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Middle of the Road

Stephen Kellogg & the Sixers

Can people who play Queen’s “Fat Bottomed Girls” and a medley of schlock-pop hits (“Afternoon Delight,” “Da Ya Think I’m Sexy,” and “Let’s Get Physical,” to name three) be all bad? Not necessarily. Stephen Kellogg & the Sixers — a semi-local outfit that emerged at UMass-Amherst before relocating to Connecticut — may be a serious band with a full-length debut out on Everfine that features Caitlin Cary (formerly of Whiskeytown), but they don’t take themselves too seriously. And at the Paradise Rock Club, on the first of a two-night stand last Thursday, they had plenty of fun. As their 100-minute set progressed, Kellogg delved into playful covers and then challenged the Phoenix to critique a guitar solo during one of his own songs, “Start the Day Early.” It passed muster.

The road that Kellogg and his three bandmates — Kyle Riabko (subbing for the band’s regular lead guitarist, Chris Soucy), drummer Boots Factor, and bassist/keyboardist Kit Karlson — traveled was middle-of-the-road: well-crafted singer-songwriterly pop with well-timed hooks and earnest vocals, as in “Sweetest Goodbye,” a melancholy song from his latest disc, Glassjaw Boxer (Everfine), with a sing-along chorus. Mostly, the band delivered feel-good rock and roll. Kellogg may be at his best when writing about heartbreak — in the opening “Sweet Sophia” he sang of a stolen heart, and in the following “Maria” he considered “things that are killing me” — but his winsome presence and the overall bright tenor of the songs themselves tend to offset the moodiness of the lyrics.

Although he’s not quite an America artist, Kellogg comes out of the Tom Petty/John Mellencamp school of songwriting. He opened the set by claiming that he was a “dirty old host” for “a dirty old tour,” but that was an overstatement. He later confessed, “I’m a total geek,” in reference to one of his more political songs, “Sweetest Goodbye,” in which he said that no matter what you think about Iraq, you’ve got to feel for the soldiers’ families. True enough — and spoken directly from the median strip out in the middle of the road.