Angels & Airwaves guitarist David Kennedy at Mt.Rushmore. One of the few images he has of the trip after losing his camera.
Some know him as an amateur road racer who won the first race in which he has ever competed, some know him as
Angels & Airwaves guitarist David Kennedy. This racer and rocker was rider this summer, setting aside his Pirelli Diablo shod
Kawasaki ZX-10R and taking to the highways of America on his
Harley-Davidson, fitted with Pirelli Night Dragons, riding side-by-side with his father, Jim, looking for America.
Kennedy Said, “The project we’re working on has a lot to do with motorcycle culture. We looked at the 1970’s biker thing and wondered what it would be like made modern, what would they do in 2020? We pay homage to the era of the adventure of the open road. To Captain America. So I took this ride with that in mind.
“Riding from San Diego to Illinois we visited family, stayed off Interstates. On tour I travel so much in the bus and rarely know where we are. On the bike things seem closer somehow. On the bus I feel far from home, but on the bike it was all connected. On a bike, with a few hundred dollars, you can go anywhere, you can ride until you feel sufficiently lost, you can get disconnected.
I’d wanted to go to Mount Rushmore by bike ever since ’98, when we stopped there on the first tour I did in the USA with a band. It was during Sturgis, and we were supposed to play. We showed up and found out we’d been cancelled. The promoter was nowhere to be found, every hotel was filled, so we kept going. We stopped to see Mount Rushmore at 6:30 in the morning. Seeing it on this trip was different, thankfully it was still there. The way I got there this time was way cooler, this was more about the journey than being there.
“We also went to Crazy Horse. It was 36 degrees, raining, foggy, icy. I duct-taped my hands to keep them warmer. It helped. I was unprepared for how much weather there is outside of Southern California. There was lots of rain, but it was cool to see the storms in the distance. I love being out there in it on a bike. There are so many changes. I love riding at dusk, the light is perfect, you feel really small, which is great because being personally so tall I always feel really big. On the road through the Western states all problems become small.”
Prior to leaving on this trip, Kennedy fitted a set of Pirelli Night Dragon performance tires on his 1996 H-D Dyna Superglide. About that Kennedy said, in a nearly embarrassingly enthusiastic over-the-top testimonial,” It was nice to slow things down from my track riding experiences. I hadn’t been on an H-D since high school. At first the bike felt lose, the tires felt skinny and detached. The front would shimmy. The new Pirelli’s transformed the bike. They solved every problem. I couldn’t believe it. It really feels almost like a sport bike now. It’s hard to think of any other modification that simple and with that kind of change. And, after the trip the tires still look nearly new. You know, it took like five minutes to get the tires on the bike and it just felt so good I could rail on the bike. The tires made the trip. I would have had so much more to deal with without them. I thought about that a couple times a day. I used to have to attack crossing lines on the freeway, but on these you don’t care. It was like I had bought a new bike.”
Despite the Night Dragon tires, Kennedy lost his camera and is left with his memories and a few cell phone images.
Angels & Airwaves has a new album scheduled for release shortly after the New Year, and will be on tour to promote their new music as soon as a schedule can be set in place. Kennedy and drummer Atom Willard have been known to bring their bikes with them on tour, so watch for them in your town.
