll get 30 percent more likes. We are seeing this and that’s where this name came from, a culture of being stepped on.

So how do you reconcile not cultivating an image on social media with having such an active presence on social media?

KC: A ton of this stuff isn’t really thought out. It’s not like we have a plan, like we need to present this image. That’s kind of what it’s about. We’re not worried about what we put up, but we do use social media because you either catch up or get left behind. We post for ourselves. Our label doesn’t post for us. We’re not saying we’re better or we use it better, we just don’t care as much as some other people do. We should care because it’s a business aspect but we mostly put up what we think is funny.

A lot of bands now put focus into producing content that caters to what their fans want to see and hear. Do you find that you have more freedom in not focusing on what others want from Fitness?

KC: The entire reason Fitness was born was because we have all the freedom in the world. Even when we play live, we change lyrics, change beats, do stupid dances. We just don’t care. We have more fun than anyone who’s at the show. Eve6 and AWOL were incredible times in our lives but we lost a lot of the fun. Fitness brings that back. Our social media is mind-blowing; we can’t believe how many people respond. People seem to be gravitating toward that I don’t care attitude and it sounds bad but… I really don’t care. We’re gonna do what we think is cool and I think people are taking that into their lives which is really cool. People aren’t letting any entity dictate what they should be.

We’re just going to keep being ourselves. As a fan of music, I look for honesty in music and it’s the only thing I look for. It’s hard to find the genuine nature or honesty inside of a song. I think people gravitate toward us because we are nothing but honest in how we portray ourselves and the music we put out.

Do you have a musical bucketlist of artists you’d like to work with?

Night Rides; their singer Travis Holly is such a special person and gifted musician. One of our good friends Matthew Koma. A producer named Colin Britton. It goes from artists to writers to producers, all across the board. There’s so many people we’d love to work with.

Do you have a favorite song on the EP?

KC: It’s hard to say, because “Get Dead” was the first song we ever made strictly for fun, so that will always have a place in my heart. “Feel the Weight” put us on the map. “Love the Suffer” was the last song we wrote, so that’s also really exciting for me. It’s the newest one. Each one of those has a special place because of a special time where we were when we wrote it.

Even “They Go Low.” That was during the election. Michelle Obama said that and we changed the quote to “get.” I kind of want to put her as a 5 percent writer on that song.  It’s hard to say which one is my favorite. We deleted tons of songs and a lot of people were upset; we deleted something off Spotify the other week and when people flipped out we were like, “If I don’t like it, it’s gone.”

The release date for the Aggroculture EP has been pushed back a few times. Why is that? When is it coming out?

KC: We were trying to be anti-business, but we do have managers and publicists and we’re learning it takes certain things to make things even presentable. It’s not right until it’s right, so that’s why it’s been pushed back. We’ve been bouncing between doing an EP or doing an LP. There are talks from sources saying it’s better to monetize it this way, but I don’t care about that. It’s a growing process. It’s just not ready yet. It doesn’t have to be, because it is whatever we want it to be. It is coming out soon! Within the first two weeks of August. We were thinking about doing an LP and pushing it back to September but we’ve gotten a lot of love from radio and places so we’re going to try to ride this wave.

Do you have anything else in the works right now?

KC: There’s a lot of talk about what the future holds. We’re going to play the K-ROQ show in Fullerton on August 29 and we’re working on a couple radio shows. Max and I write with a lot of bands and have a lot of opportunities to go out on tour. We were looking at fall, but things take time in this industry, so we’re looking at spring.

Max and I are always creating. There’s never an end to it. We’d like to put out another EP before the year is over. What’s the point of sitting on it? Sitting on a song for a year doesn’t make sense because we’ll have newer stuff in that time.

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We might put out a LP, another EP, maybe a double EP. Some people say, “That’s so stupid,” which makes me want to do it even more. Imagine an EP, Volume One and Volume Two, with the same logo in different colors. It’s the same as getting a 10-song album on the same day, but people can buy one or the other or both. The more they tell me I shouldn’t do it, the more I want to do it. It is whatever we want to do. I just want to do something cool and new. Who does double EPs? Nobody. So let’s do that.