Chip Kinman

In 2022, In the Red Records released The Great Confrontation, an album of instrumental electronic music by Chip Kinman. It was Chip’s first solo album; his previous recording, This American Blues, by his band Ford Madox Ford, was issued just prior to the 2018 death of his brother Tony. The Kinmans had been partnered musically since they were teens, in a variety of now-legendary projects: the OG California punk band the Dils, the pathfinding cowpunk unit Rank and File, the ear-shattering electro-rock duo Blackbird, and the Western music twosome Cowboy Nation.

In the wake of The Great Confrontation, Chip and In the Red plotted another record. The resultant collection, Chip Kinman, is reflective, soulful, and profoundly affecting, a statement of identity and a look back at life that avoids the pitfalls that could derail an autobiographical work. The album features several moving, personal new songs: the heartfelt “Me and Tony,” about the Kinmans’ lifelong brotherly pursuit of music; “Goodbye Rock and Roll,” an account of a freshman summer fling with an “older woman”;  and “So Young,” a look back at the Kinman crew’s nocturnal prowls of L.A. Looming mortality is touched on in “Brian,” a portrait of an L.A. musician coping with his partner’s death, and the staggering, literally cosmic finale “Forever Shining.”

As its self-declaratory title suggests, Chip Kinman was largely a solo work, with its author producing and also playing most of the instruments (including, for the first time, drums). But some old punk compatriots lent a hand: Alice Bag of The Bags and Juanita and Juan, In the Red’s duo act with Kid Congo, Cliff Roman of The Weirdos, Mike Watt of The Minutemen and Ford Madox Ford’s drummer S. Scott Aguero.