Kokomo will kick off the Katikati Avocado Food and Wine Festival.
Kokomo will kick off the Katikati Avocado Food and Wine Festival.
The Katikati Advertiser is doing a series of profiles on bands who will play at Katikati Avocado Food and Wine Festival. First up is Tauranga blues band Kokomo. Rebecca Mauger spoke with frontman Derek Jacombs.
Tauranga band Kokomo’s musical roots are firmly in the blues but there’s no set rules for this crew.
The long-standing band are the opening act for Katikati Avocado Food and Wine Festival and they plan on bringing a mix of their old classics and new bangers to wow the crowds.
Frontman Derek Jacombs says they do their own thing with songwriting and style and they don’t stick to one formula.
“I don’t know why our music isn’t like that but we don’t try and imitate any of the blues schools of London or Chicago – we’re just trying to interpret blues through our Kiwi eyes.”
For lack of a better description, Jacombs calls what they do “Kiwiana blues”, as many of their songs mention New Zealand places.
“Everything we do has a foundation in the blues.
“These are probably lofty comparisons, but take The Rolling Stones or Bob Dylan, for example ... they play a lot of blues but they are not blues artists per se, they just use the blues template as a foundation to express the songs.”
Kokomo at one of their many Tauranga Jazz Festival performances.
Each one of Kokomo’s 15 albums has a different flavour.
“We deliberately make it that way as everything is a moment in time,” Jacombs says.
Their latest album Futura, released this month, is an electronica album. It contains “songs” but one is an instrumental and the title track is 12 minutes long. The album is a big shift for any blues band, Jacombs says. It is intended for home use and not the sort of thing they’d play live, he says.
Kokomo members are Jacombs and co-founder Grant Bullot with Nigel Masters, Ian Gilpin and Santiago Rebagliati.
The band have toured extensively throughout New Zealand and performed at dozens of major rock, blues, jazz and folk festivals. They are familiar faces at Tauranga’s National Jazz Festival.
The band were formed in 1991 after a performance at the Tauranga festival – Jacombs was set to play solo blues and invited Grant to join him. The gig was a success so they formed acoustic blues trio Kokomo Blues (with Grant’s brother Roger). The name came from the Kokomo Arnold song Old Original Kokomo Blues.
Years later they dropped the “blues” and became just Kokomo.
Katikati Avocado Food and Wine Festival is a celebration of local cuisine, wine and entertainment. Three acts have been announced — Kokomo, groove/funk band White Chapel Jak and artist/producer Tiki Taane. The lead act is still to be announced.
Kokomo will play songs from a new album they are recording at the moment and the rest will be their most popular, bluesy tunes.
For information about Kokomo, check out kokomo.co.nz
