Meet Rod Kim and Vince Cirino of RKVC

Today we’d like to introduce you to Rod Kim and Vince Cirino.

Self-deprecating romantic pop rock duo RKVC originated in Wilmington, Delaware with Rod Kim and Vince Cirino. Rod was a solo artist previously, and Vince had been hired on as a touring guitarist for the last leg of Rod’s 2010 tour. The two would continue to work on Rod’s sophomore album together, and the collaboration worked so well they eventually rebranded as a duo and the self-deprecating romantic pop rock of RKVC was born.

We recorded several EPs, played tons of shows on the east coast and collaborated with a lot of the artists and musicians in the Delaware/Philly area. In 2015, we were hired to write and perform the theme song for the new Philadelphia Phillies mascots in collaboration with Bruce Productions. Later that year, we packed our bags and moved to Los Angeles. We’d been planning on it for a couple of years, but something about that year really motivated us to take the leap.

Since moving to LA, the YouTube and social media community took us in with open arms and introduced us to a whole new world of audiences and content creation. Our YouTube channel features not only our music but also comedic sketches, social media challenges, and vlogs of our crazy adventures. Though the subscriber count there is relatively small compared to some of our more successful friends, our cameos in viral videos and many massive YouTube channels is where most people recognize us from.

Our first splash in the YouTube video world was with a sketch called “7 Types of People at Guitar Center” From there, we’re regular characters on the Granny PottyMouth channel as Granny’s “twins” and are regular collaborators with comic channel NerdSync where the video “Why the DUCKTALES Theme Song is Stuck in Your Head Right Now…” amassed over a million views. You’ll catch us in a lot of other videos across social media, and we have our amazing friends to thank for bringing us into those exciting projects.

After a year in Los Angeles, we wrote, recorded and released our EP “West Coast Drug” that featured a new kind of polish on our music. The songs range from the hypnotic title track about the intoxication SoCal gives you to the “screw you” anthem of “F-C-dm-Bb” to drunk tank ballad “Gotchu.” In September 2018, we released our first new single since then called “Wrong Things, Right People” and followed up in November with the somber “Give Up.” Both tracks will be on our forthcoming EP that we’re currently working on and set to release some time later in 2019.

Has it been a smooth road?
The past few months, we’ve been focusing on gratitude, so through that lens, we feel very fortunate. There are amazing creators as well as people behind the scenes with a lot of clout and influence that believe in us and support us even when we don’t feel like we deserve it. We’re forever thankful for those friends and what they continue to do to encourage and support us.

That being said, it hasn’t been a particularly *smooth* road, that feels near impossible in this city. We’ve had opportunities fall through, promisers ghost us and struggle with the internal voice as artists constantly doubting and challenging ourselves. Our song “LA Hymn” is kind of the song form of that struggle and how we found our peace (and continue to find it when we need a reminder).

So let’s switch gears a bit and go into the RKVC story. Tell us more about the business.
We’re mostly known as a band, RKVC is a musical duo, and we write and record songs to release. We’re also known as YouTubers, though we don’t consider ourselves actors. Many of our friends are successful YouTubers, and they pulled us into their circles, and we took the advice and experiences as a way to create channels to connect with our fans.

Most bands make music and seldom get to find out how that music has affected their fans, but we get to stay connected through social media, but also our weekly live streams on YouTube and Twitch where we hang out with our subscribers, followers and fans.

That’s something that just wouldn’t have been possible a decade ago and something a lot of musicians and artists are too arrogant or unaware of to embrace. Our fans make our occupations and dream possible, so we want to give back and stay connected with them as much as humanly possible.

How do you think the industry will change over the next decade?
The music industry is a moody beast, so it’s hard to say where it’ll be. The two things we try to remember is:

1. The medium will continue to shift, you either go with it or fight it… when Spotify and other streaming services gained popularity, we were initially hesitant because we didn’t want to understand it. Because of that, we feel like we missed out on a lot of momentum a new medium had swinging. Since then, we’ve embraced where audiences want to hear, see and find us and keep in mind that music is an adapt or die kind of industry.

2. We can’t follow trends in creating the actual music because we’ll just always be behind. So we follow our gut and make the music we feel like represents our inspiration the most and put it out there. It’ll either be ahead of the curve or miss, but at least we won’t be late to the party, and we’ll be proud of what we made either way.

Contact Info:

• Website: RKVC.net
• Email: booking@rkvc.net
• Instagram: instagram.com/RKVCinstas
• Facebook: facebook.com/RKVClikes
• Twitter: twitter.com/RKVCtweets
• Other: youtube.com/RKVCviews

Image Credit:
Mike Prasad, Dan Williams, Chris Porter, GMS Photography

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