Chris Daniels and the Kings are Making a Scene

September 28, 2024

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Making a Scene Presents an Interview with Chris Daniels and the Kings with Freddi Gowdy

Chris Daniels & The Kings with Freddi Gowdy are celebrating their 40th year with live performances over the summer, playing songs from their brand new album ‘40: Blues with Horns Volume II, and BLUES WITH HORNS Volume I – their 19th and 20th Kings albums plus their fourth with Freddi Gowdy of the Freddi Henchi Band. who joined in December 2010. Freddi joined Chris as an inductee into the Colorado Music Hall of Fame in 2019!!

Doing more than 70 dates per year touring over two continents, Daniels and his band have been invited to appear in such diverse places as The Down Home Blues Festival in South Carolina, The Bob Hope Chrysler Desert Classic, The Curacao Swing Festival (South America), and all over Europe. Chris was inducted into the Colorado Music Hall Of Fame in 2013 with Judy Collins and the KINGS have been the backup band for Garth Brooks, Vince Gill, Amy Grant, The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, John Oates, Bonnie Raitt, The Coasters, The Drifters, Sonny Landreth, Al Kooper, David Bromberg, Sam Bush, John Cowan and Bo Diddly, and also appeared with The Lumineers, Uncle Kracker, Blues Traveler, The Neville Brothers, The Doobie Brothers, Little Feat, The Pretenders and Toto,…. and the list goes on.

The band has also headlined some major international festivals, including ParPop and Ribs & Blues Festival in The Netherlands, Marktrock, Berchem Blues, and the Lokeren Festival in Belgium and they’ve played venues from The Roxy in LA to The Bottom Line in New York, the Mission Ballroom in Denver to Paradiso in Amsterdam.

Die-hard fans from Italy to Holland rocked with this remarkable band including appearances on major TV shows and channels across the world, including HDnet all High-definition TV, VH-1, TNN, Much Music/Canada, Nippon TV/Japan, Crooked River Grove in Cleveland, KUSA in Denver, and on Onhe Filter, AVRO, KAVRO, Paris MTV, and Brussels 1 in Europe, and on Swing TV in Buenos Ares, Argentina.

Chris Daniels & The Kings w Freddi Gowdy

40: Blues With Horns

In the liner notes of their effervescent new album, 40 – Blues With Horns Volume II, by Chris Daniels and the Kings, Daniels describes Louis Armstrong’s brilliant 1928 recording of “West End Blues” as the beginning of an era of “horn-band sound.” The King’s 20th album on their 40th anniversary proves that their magnificent big-band sound is still keeping that era alive.

The Colorado-based Kings have been pumping out music since their 1984 founding by Daniels, with the band membership shape-shifting along the way. The Kings of this album are: Chris Daniels, vocals, electric, acoustic, slide and synth guitars; Freddi Gowdy, vocals; Steve Ivey, drums; John Thornburg, bass and vocals; Colin “Bones” Jones, guitars; Bob Rebholz, alto sax and flute; Darryl “Doody“ Abrahamson, trumpet and vocals; Darren Kramer, trombone. Daniels and Gowdy share the vocals all through the tracks.

Guests adding their talents throughout include Christian Teele, percussion; Mark Oblinger and Linda Lawson, vocals with Robert Johnson and Kenny Andrus; Sam Bush, mandolin and fiddle; Hazel Miller, vocals; Tom Capek, B3 and keyboards; Steve Conn, accordion, B3; and Sonny Landreth, slide guitar.

The multi-award-winning Kings have toured with Albert King, James Taylor, Tom Jones, Al Kooper, David Bromberg and many more, and backed everybody from bluesy Bonnie Raitt to rocking Bo Diddly and country superstar Garth Brooks. The band plays good old-fashioned jump blues and their distinctive mountain-funk with joyous emotion, horns that blaze through ten tracks on this musical romp, and Daniels and Gowdy sharing vocal duties on each one.

It’s fitting, then, that this exuberant session opens with horns blasting into the lively “Jump,” with Daniels and Gowdy on vocals – “Now my baby says jump, jump, jump / And I’ll say how high, high, high you want me to / Jump, jump, jump,” with a swinging Sam Bush fiddle. Background vocals from Miller, Oblinger, Lawson, Johnson and Andrus behind Daniels and Gowdy help put the funk in the highly danceable Gowdy original, “I Like Funky Music” – “I like funky music / Something about the beat / Come on grab your partner now / This music will move your feet.”

The Daniels original “Everybody’s a Millionaire” snaps to life behind lively percussion and sharp horns with its message: “Everybody’s a millionaire / It’s what’s inside, what you can share.” Pulsing rhythms highlight an urgent bid for better times in “I Need Some Good Luck Bad” with the plea: “Sister fortune won’t you smile on me / I’m as ready as a man can be.”

As if you need to be reminded of the album’s purpose, Gowdy’s “Dance, Dance, Dance” steps out: “When I hear that rock and soul music / I want to dance, dance, dance, dance.” Sonny Landreth adds fierce slide guitar to a song he co-wrote, “Congo Square,” where “It might be superstition, but some kind of somethin’ / Goin’ on down there / It’s an old time tradition when they play their drums at night / In Congo Square.”

The gently swinging “Stealin’ Candy” slows the pace with a lilting guitar intro followed by the sweet lyrical vibe of “Stealin’ candy / From my baby / You know it’s easy as can be / And it’s always so delicious / The way she steals it back from me.” Landreth takes another turn in the whimsical “I Like Your Shoes,” co-written by Gowdy – “Now there is no need to go out and plead in the parking lot /No 2 a.m. last ditch routines / You just compliment your partner on those fine-looking shoes.”

“Under Pressure,” also co-written by Gowdy, adds some social commentary to a throbbing beat: “Tryin’ to be the man you are / You know that just can’t be / Systems got you all tied down / Why can’t they let us be free.” The joyous, foot-tapping shuffle “When You’re Cool (The Sun Shines All the Time),” wraps everything up in a blanket of sassy horns and smart lyrics: “You can shuffle right through that rainstorm / Don’t you pay it no never mind / It’s got a lot to do with the attitude / Of leaving your blues behind / When you’re cool, boy, the sun shines all the time.”

Chris Daniels says of his music: “Our goal from the start was to bring the incredible energy of ‘call-and-response’ between a singer and the horn section to a new audience….” And forty years later, the Kings are still bringing that incredible energy!

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