Trio Koko

Roots ‘n bluesy surfy space stuff on bass, drums and a guitar 🌊 🚀 🌴 🎸 That, in a nutshell, is what Dutch band Trio Koko is about. The members of the band -Ton van der Kolk, Timothy van der Holst and Ron Smith - are smokin’ – white hot – tuned into the same primal source … the blues.

But the blues - result of an intermingling of work songs, field hollers, European ballads and popular songs of the day - the blues, mother of all 20th century rock & roll music, is more than ‘just the blues’, at least according to Koko. The musical spectrum they're covering is wider. Their idea of blues is inspired by the richness of other roots music like rhythm and blues, rockabilly, surf, and country & western. Notice the way Koko likes to juice these styles with a party sensibility by using latin-oriented rhythms like mambo.

Most of the Koko songs and tunes are self written. But since they are written within that certain idiom of roots music, they’re full of striking style quotes. So sometimes the unwary listener doesn’t know if he or she is dealing with an unmitigated classic or with a brand new home-cooked Koko tune. Koko has made a true art of writing – what they call – “pastichio’s”.

Many of their tunes are made for some top-down cruisin’ or butt-struttin’ funky chicken dance action that’s spearheaded by Smith’s motoring guitar leads, van der Kolk’s groovy basslines and van der Holst’s shuffling drumrolls. They boogie, they rock, they shuffle and surf shit down to it’s core.