Ex-Tickle Me Pink frontman goes solo

For a guy who split up and with his girlfriend and his long-running band in a six-week period, ex-Tickle Me Pink singer-guitarist Sean Kennedy is a remarkably cheerful guy. “It’s been a really fucking rough month,” Kennedy admits. “At the same time, good things are coming out of it. Sometimes drastic changes spur growth.”

After Kennedy unpacks his things in his new bachelor’s pad, he’ll take his first strides into his new musical life early next month. After setting up house, he has his sights on a career as an acoustic indie rocker, and will make his first appearance outside the Tickle Me Pink world at Choice City Butcher And Deli as part of the Fort Collins Music Experiment on April 9. As part of the move, he hopes to reposition himself outside of the pop-punk milieu within which he spent the last six years toiling.

At this point in his life, bouncing back from problems may be second nature for Kennedy. As part of Tickle Me Pink, he endured the overdose and death of bassist Johnny Schou the same day that the act’s Wind-up Records debut, Madeline, hit stores in 2008. Shortly after that the band’s sales figures proved a disappointment to record execs, who had aggressively marketed the band to teenage pop-punk crowds instead of to a more mainstream audience befitting the pop songwriting. Following those setbacks, and in a creative funk, the band made the tough decision: Its members would remain buddies, but be bandmates no longer. Tickle Me Pink announced its dissolution in February, rather than dragging out the inevitable and embarrassing itself.

“Why don’t we just go out with what people know of us and not try to keep, for lack of a better word, the legend of our band alive?” Kennedy says. “I wouldn’t doubt that we’ll get back together soon, but we’re taking our own paths for now.”