No More Kings 'No More Kings' album

After dancing the night away to his fun, high-energy pop/funk/rock, you’ll find snippets of his catchy songs about zombies, Smurfs, and The Karate Kid stuck in your head. And you won’t be at all surprised to learn that this singer/songwriter’s story is as unique as the characters in his songs. Pete Mitchell is just as comfortable on the West Coast as on the East, in a garage band as in a recording studio, animating cartoons as painting fine art, and his music echoes this ability to swing between the silly and the serious.

Pete Mitchell calls No More Kings’ first album a “thank-you letter to the 80s,” a perfect theme for someone who says that he (and his music) were “born in the 70s, raised in the 80s, and perfected in the 90s.”

Born in the 70s...
Pete was born in Providence, Rhode Island. As the son of an Air Force mechanic, he spent most of his younger years moving around the country. Though no one else in his family had ever been a musician, Pete was always singing as a kid. “I sang along with the radio or made up my own goofy songs. But I never took it seriously, or thought of it as something I could really do, until high school.”

Raised in the 80s...
In eighth grade, Pete formed a friendship that would change his life. He found a musical kindred spirit in Neil Robins of Dirt Poor Robins. “Neil was already a phenomenal guitarist and an amazing songwriter at age fourteen,” Pete said. “We started writing songs together, and I thought, oh, my goodness, I can’t believe I can do this. I can write these songs, and they sound great! That was the beginning. I was hooked from there. I knew I had to make music.”

Later in high school, Pete and Neil started playing shows together. Even offstage, the two couldn’t stop making music, often singing two-part harmony in the halls and in the back of the school bus.

Perfected in the 90s...
While Pete was in college studying fine art, No More Kings was born, and they began perfecting their sound. Neil and Pete wrote silly, energetic songs, and with the addition of bass player Adam DeGraide, Founder/CEO of Astonish Entertainment, No More Kings played all over New England.

Soon after Pete and Neil moved to Los Angeles with a different band, they split up, and Pete thought that was the end of No More Kings.

The 2000s
After the move to California, Pete’s music career slowed down, and he found himself working for Disney and Henson, animating video games. He continued to record and write songs on the side. “I built a home recording studio in L.A. and also played in a band for a little while, but my focus was the visual arts, not music.”

By 2005, Pete desperately wanted a change. “I was working too much. I didn’t have time to do my own artwork and music. I was sick of working my butt off to tell someone else’s story. I was good at it, but I had so many of my own stories I wanted to tell.”

Just when he felt ready to give up, an old friend called. “It was such a crazy surprise to get a call from Neil who said, ‘Adam has a record label now, and he wants to sign you – you’re going to be No More Kings again.’ It was perfect timing. I was ready.”

The Album
No More Kings, the self-titled first major release, is a positive, upbeat, pop/funk/rock party-in-a-box, full of pop culture references and quirky lyrics.

“This album is very character-driven, very story-based,” Pete said. A trait he learned as an animator that has carried over into his songwriting is communicating a character’s core to an audience. In “Sweep the Leg”, for example, Pete digs into the head of Johnny, Daniel-san’s nemesis in The Karate Kid, and presents a new way of looking at the story.

Pete-the-musician is also Pete-the-artist on this project – he is doing all of the artwork for the album and the band’s promotional materials. “I’m extremely lucky to be able to combine both of my loves. My whole life, people have told me I have to choose one, either art or music. I fought that and said I could do both. Now is the first time in my life that’s become true. It’s exciting for me, and I still kind of half think I’m going to wake up.”

“The whole album is a happy celebration of the crazy times I grew up in, the things that influenced me, the little pieces that made me who I am: watching Knight Rider, Schoolhouse Rock, The Muppet Show...Whatever those influences are that got in and stayed in and have been rattling around for years. This album says, ‘Thank you, 80s, for raising me; you did a good job.’ ”

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No More Kings - No More Kings