Kid Dakota - Denervation Vinyl Record

AKA Kid Dakota - began writing the songs for Denervation, his fifth full-length studio album, and first in over six years, while convalescing in a hospital bed in South Dakota in 2014. What began as a brief summer vacation at his parent's house in the Black Hills, turned into an extended nine month stay after he fractured his pelvis in a horrific bicycle accident. To cope with the crippling depression, Darren started writing the songs that would eventually constitute Denervation.

After making some rough recordings, Darren sent the demos to longtime friend and producer John Kuker, whom he had worked with on previous Kid Dakota recordings at Seedy Underbelly in Minneapolis, MN. John immediately recognized the raw potential in the demos and suggested that Darren come and make the album at Pachyderm, the fabled recording studio in Cannon Falls, MN that John had recently purchased and renovated. They spent two weeks woodshedding the new material before heading into Pachyderm in January of 2015.

After three days of tracking, they had the basics of Denervation in the bag and planned to finish the album at John's studio in Los Angeles that spring. Tragically, however, John died from a heart attack on February 2nd, and the record came to standstill. Born out of Darren's attempt to come to terms with the trauma of his bicycle accident, the album was now inexorably linked with the death of one of his best friends. It was only after getting married and moving back to Minneapolis in the summer of 2017 that Darren began to muster the fortitude to finish what John and he had begun over two years prior.

To aid him in this endeavor, Darren called upon both some long standing musical conspirators (Martin Dosh, Andrew Broder, and Alan Sparhawk), as well as some new (Johnny and Molly Solomon, Jeremy Ylvisaker, Jeremy Messersmith, Todd Trainer, and Dave Simonett). The result is a intensely personal record that addresses the subject of loss from diverse perspectives.