Flint Man Designs And Creates Stage Pieces For Pop Evil Tour

This is way cool. Ryan Kilpatrick of Flint recently finished the job of a lifetime - creating and designing stage gear for Michigan's own Pop Evil. Ryan created a mic stands and several risers. The band is set to hit the road this month, and Ryan's creations will soon be seen all over the country.

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I have known Ryan for many years, and when I saw his Facebook post about this - I first wanted to congratulate him of course, and I also had some questions. Ryan was kind enough to answer my questions, and share some super cool pictures from the project.

How did you creating a mic stand for Pop Evil lead singer Leigh Kakaty come about?

Shelby Hanson, the bands tour manager, got in touch with me. Shelby had asked Kevin Zink (The Machine Shop) who did work like this for him, and Kevin gave him my name.

How long did it take to create the concept and or design for the mic stand?

Honestly I'm not to sure. If I had to guess there's probably 12 hours of total work into it. Collecting the parts and incorporating took up most of the time. The parts I used came parts came from some of my amazing friends. John Blaze gave me the Hurst shifter that is holding the microphone, my sister Tonya and her boyfriend Chris gave me the steering wheel on it and the chrome bird cage came from a low rider bike I am building. The rest was the design artwork from the bands latest album 'Versatile'.

3). Did the two of you develop the style and design together- or did you design on your own?

No we wanted it to be secret for Leigh. Aside from the mic stand, their tour manager Shelby gave me a couple of other projects to do at the same time. I actually built two mic stands, one for local traveling and and another one that breaks down when traveling via plane, it fits in a back pack. That's a whole other story.

I also built six stage risers for the band. Including one for Haley Cramer's drum kit and risers for the guys to stand on to see the back of the crowd. Shout out to my son Kyle LaClair for welding them out while I was partying in Tawas for my birthday.

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How exciting was it to have been asked to do this for Pop Evil?

It's huge to me. This was one of the coolest things I have built since the Flint sign for sure. (Yes - Ryan built the awesome blue Flint sign downtown Flint)

How cool is it that a mic stand you built will be used and photographed all over the  country?

Rad as hell! I can't wait to see the pictures and of course at the Machine Shop on September 9th!

So you mentioned you have done some work for The Machine Shop, that's awesome. What kind of work did you do there?

Hell yeah I love doing work there. Kevin Zink likes the industrial look and that's right in my wheel house. I did the spider web stairs for the merch area, stairs for the main stage, the beer tub rack, a steam punk sugar skull and a Flint sign above the gates.
Kevin keeps me pretty busy from time to time

Are open to doing more mic stands for other bands?

I would love more opportunities like this for sure. Its pretty cool I'm going to make a house mic for the Machine Shop soon, so keep your eyes out this one is going to be hot.

What other specialty items are you open to creating?

I want to build a 1911. Pop Evil bassist Matt Dirito hit me up about it. I read his article in Ballastic Magazine and was like let's do this!

Way cool! Congratulations again Ryan Kilpatrick - you are so talented. Thank you so much for taking the time to do this.