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6 Degrees Entertainment

The Melancholy Kings [2025] The Melancholy Kings [2025]

Steady As She Goes: The Melancholy Kings Speak!

New Jersey’s THE MELANCHOLY KINGS have just brought out Bitcoin Elegy, a guitar-driven rocker about the decline of meaningful personal relationships in the digital age, with the cryptocurrency’s name serving as a notable marker for the post-analog world.

The Montclair outfit blends the sounds of Wilco and The Replacements with a sound rooted in the rough-hewn insouciance of 80’s pre-grunge alt-rock.

The core duo of singer/guitarist Mike Potenza (The Anderson Council, Crash Harmony, BARD, Gramercy Arms) and bassist Scott Selig (Ambulance, Uncle Moon, Deni Bonet Band, Super Tuesday) met at a Manhattan law firm, learning they both had roots in the 90’s-00’s NYC music scene.

Escaping corporate misery, they jumped back into music, joined by drummer Paul Andrew (Fluffer, Phantom Tollbooth) and guitarist Peter Horvath (The Anderson Council).

Bitcoin Elegy previews Her Favorite Disguise, the band’s first album in six years (out November 27th, 2025 via Magic Door Record Label) - produced, recorded, mixed and mastered by renowned producer Ray Ketchem (Guided by Voices, Luna, Elk City, Gramercy Arms, Crash Harmony) at Magic Door Recording Studio.

I recently spoke with both Mike and Scott about their upcoming new album, what went into making it, how some of the tracks came to be, and, oh yeah, penguins!

Being that this new album was created - at its core - by two guys who were once embedded in the 90’s/00’s New York indie scene, one that brings forth its very own unique sound, before we explore it can you please explain how long it took beforehand to bring everything together for it?

Scott Selig – bass, keyboards, co-producer: “Well, it took us both (independently and separately) going to law school as a career shift, moving to the suburbs in New Jersey, and suffering for several years through the ossification and ennui of life at a big NYC law firm.”

Mike Potenza – lead vocals, lead and rhythm guitars, chief songwriter: “We were both working in a rather staid NYC white-shoe firm at the time and Scott was like, “Yeah, I used to have purple hair halfway down my back.” As odd as it sounds, we were like, “Why don’t we see if we can get some summer interns and have a law firm rock band enter this charity contest called ‘Law Rocks’.”

“At around the same time, I started going through old notebooks of song ideas from back in the day (New Girl, for instance, was written pretty much as is when I was in high school). I also was getting into looking into my ancestry. I realized I have one picture of my great-grandfather and great-grandmother fresh off the boat from Italy, and that was pretty much all I knew about them. Not one story; not one piece of writing; just that picture. And so from my vantage point, I was like, “I’d like to record some of these songs so at least someone, if they care, can know what my voice sounds like and what some of my thoughts were.”

“Coincidentally, I was at a neighbor’s party who happened to be in A&R in Boston back in the 90’s and 00’s; we played the “do you know” game and I mentioned that I was in a band in college whose singer (Dave Derby) went on to front The Dambuilders. My neighbor was like “Sure, I know that band; you know Dave records with my friend [and album co-producer] Ray Ketchem here in Montclair. You should meet him.” So that’s how the ball got rolling.”

Scott: “It didn’t take us long to start playing new songs, initially as a trio with our first drummer, and heading to the studio to record our first album, which came out in 2019. The additions of Peter and Paul afterwards completed the evolution to where we are now.”

Mike: “We added Pete Horvath on guitar and I joined his band (The Anderson Council); Pete and I were band mates way back in high school. Paul Andrew joined on drums (hat tip to Ray for hooking us up).”

What were some of the biggest obstacles along the way to bringing this album to fruition and how did you overcome them?

Scott: Not long after we released our first album in 2019, COVID came along and shut the world down. That obviously slowed down our momentum for a while. After we put all that behind, we started working excitedly on the new (or repurposed) material that made its way onto the album. Some gigs along the way helped solidify our new sound and got us ready for the recording sessions for the album.”

