The Kokomo Kings - A Drive By Love-Affair

03-11-2021

Take a big bucket of unpolished Mississippi juke joint boogie and blend it with another bucket of laid back down home blues. Add a teacup of swamp pop, a tablespoon of hillbilly and a pound of profane, ecstatic gospel and you´ll have the Kokomo Kings. This ain´t nothing but primitive, groovy Saturday-night music made for dancing. The band is a collaboration of some of Swedens and Denmarks absolute top players. After years of backing a long list of international blues artists like James Harman, Mud Morganfield, Big Jack Johnson, Lazy Lester, Louisiana Red, John Primer, Big Joe Louis, Keith Dunn, Rusty Zinn and so on, and playing with a number of Scandinavian bands like The Instigators, The Domestic Bumblebees, Paul & The Blue Delivery, Peter Nande Band and many others, they decided to start a new band and do their own thing. Since the start, they´ve performed at clubs and festivals in Sweden, Denmark, United Kingdom, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Finland, Norway, France, Austria, Switzerland, the Czech Republic and Spain. It's nice how the cover artwork this time sums up the sly charm of the increasingly successful quartet. Slightly elegant and at the same time casually tousled, nerdy but also cool, the Kokomo Kings' 'role-modelling' is certainly also a major factor in their success : their charismatic live presence is attracting more and more fans across Europe. The musical recipe is once again raised to the next level on the fourth longplayer. Conceived in the rumbling, creaky sound of the 30s, yet produced completely to the point, the twelve new songs only show once again how ingeniously the Kokomo Kings concoct their minimalist hits that hit the mark in under three minutes from the age-old ingredients of blues, boogie and rock'n'roll. The team around songwriter and bassist Magnus Langhammer and the award-winning guitarist Ronni Busack-Boysen let the dance floor smoke from the first beat and add a lot of charm and humour. Even before the old blues audience had the band halfway on their radar, they have already won the genre a new generation of fans.

1 The Wonder Man

2 Buckle Up !

3 No Dinner Tonight

4 She´s Shaking Up a Storm

5 A Million Stars

6 Gotta Get it Off the Hook

7 A Drive-By Love Affair

8 Turning Wine into Water

9 Too Late to Grow Up

10 Jump Like A Chicken

11 The Smile Of A Shark

12 Drinking Fire And Eating The Ash