BUSY BROTHERS ON THE ROAD
Kongos not only tour, but also have a podcast and a docuseries
It’s been a wild week for the rock band Kongos. During tour, the band’s bus was rear-ended. Luckily, only the bus was damaged and the tour got back on track.
“Everything is going well now,” says Johnny Kongos during an interview from Washington, D.C. “We’re having fun on tour and enjoying our time back on the road.”
Kongos is one of four members of the band, which includes his brothers Jesse, Dylan and Danny.
The quartet grew up in London and Johannesburg until settling in their mother’s hometown of Phoenix. The brothers formed the band in 2003 and have since become a staple in rock music.
Kongos put out their latest album, “1929, Part One,” on Jan. 18.
Johnny Kongos says the project will eventually have three parts to it.
“The next two parts will be out within the next 18 months,” he says. “We had so much material that we knew we could break it up into three different albums. The songs that made the first album are all thematically or sonically connected.”
Kongos recorded the album in a new space and quickly found that sound to be very different from previous albums.
“It’s a real open live sound,” he says. “We stole from vintage synths from our father to record this time around. We had this Roland Jupiter-8 that, once you turned it on, the sounds that came out were intense. It instantly found a place in our music.”
The writing for the album was done over many years.
It wasn’t the only thing to keep the brothers busy.
Kongos have their own podcast, “The Front Lounge,” which is available on iTunes. The band also recorded a docuseries called “Bus Call,” which is on YouTube.
The docuseries is a realistic window into one of the most coveted and often overly romanticized jobs in the world — touring in a rock band. This is travel, culture, humor, relationships, drama, heartbreak, redemption and, most importantly, a family of characters with a common goal.
“The podcast is the easy one. We already talk a lot about music. We turn the microphones on and just record,” he says. “The docuseries was incredibly long and arduous. It’s part of the reason we ended up with so many songs. The entire show, we were discovering songs and their place. It gave us a chance to let our fans into our daily life on the road and the many obstacles.”