Mike: “I’d say COVID was a big one, and just everyone’s schedule. I really wanted this record to be a group effort, so I wanted us all to be there not just for the basic tracks, but as we put in vocals and leads and percussion so that each song reflected the best of everyone’s thoughts on bringing it to life. We did that for the most part, with minimal “flying in” of tracks.”

As for the album, Her Favorite Disguise, I understand that it is being touted as one featuring pop smarts mixed with indie cool, with big riffs and infectious bassline grooves, so can you please explain just what that means to you within the context of how it came together, both thematically and musically?

Mike: “These songs were written over a long period of time, but I think whenever they were conceived, we’ve always tried to put a premium on having a solid hook and guitars/bass/percussion that tries to be thoughtful and respectful of each other’s space. There are some songs that are less traditionally structured, like UV; but I think we try to have at least one thing in there that’s infectious. For the songs I write, I don’t do up very detailed demos; it’s really just me and an acoustic guitar, singing into my phone, that I send around. I really want everyone to come together when we rehearse so it solidifies. For some songs, like Kensington, that happened more in the studio than anywhere else, and [co-producer] Ray [Ketchem] was key in that process.”

Scott: “Generally, we don’t overthink things when we arrange and record the songs. They usually come together organically in a way that reflects the sum total of all of our collective influences. When you play with people with whom you are musically compatible, these things tend to come together pretty seamlessly, I’ve found. And this is certainly the case here. Not that we’re complete musical clones of each other. Each of us four bring our own idiosyncratic musical personalities into the sonic soup that we make together.”

With everything you do lovingly embodying that beautiful New York indie scene of the 90’s/00’s, how does the music you create and perform today still meld itself into that ambiance, and how is it then different to the music of the same genre created outside of New Jersey?

Mike: “I think we are what we eat, and all of us kind of grew up in the NY-area scene of the 90’s to the aughts.”

Scott: “Even though we live in the suburbs of Jersey, we still carry the DNA of the NYC indie scene in our souls and in our music. When I moved to NYC after college, having grown up in the South and the Midwest, I felt at home for the first time in my life. It took a lot of persuasion and logic to get me out of Brooklyn and to New Jersey. But the towns we live in – Montclair and Maplewood – are suffused with fellow travelers (perhaps refugees) from that scene who eventually found themselves with offspring, behind the wheel of a large automobile, with a beautiful house, and beautiful spouse, and asking themselves “well, how did I get here? (to paraphrase David Byrne).”

“It seems like everyone you meet in these towns was in a cool band from that time, and many of them are still playing now. There is this whole community here of former NYC hipster ex-pats, and we feed on each other’s creative endeavors. I think this tension between our past selves and our current states of being informs our music, both lyrically and sonically. The song Astor Place, for instance, is expressly about the urge to take flight from the East Village and settle in “the land of Springsteen and honey.”

Mike: “Being from NJ perhaps gives us a little different perspective — Pete and I grew up in Highland Park, which is just outside of New Brunswick and in our day, it was a great indie music scene with wonderfully run-down places like The Court Tavern and The Melody, where we cut our teeth and heard our friends doing the same. It was NYC-adjacent, which I guess is kind of where I’d put this record.”

A lot of words have already been used to describe your music, but how would you yourself sum up your sound on this album ... and in just five (5) words?

Mike: “Eclectic, indie, guitar, rock, stuff!”

Scott: “What Mike said!”

Please tell us (in a couple of sentences or less) a little more about what these tracks noted below mean to you and how they came to be:

Victoria - Mike: “Pete and I wrote this one a long time ago. I could be getting some of this wrong, but I think I was a freshman in college and made a tape of some songs I was futzing with. Pete was (and is) a couple years younger, so when I came back for Thanksgiving break, we worked on some of those songs, and this was one of them. He eventually did up a demo of it called Muddled Times. Years later when working on this album, I futzed around a bit more, added the “Victoria” chorus and the modulation at the end and changed around some of the lyrics (like the “staring into your phone” — obviously that was anachronistic to the time when the song was written).”

