Music
The best kept secret in music
Press
The down-home local quintet Kings County Queens plays country music genuinely, without undue affectation, yet they know how to stretch the genre to serve their own purposes. The band is celebrating the release of its first album, "Big Ideas," a mixture of covers and strong original songwriting, which features such warm touches as accordion, upright bass, lap steel guitar, and baritone ukulele. - New Yorker
Brooklyn's Kings County Queens ply a mainly acoustic classic-country sound on their brand new debut, "Big Ideas" (Rubric). The album's breeziness belies its title: This band is smart enough to keep its ideas small with simple good-time songs. - Time Out, New York
Country music in the slow and bittersweet tradition of a bygone era, the beautifully melancholy harmonies of Kings County Queens vocalists Chris Bowers and Daria Klotz speak with an authentic country loneliness that makes you forget that this collective actually hails from Brooklyn. - Creative Loafing, Atlanta
Kings County, more commonly known as Brooklyn and environs, is home to the three men and two women who make up Kings County Queens. Their debut tips its hat to the city with its sometimes streetwise lyrics, but overall the sound is old-fashioned: a ukulele tune on a moonlit boat ride flavored with rockabilly riffs.
Guitarist Chris Bowers wrote 7 of the 12 songs, which also includes covers of tunes by Moe Bandy and Cowboy Copas. Daria Klotz on the baritone ukulele and Suzanne Price on the accordion give the record both a refreshing and old-timey air. Bowers and Klotz provide well-executed harmonies that quiver with vulnerability at times. Even when singing of Percocet, trucker speed and pneumatic cough, KCQ does so with a gentle thoughtfulness. The last song, "How Do You Sleep at Night," has the effectively ironic sound of a lullaby, and the lyrics "you destroy everything you can't control/you keep your world in a stranglehold" are sung with the utmost tenderness. Their mix of musical and melodic innocence with lyrical experience keeps KCQ from slipping into the neo-traditional niche. They come across instead as a contemporary band employing elements of tradition to a musically intriguing end - Country Standard Time
Discography
Big Ideas (Rubric Records, 2002)
Photos
Feeling a bit camera shy
Bio
KINGS COUNTY QUEENS has been an important fixture on the New York City country scene since its debut in 2000. Driven by mostly acoustic arrangements, lush male-female harmonies, bittersweet lyrics, and music that one critic called “soft songs with a hard center,” KCQ is true to the country tradition, while maintaining a contemporary edge.
The Kings County Queens was started as Suzanne had been looking around Brooklyn (aka Kings County) for some like-minded musicians with whom to play old country standards, and one night she and Chris were frequenting the same local watering hole. Once their conversation turned to Kitty Wells, the seed of Kings County Queens was officially planted. Daria, who had recently left the Moonlighters, seemed a natural addition and soon came aboard. After their early rhythm section left the to pursue other projects, Kings County Queens recruited the help of their friends Eric Eble, who was playing with then label-mates The Heroine Sheiks, to take up bass responsibilities and Johnny Rock, who played with Chris in Jerkwater, to play the drums. It is with this line-up that the band truly began to feel like a band.
The band's first show was at the summer-opening of Coney Island in May of 2000, where they debuted with a handful of Chris Bowers' originals and a mixed bag of covers. Since then they have happily shared the stages with the Waco Brothers, label-mate Mary Lou Lord, Trailer Bride and others. In addition, they have toured throughout the US, including showcases at SXSW and CMJ.
The band was picked up by Rubric Records in 2001. And in 2002 the band released the LP “Big Ideas”—a CD that captured both their songwriting ability and appreciation for the Sun Records sound. The CD was critically well-received and won over new fans all over the world. With the merger of Rubric and Tee-Pee Records in 2003, the newly formed label began to focus on heavy rock, and the label and KCQ decided to part ways.
The KCQ’s have currently finished recording their follow up to “Big Ideas,” tentatively called “Big Mistakes.” Like their previous release, this recording showcases their penchant for harmonies and sharp lyrics. This time out, though, the sound is more developed with a larger sound and more complex arrangements, including tracks featuring lap steel, banjo and strings. The KCQ's are currently looking for a label to release the CD and hope to get it out sometime in the fall.
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