The City Kids – Best Of You

The City Kids have released today, 24 January 2020, their first single ‘Best Of You’, taken from the upcoming album Things That Never Were. The City Kids is a project of JJ Watt, the former rhythm guitarist of The Main Grains. If you loved The Main Grains, this is something for you.

When the story of The Main Grains ended in the late summer/early autumn last year, I was comfortless. Something that I had loved was taken away from me. But it seemed that something would soon step into that corner of my heart that was previously reserved for The Main Grains (well, TMG’s music is still there). When I heard some early versions of the stuff that JJ Watt was writing, I knew that this would definitely be my stuff! Eventually the project was named The City Kids.

‘Best Of You’ is their first single. This song, or a demo version of it, was one of the very first songs I heard. After listening to it, I wrote to JJ: “Yeah, ‘Best of You’ is great.” I was already a fan. That was just after mid September.

Knocked Down, Kicked around
they try to turn you upside down
No matter what they say or do
Don’t let them take the best of you
Stepped on, beaten down
they try to twist you inside out
No matter what they say or do
Don’t let them take the best of you (away)

The City Kids are JJ Watt on lead vocals and guitar, Dennis Post (from Warrior Soul and Flush The Fashion) on guitar and vocal, and Berty Burton from Tigertailz on bass. The missing link is Dave Sanders from Falling Red, who will be the drummer on the album Things That Never Were that will be released in March. (Update, on 15 May.)

You can purchase the digital single (or whatever you call it) on the band’s Bandcamp site. All the proceeds will be donated to the bucket list of Mikey Lawless (the bass player of Falling Red), who lost his battle with cancer in the very early this year, and to Marie Curie and McMillan Cancer Support.

With ‘Best Of You’ also demo versions of it and wonderful ‘You Get Nothing’ (a song that we have heard naturally at the Main Grains gigs sung by JJ) are included as well as ‘Round And (A) Round’ that also features Billy Tee and Alex Holmes from The Suicide Notes on vocals and guitar respectively. Different versions of these songs will be on the upcoming album.

And by the way, I love JJ’s voice, it’s perfect for this kind of music, easy to recognize in the vast sea of rock ‘n’ roll singers!

And here it is, a video for ‘Best Of You’ (made by Fuzzy McGlide, known also for some videos and other stuff for The Main Grains):

I do really look forward to the album and you can be sure that you will hear about it and The City Kids on my blog! I don’t very easily become interest in new stuff, but this is definitely something I will follow very carefully.

You can follow The City Kids on Facebook.

Bandcamp site can be found behind this link. Update: band has now also a real website. You can find it here.

© Katriina Etholén