Bitcoin Elegy - Mike: “I was playing around with the opening riff late at night and came up with the first line (“I’m getting so old, I remember thinking that the center just might hold”). The rest of the lyrics are about the feeling that things these days seem to be so lacking in meaningful personal interaction; we’re all buried in our phones, looking at social media; and there’s a sense of inevitability about it all that is beyond our control. The flip side to that is that things carry on; there are bigger forces in the universe. So, bitcoin was really chosen to be like a marker for a digital world and the elegy is about the loss of interpersonal connection.”

Steady As She Goes - Mike: “This is another one where the riff kind of wrote the song. Not really a deep song; just trying to be a playful pop number about a guy who thought he was going to be successful with a gal and wound up flopping on his face.”

Alex Bell - Scott: “We often like to throw a non-obvious cover song into our live set, and we love the melody and groove of Alex Bell, as well as the way the arrangement shifts from one section to another – it’s like an entire album side encapsulated into a five-minute explosion.”

Mike: “You’d have to ask Mr. Pollard what exactly the song means, but I think we all found the vibe of it to fit in well with the record. I just love the line: “I see you around, every time there’s a ghost in town.” We wound up playing around a bit with the arrangement after we recorded the basics, putting the quiet “ghost in town” part at the beginning as an intro, which I think added to the overall arrangement. I think that was Paul’s idea. Pete does the lead vocals on this one; I personally like it when albums have multiple lead vox, like XTC, the Clash, etc., and of course Pete’s a better vocalist than me anyhow.”

And was Her Favorite Disguise always going to be the albums name or was there another that nearly won the race come the time to take your hands off the project?

Mike: “I may as well tease this now; we have a song called Her Favorite Disguise which is recorded and in line for the next album, which we’ll probably call Bitcoin Elegy. Bitcoin Elegy was one of the names we considered for this record, but we loved Renee LoBue’s cover artwork so much and thought it fit perfectly with Her Favorite Disguise, so we went with that.”

Being that we’re not called Exclusive Magazine for nothing, is there a hidden message, a secret notation or an easter egg to be found amongst all the tracks assembled for Her Favorite Disguise?

Mike: “Hmm. The line in Steady As She Goes (“A Mahler symphony that’s in D minor”) is sung over a D minor chord; Mahler doesn’t have any symphonies in D minor. Astor Place has a location (Baxter Street and Pearl) which I don’t think exists anymore because the new Federal courthouse was built over it. Also in Astor Place “Tommy Vu II” is a reference to Tommy Vu, who used to DO a lot of late-night cable TV ads about making tons of money in real estate. He was kind of a NY symbol to me, so I thought it would be funny if he moved out to Jersey too.”

“Here’s a Tommy Vu infomercial to check out.”

Scott: “If you’re a Thomas Pynchon fan, the lyrics to UV are loaded with Easter eggs for you. If Paul Thomas Anderson ever adapts V for a film he can put the song on the soundtrack.”

The video for Bitcoin Elegy is interestingly filmed, put together, and features a lot of energy, so who came up with the idea and what can you tell us about the behind-the-scenes set up of it and how the filming went?

Mike: “Scott was actually a film major in college. It’s all him. Scott: Yeah, I shot and edited it. It was chiefly inspired by the dynamics of the song itself. The song’s intro and first part of the verses feel more frenetic, and the second half of the verses shift downward. That inspired me to play with time manipulation for the video, with the first sections in fast motion (shot with a locked-down camera for jump-cutting) and the second parts in slow motion.”

Mike: “He comes with these spreadsheets with every detail imaginable (you’ll have thirty-two seconds to change costumes, then we’ll do slow motion, then another change (thirty-two seconds) and then fast motion).”

Scott: “Hey, you gotta be prepared. The various areas at Prototype 237 were ideal settings for the sequences we shot there. We had intended to shoot the slo-mo scenes there too but we went over schedule and shot those sequences instead in Mike’s den.”

