How Kid Royal became DIME

Header image for Interrobang article CREDIT: PROVIDED BY DIME
MIA formed Kid Royal, has been redesigned and turned into DIME, a pop-sounding group that's surely set for success.

DIME is one of the most recent and exciting musical group to come out of Fanshawe's Music Industry Arts (MIA) program. Members of the band include frontman Cameron Russell on lead vocals and guitar, lead guitarist Alex Hindriks, bassist Karl von Estorff and drummer Drake Campbell.

The group has its roots in the former indie rock band known as Kid Royal.

Kid Royal was a group formed in 2013 that saw a large amount of success in the London area. Russell joined the group in 2014 as just a guitarist, but stepped up to lead vocals after the departure of the original frontman.

Upon attending Fanshawe in 2016, Russell shared how the lineup continued to evolve and soon included several musicians from the MIA program.

Estorff joined in first year on bass, followed by Campbell on drums several months after.

During the final stretch of second year, lead guitarist Kevin Valkenier departed to pursue a career outside of music and was replaced with Alex Hindriks on guitar.

Valkenier was the last original member of Kid Royal and with such a drastically different lineup from the band's roots, the four current members felt it was time to lay Kid Royal to rest.

“Basically we're a brand new band and we just ‘rose out of the ashes,' I suppose,” Russell said.

Although the decision to rebrand was formed several months back, the announcement was only made a few weeks ago as the band took the summer months to develop their sound, write new music and decide on a new name. One of the biggest changes for the group was a shift in genre with a new primary focus on pop music.

“I found that as Kid Royal, we had always ridden this line in between pop and indie rock and I couldn't picture us being played on rock radio or being played on pop radio. We were too half-way, so I think we had to make an actual choice of what we wanted to be and that was more pop music,” Russell said.

Although there's been a shift in direction, Russell shares that original fans of Kid Royal will still find something to enjoy in DIME.

“I don't think we're so far distant from what we used to do”, Russell said. “But I think we certainly have made enough of a definitive change in our sound that we definitely call ourselves a pop band.”

Another major change in the way the band operates is through its songwriting process.

Although Russell used to take care of the majority of songwriting and arrangements, the group now welcomes a more collaborative environment.

Most new songs have come to fruition through a co-writing process between band members who create demos of songs on their computers to share ideas and solidify arrangements.

Russell said that this new method of process has yielded nothing but positive results as now “everybody has a really good idea of what the song already is before we go downstairs to actually play it, which feels really good to do it that way”.

The band also intends to do a multitude of co-writes with songwriters and producer outside of the band as well.

Their debut single “I Won't Say” for example, was written with Vancouver based producer Davor Vulama during a trip to B.C. last year.

“We're trying to do as many cowrites as possible and just get our connections out there,” Russell said.

Having their debut concert as DIME on Sept. 8, Russell shared that he was quite nervous going in, however the show ended up being a huge success.

“We tried out all of our new gear and all of our new songs...so, it was super fun to do that [and] it was kind of nerve-racking,” Russell said. “But it was a great opportunity to experiment...and a lot of people really seemed to like the new direction and get it.”

For those who couldn't make it out to the show, but are excited to find out what this new direction sounds like, Russell hinted that the group hopes to release “I Won't Say” in October with an official music video release following shortly after.

Until then you can stay in the loop on all DIME related news through Facebook at Facebook.com/DIMEbandofficial and on Instagram @dimeband.