The co-leader of this year's hottest new local band said this only a few minutes before getting a soy latté from just such a fan in a downtown coffee shop. But the girl behind the counter didn't say to Darren Jackson, "Hey, you're in that group that wears the funny track suits."

Instead, she asked, "You're Kid Dakota, right?"

Yep, he's still Kid Dakota. After a year of having fun with a group that he admitted "didn't originally have a lot of motivation behind it," Jackson is reinvigorating the act that first made him a familiar face in the Twin Cities indie-rock scene.

Kid Dakota's second album, "The West Is the Future," lands with release parties tonight and Saturday at the Triple Rock in Minneapolis. The album is a dark, tempestuous, icy recording derived from a time in Jackson's life he's glad is behind him.

Darren Jackson in Olympic Hopefuls modeTom WallaceStar TribuneAlmost everything about the CD is the direct opposite of the Olympic Hopefuls. The catchy, bright, bubble-blowing pop-rock quintet released its first album in January and came up with a costumed stage gimmick -- matching athletic track suits -- to help sell its live shows (see: Hives, Faux Jean). It worked. The band headlined First Avenue just last weekend.

It's not uncommon for musicians in this town to be playing in two happening bands at once, but it is rare for those acts to be so different -- so bipolar.

Jackson as Kid DakotaTom WallaceStar Tribune"It all comes from the same guy," marveled Zak Sally, bassist for the Duluth band Low, whose Chairkickers Union label is putting out "The West Is the Future." Sally has been double-timing as Kid Dakota's bassist for almost the past three years.

"Darren is kind of a pop slut," he said. "He works all over the pop-music idiom, and can bounce from one type of song to another and write all sorts of different things with it all still sounding like him."

For Jackson, the two different bands "are almost a requirement," he said.

Olympic HopefulsHandout"The songs come out different ways, and it seems to work best filtering them into these different identities," he said. "It would probably ruin the integrity of either [act] if I tried to put the songs all together in one mish-mash."

"Besides," he added with a laugh, "I think a lot of the people that have gotten into the Olympic Hopefuls would probably hear Kid Dakota and say, 'Why are you bothering with that stuff?' "

The Dakota kid

Jackson said he was writing pop songs of the Hopefuls variety even when he first started playing as Kid Dakota. That was in the summer of 1999, after he had bounced around the country and in and out of drug treatment -- when the darker music seemed to come out a little easier.

Jackson, 32, grew up in Bison, S.D., population 400 or so. He was a starter on the basketball team, the leader of a local cover band and quite the party honcho, he said.

"The town's really too small and boring for kids to fall into different cliques," he said.

He went off to St. Olaf College in Northfield, got a degree in philosophy and then got lost.

While he's plainly embarrassed by how much of a rock 'n' roll cliché it sounds like now, Jackson said he "experimented" with all kinds of drugs and became addicted to heroin.

He doesn't talk much about it, but the story was already pretty well told by the cover of Kid Dakota's first album, "So Pretty." It's a photo of Jackson with his arm in a bandage and his face scraped up like a hockey rink after a Soviets-Czechs game. He says he simply fell, but it's no coincidence he went to rehab right afterward.

Alex Oana, who produced the Hopefuls and Dakota albums, helped Jackson put his Kid Dakota songs to tape soon after he straightened out. The two were schoolmates at St. Olaf.

"He'd had his problems, but he was always one of the most smart, together, big thinkers that I've ever known," Oana said.

The producer hooked Jackson up with drummer Christopher McGuire, and together the duo pounded out the tracks that became "So Pretty," which was originally self-released with five songs, then re-released on Chairkickers with eight tracks.

The album, Jackson admitted, "was pretty dark and autobiographical, even more so than the new one."

Songs like the title track and "The Overcoat" came straight out of drug counseling, with lines like, "Instead of a habit, you should have a hobby."

By the time of "So Pretty's" re-release, Kid Dakota had developed into a full band -- at least part-time -- with Sally on bass. About two years ago, Jackson also hooked up with fellow South Dakota native Erik Appelwick.

The full lineup is half of what separates "The West Is the Future" from "So Pretty." Jackson says he's a fan of orchestrated, arty rock acts like Sparklehorse, Neutral Milk Hotel and even Pink Floyd, and the album reflects those influences with instrumentation ranging from stark, barren parts (such as "Pine Ridge," about the impoverished Indian reservation near Jackson's hometown) to crashing, falling-through-the-ice kind of arrangements ("Ivan," the CD-ending "Atomic Pilgrim" and "Homesteader," which goes from soft to loud to soft to ...).

The other half of what makes "The West" different is its themes. Instead of autobiographical tunes, Jackson spins out tall tales and uses his poetic license in songs dealing in despair and isolation.

The album's concept, as evidenced in the title, is about "false optimism, and confrontation of the unknown," Jackson said. It's still a personal subject, dealing with a lot of what Jackson faced in his troubled post-college years.

"I continually draw on those times," he admitted. "They were just so life-changing in good and bad ways."

Hopeful future

With Appelwick, Jackson found someone who could (A) start playing second guitar in Kid Dakota, plus bass when Sally isn't available, and (B) use Jackson as a guitarist in his own band, the coy dance-rock act Vicious Vicious. (Jackson also has done sideman work with the likes of Brenda Weiler and Alva Star, led by fellow Hopefuls member John Hermanson.)

Oh, and (C) start collaborating on the songs that would make up the Olympic Hopefuls' album.

"Erik and Darren have some kind of mysterious bond that's partly the South Dakota native thing, and partly a musical connection that's pretty unique," Oana said.

The bond solidified in the Hopefuls, which originally started as a side project called Camaro and almost ended that way.

Said Jackson, "It wasn't until Erik and I started recording those songs -- just kind of for fun -- that we realized, 'Hey, this is pretty good. Maybe we should make this a band.' "

Some of the songs on the Hopefuls CD, "The Fuses Refuse to Burn," still show a hint of Jackson's darker edge. Take "Stoned Again," about a guy longing for a girl and turning dangerously obsessive by song's end.

Still, there's no comparing such tracks as Jackson's "Holiday" or Appelwick's "Pretty Bigmouth" with, say, the new Kid Dakota song "Winterkill."

That the Hopefuls have arguably become more popular than either Kid Dakota or Appelwick's Vicious Vicious ever were didn't surprise Jackson.

"The Hopefuls are just more easily digestible," he said. "And more recognizable thanks to the suits."

The Hopefuls' brightness suits Jackson's personal life these days, too. He has been sober (no alcohol, either) for almost a half-decade. He has a home studio now, which can make any musician's day. And he's getting married next May to former Pulse of the Twin Cities staffer Erin Anderson.

Yet, he believes Kid Dakota is probably more his future than Olympic Hopefuls.

"I still feel closer to that kind of music, whether or not it fits my personal life or not," he said.

Career-wise, too, he said, "Kid Dakota is more slow-burning, easier to manage. With the Hopefuls, we came out so fast and strong, it will be hard to maintain that momentum. But we're going to try."

With the hint of sarcasm that partly makes the Hopefuls such a guilty pleasure for many of Jackson's fans, he added, "Maybe some new track suits will help."