Incubus ‘to keep it fresh,’ ‘do our thing’ during Colorado Springs concert this weekend
When the pandemic pulled Incubus off of the road, the band’s turntablist Chris Kilmore didn’t slip into months of wait-and-see inactivity
He used the time to work at the keyboards, which he picked up later in life, learn some more music theory and, of course, try to further the turntable skills and sounds he’s been making since he was a pre-teen growing up in Pennsylvania.
He started DJing at 13 and continued through high school and college in Washington, D.C., before he moved to Los Angeles and became part of the Jedi Knights DJ crew.
“We would link all of our turntables together,” he said. “We’d make beats and things like that live together. While we’re scratching, and it kind of (became) we’re a band — you’re playing the bass on a turntable, I’ve got a kick drum, this guy’s got a hi hat and snare and so on. I’m like, we’re a band. That kind of opened up my mind.”
That mind opening brought Kilmore to Incubus in 1998 as a replacement for Gavin Koppel. Incubus, with special guests Badflower and Paris Johnson, will perform Sunday at Weidner Field in downtown Colorado Springs.
Kilmore’s first album with the band was “Make Yourself,” the 1999 double- platinum breakthrough album that yanked Incubus out of the nu metal mass and into the rock mainstream.
“There was a point there where I felt like a DJ in a rock band was really cliche. Every band out there was trying to come up with a DJ,” Kilmore said. “But I felt like I was always a little different than those guys.”
In large part, that difference was rooted in Kilmore’s musical approach, which incorporates turntables almost like another instrument in the group.
“There’s a bunch of solos and things like that, but there’s a lot of other (things) going on that are blended in,” Kilmore said. “That was actually the hardest thing to achieve with this band — how do I get into this and not stick out and blend in just like everybody else is blending in?”
Incubus went on to enjoy a string of hit albums in the 2000s, including “Morning View,” “A Crow Left of the Murder” and “Light Grenades,” and remains a big draw on the concert trail, where the band tends to mix up the song selection from night to night.
“We’re pretty flexible as a band,” Kilmore said. “Obviously, we’ve been around for so long, we have so many songs we could play, we can throw in audibles as often as we like. We try to keep it fresh every night and do our thing.”
What: Incubus with Badflower and Paris Jackson
When: 6:30 p.m. Sunday
Where: Weidner Field, 111 W. Cimarron St.
Price: $39-$159; seatgeek.com/venues/weidner-field/tickets, weidnerfield.com
Incubus will perform Sunday at Weidner Field in downtown Colorado Springs.