Kevin Renick
- Soundtrack
Kevin Renick is a St. Louis-born musician and singer/songwriter who "came of age" as he puts it, during the commercial era of the great songwriters such as Paul Simon, Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, Cat Stevens, James Taylor, and others. Young, in particular, strongly influenced Renick, and their vocal style was similar enough that Renick was eventually able to front a Neil Young tribute band called Shakey Deal, which greatly impressed audiences around St. Louis and other Midwestern cities. But Renick's signature success happened in 2009, when his original song "Up in the Air" made it into the hands of director Jason Reitman, who was about to film a movie of the same name starring George Clooney in Renick's hometown. Reitman felt the song fit the themes and aesthetic of his movie, and so did audiences; the tune became wildly popular and essentially launched Renick as an up and coming singer/songwriter. From this development he was offered a commission to write a folksy song about the struggles of farmers for James Roberson's documentary "In The Interest of National Security". "Ballad of the American Farmer" was placed as the closing credits song and director Roberson loved it, but sadly he passed away while working on the final audio scoring for his film, and it remains unreleased as of 2022. Meanwhile, Renick continued to write and record original songs, including "Goodbye Typewriter," a song about changing technology that is the subject of a popular music video directed by Wolfgang Lehmkuhl, and "These Things Happen," a piercing rocker about loss and personal devastation that St. Louis paper The Riverfront Times said conjured the vibe of Neil Young & Crazy Horse better than anything Renick had released to date. Renick has a passion for film music and has been quietly creating a series of short instrumentals for possible use in film for several years; hopefully, a compilation of these will see release eventually.