“In order to film these sequences and have the band accurately lip sync and play to the song, we had to prepare extremely slowed down playback tracks for the first sequences (to speed the shots back up in the editing), and vice-versa for the second sequences (using extremely sped up playback tracks). It took us a while to adjust trying to look like we’re playing to the songs when the playback tracks were 1/3 or three times the real speed. There’s a tendency to start moving in slow motion with the track, but to do so would kill the intended effect so we had to overcome that.”

Mike: “All I know is I was truly sick and tired of lip synching that song by the end of the day!”

What are some of the last albums (CD, vinyl, cassette, et al) you physically purchased (vintage and/or new releases) and which one have you already gone back to listen to more and why?

Mike: “Warren Zevon: Preludes: Rare and Unreleased Tracks. I’ve always loved Warren Zevon. His Bad Luck Streak in Dancing School tour was the first rock concert I went to at age 10 or 11 at the Rutgers Athletic Center in Piscataway. Waddy Watchell on the slide. Loud as all fuck. So good. This album is poignant and beautiful and raw and just displays so much songwriting genius and incredible vocal performances on kind of happenstance tapes he was making and his son found in some storage bin. Thank God he found them, and I hope there’s more to be released.”

Scott: “After seeing Becoming Led Zeppelin earlier this year, I realized that I never owned Led Zeppelin I on vinyl – I probably had it on cassette when I was a kid. So I went out and bought it and gave that album a real listen for the first time in forever. For whatever reason that was the LZ album I listened to the least growing up (besides Presence of course), so I had never really given it its due until now – especially side 2. It’s been great reacquainting myself to its awesomeness.”

“I also love digging through used record bins and finding bizarre and esoteric nuggets from the past that are almost certainly not available anywhere on streaming. The last one I found is something called The Rite of Exorcism, a dramatic recording of an exorcism ritual from the ‘70’s that kind of a riot.”

And as we come to the end here, with regard your upcoming new album Her Favorite Disguise, and now it is all finished and ready to unleash to the public, just who IS she and just what IS her favorite disguise?!

Mike: “I teased this before; all will be revealed on the next record!”

And just where did the band’s name originate and what were some of the other choices in the running at that time?

Mike: “I hate band naming.”

Scott: “In every band I’ve been in, the most contentious issue has been finding an original band name that everybody likes.”

Mike: “We were The Other Defectives for a while, which was derived from a law Woodrow Wilson passed when he was Governor of NJ allowing judges literally to sterilize ‘Idiots, imbeciles, and morons” as well as “epileptics, rapists, certain criminals and other defectives.”

Scott: “Then we tried to come up with an active-verb name (e.g. The Pretenders, The Drifters, The Beaters, etc.), but the best one we could come up with that apparently wasn’t already taken was The Accusers, which we weren’t that crazy about (and we subsequently learned that was also in use by another band).”

Mike: “The Melancholy Kings was inspired by some graffiti I saw driving into Newark Penn Station to get to work. It was of an abstract King with some tear drops and I thought, “The Melancholy Kings might be a good name.”

Scott: “…and eureka – we found it!”

What would you like all the readers of this interview to know about the new album and what to expect?

Mike: “I think we try to write songs that are fun to listen to, that have a hook and have riffs and beats and harmonies that are catchy. Sounds very poppy, and I think we do embrace the power pop ethos, with perhaps a bit of psychedelia mixed in THERE. We hope it’s a good mix of styles that reflects our foundations.”

And yes, we ask everyone we interview this very same question (as we are putting together a kid’s book). We here at Exclusive Magazine love Penguins and so we were wondering if you had any love for them and/or had a story of one (soft toy, zoo, chocolate bar, relative, etc.) that you could share with us?

Mike: “The penguin exhibit at the Central Park Zoo was always my favorite. They really are such characters! I could watch them for hours. And those Central Park penguins were spoiled; only the best herring, bubbala.”

Scott: “I once observed the keepers cleaning out all the guano from the penguin tank and after seeing that I’m glad I’ve never had one as a pet.”

And finally, we asked both Scott and Mike to kindly take some never-before-seen selfies of themselves. Ones that perfectly personified their readiness for the world to hear their new musical endeavor. For better or for worse, these are what we got back!