Reviews and Articles

“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

Judging by their name, the Kings County Queens sound like they take a tongue-in-creek approach to country music. But listening to the music, you discover that KCQ aren't a joke band. While there is humor in their songs, they definitely hold an overriding reverence for country music. Their tunes, like "14 Ton Crush", have a charming home-spun quality to them, while they handle such covers as Moe Bandy's "Honky Tonk Merry Go Round" and the standard "Walking My Baby Back Home" with aplomb. The band also benefits from having two lead singers with Daria Klotz and Chris Bowers making an easy-going but engaging female/male vocal twosome.

Click on the link: Straight outta Brooklyn comes... a down-home country band? - By Mark Wedel

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.

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.