King Midas

As some of King’s current bands were growing, and he was invested in other local bands—including Love-cars, Rhea Valentine, and 12 Rods—the bands were all more or less on equal footing. But in 1997, when Happy Apple released its first record, the band immediately achieved local renown and started touring. (King had been making ends meet teaching master classes at Musictech—now McNally Smith—and the University of Minnesota, as well as giving private drumming lessons.) Then, in 2002, Happy Apple signed a record deal with Universal Europe, a major label. When, six months later, The Bad Plus signed with Columbia Records, something had to give. King soon quit 12 Rods and focused on touring and playing mainly with The Bad Plus and Happy Apple.

Those two bands have “sort of sparred for space since then,” says King. “But The Bad Plus has received so many opportunities to play, it’s opened doors for Happy Apple,” which does two or three European tours a year, plus plays New York, Chicago, the Twin Cities, and college campuses. The Bad Plus has toured internationally for the past four years.

Meanwhile, King and James Diers of Love-cars started toying with the idea of electronic pop. They recruited keyboardist Ev Olcott from 12 Rods and bass player Matt Friesen—whom King has known for twenty years—and Halloween, Alaska was born. The new band made a record, and Ryko Discs/East Side Digital offered a record deal. Soon Halloween, Alaska was playing on the Current and was played twice on Fox’s prime-time soap The O.C. 

Hollywood was interested in King’s other involvements as well. A sample of a Happy Apple song was included in the otherwise forgettable film The Hot Chick. King is still incredulous about the experience. “We got paid $7,500 for six seconds of a drum beat,” he says. “Six seconds! That’s more than Happy Apple makes on a two-week European tour. Two weeks, twenty-four hours a day, riding around on a fucking train, humping a  cymbal bag and bass and saxophone cases, and being yelled at in French by people for sitting in the wrong seat. Then The Hot Chick. It’s ridiculous. A drum beat.”

From the beginning, King’s sense of humor—sarcastic, witty, ironic, infectious—has been part of the mix, and there are those among Happy Apple’s audience who may come just for the comedy. The jokes and patter, King says, “grew out of the idea of getting a breather for the saxophonist between songs. That’s a wind instrument, and sometimes he looks at me like his head’s going to come off. I just started talking and never rehearsed any dialogue. Your mind is in a creative space when you’re playing, and all this weird stuff started coming out.”

Chris Morrissey, a musician who most notably plays bass with Mason Jennings’s band, says, “There are a lot of musicians who play a part when they get onstage and act the way they think that their crowd wants them to act—but Dave acts the way he is.” Saxophonist Mike Lewis agrees. “He’s really funny, sharp-witted, and passionate, and he doesn’t curtail that for anybody. Onstage, it’s the same deal.”

In December 2000, King, pianist Ethan Iverson, and bassist Reid Anderson played their first local gig as The Bad Plus at the Dakota (then located in St. Paul’s Bandana Square). The following year, they performed another holiday show there, and prior to the performance The New York Times included the band’s self-titled album in its list of the ten best jazz CDs of the year. “For a young group, first album, small Spanish label [Fresh Sound], that was an amazing thing,” says Dakota co-owner Lowell Pickett. “Then stuff really started happening.” December 2006 marked the seventh year the band has played the Dakota between Christmas and New Year’s—prime time at the venerable jazz house, now located in downtown Minneapolis.

“Historically, there’s been this notion that you have to leave town in order to be successful,” says Pickett. “This has been changing in other kinds of music in the Twin Cities for a while—obviously Flyte Tyme, Prince, Soul Asylum, The Replacements, and Mint Condition in rock and funk and R & B. But these were the first guys who did it with a strong existing Minnesota connection in jazz.”

According to Pickett and other observers, underpinning the success of all of King’s bands is the continual search for better music. King himself says, “All these bands are focused on at least trying to stretch out to be interesting. It’s not like they’re all brilliant and trendsetting, but they’re all earnestly attempting to let the limits go within their genres.” That means genre-bending as well. “I’ve always found that the more you can inform your playing by all genres, the more you’re going to be someone who’s able to cross those boundaries and have different camps accept your art and accept your ideas,” King says. “You end up playing like no one else because you’re not informed by only jazz musicians.”