This is becoming a busy year so far for out rock singer and bass player Doug Pinnick. His longtime band, King’s X, is about to hit the road for another tour and his newest band, KXM, a side-project rock super-group featuring rock guitarist George Lynch (Dokken, Lynch Mob) and powerhouse drummer Ray Luzier (Korn, Army of Anyone), recently released its debut album, which also debuted on Billboard’s Top 40.
When Pinnick was asked about how his latest band came together, the answer wasn’t the kind of rock-star story we expected.
“Ray was having a party at his house for his son, who had just turned 1, and we were all invited and hanging out,” he said. “George and Ray and I started talking. Ray had just built a new drum room to record in and George said, ‘Why don’t we just jam on some music?’ One thing led to another and we ended up making a record.”
The resulting self-titled album melds the styles of the three very-different rock bands its individual members are from and Pinnick said that, so far, listeners are happy with it.
“All the responses from fans and close friends, they just love the record,” he said. “They say it sounds original but it also sounds like all three of us. Me being in King’s X and being a singer and the bass player, there’s a signature sound we have, and me being a part of KXM, you can hear that.”
The hope is that the band will take its new music on the road at some point, but Pinnick said commitments to their other bands come first.
“This is just a side project,” he said. “We want it to go as far as it can go for sure, but all three us have our regular bands that we work with. The problem is all three of our bands are touring and we’ve got so much other stuff going on. But Ray’s band, Korn, they’re huge and always touring all over the world. That will be the bigger obstacle we’re going to have to get past: finding time around Ray’s schedule.”
For the time being, Pinnick is hitting the road with King’s X, a band for which he has been playing bass and singing for more than 30 years.
As an openly gay rock musician, Pinnick said he’s seen a lot of acceptance over the years, but he wishes the gay community would get more involved and visible in that genre of music.
“It seems like the gay community does not embrace hard-rock music and it’s a frustrating thing,” he said. “Or if they do, you kind of stay in your closet. For me personally, everyone knows that I’m gay but I don’t talk about it a lot and no one asks me questions about it. So it’s sort of a silent thing in my world. But I have found a few gay people that have contacted me and told me that they have been inspired. A transgender person came to a show one time and I met her afterwards and she said she was going to kill herself. I did a speech in the middle of a song about believing in yourself and not letting people take that power away from you. And she said because of that, she decided to stay alive and she was working it out. I felt good that someone would hear that. I would like to be more vocal about it but I haven’t figured out the right way to do it. Being gay and living in the rock world and coming from a family that is homophobic, I would love to be able to stand up and make my point to the world that we do not choose this. This is who we are. Stop disapproving of our lives and understand who we are instead of just standing on the outside. I find that the world that I live in has a lot of straight people. When they find out that I’m gay, some of them say they deal with it but then they think about it for a second and say, ’We love you, Doug. We know you.’ When people get to know each other, those walls, they fall.”
KXM’s debut album is available now. Doug Pinnick performs with King’s X 8 p.m. May 1 at Sellersville Theatre 1894, 24 W. Temple Ave., Sellersville. For more information or tickets, call 215-257-5858 or visit www.kingsxrocks.com or www.kxmband.com.
