Lead guitarist Jonnie Russell is tired. I can hear it in his voice. He’s been busy you see, riding the wave of success currently rolling him and his band mates around the country on a tour they were only meant to open, not headline. They find themselves smack in the center of attention, but somehow manage (as Jonnie represents) to be both very professional and quite laid back about it.

They’d just released their debut LP Robbers & Cowards with songs from their other two previously released EPs along with two new tracks. The album, much like their live act, is getting good reviews, despite the fact that it mainly only revisits the Kid’s journey to the top. It gives people who might have passed the hat the first time around the opportunity to re-discover the seemingly effortless talent the band displays with their song writing skills.

I asked Russell how they decided which songs they wanted to include on Robbers & Cowards and if the choice was difficult at all for them. “It was a relatively simple process. Personal favorites and kind of…what seemed to fit together the best I guess.”

This was probably a good thing and one of the reasons why Russell views the situation as having been no sweat. The sound they produce is electrifying and fresh. Each cut mixes so well with the two new tracks included on Cowards, you’d swear they’d been there from the beginning. Russell and his mates managed to make it all sound not only like parts to a whole, but chapters to a story.

Take “Passing the Hat” for example, my favorite one of the new tracks on Cowards. I asked Russell specifically about the process of putting this song together; fascinated by lyrics telling the story of a man so desperate for change he steals it, literally, out of a hat.  “That song is specifically a story about an activist just trying to get away from where he is to a foreign land and goes about it by stealing money from an offbeat place…a church. So it’s in essence about his struggle with doing that and justifying it to himself.”

The song, one of the best on the album, was written the way they usually do it. That kind of laid back jammer's version of a writing session where everybody gets together and just hashes it out old-school style: music first then the story. “Usually all our songs we start with the music. The rhythms and stuff before the lyrics. Most of the time we get together with a bunch of musicians with our instruments…kind of just jamming. We write as a group. It’s a matter of feeling out what the song is—what kind of emotions it evokes.”

Evoking emotions is what Cold War Kids is very good at. With each one of the stories they tell, the common thread is the connection with every day people and the highs and lows of life. Love. Loss. Struggle. Disappointment. Happiness. As lame as it sounds, they write poetry. Not the kind you roll your eyes at, but the kind you nod your head to.

In critiques of the bands style, their sound has been described as being ‘unique’. Does the word ‘unique’ even mean anything in today’s world of muddled music genres and watered down versions of rock, alternative, and punk? All bands take something from influence and admiration of their predecessors. That’s generally how it works in the natural evolution of things. It’s safe to say though, that for most up and comers, claiming to bring something original into the mix is usually the goal. But how about what the Kid’s think? Does Russell consider his band’s style original? And is that the intentional goal? “For us it’s not really a matter of intending to be unique for unique’s sake. All of us just kind of have a variety of quirky interests, you know? Different types of music and styles...I think it’s just all those things thrown in a hat.” That hat again. This time being filled with something that does make for one of the most interesting sounds you can find today.

Not only is their sound enthralling on the album, but they manage to enhance it tenfold while on stage. Live performance is essentially what this band is known for. It’s also what they live for. “Music and art is about connecting with people.” Russell goes on to explain that connecting with the audience is basically what the band (most bands in fact) lives for. This is why they’re so good at it. Not to say that being in the studio has no allure for them.

Creating music for the people they wish to connect to is where it all begins. “For myself at least, from the beginning as far as how we play when we write together and record in a room, I think it naturally feels very live in that sense. It’s the driving energy and excitement of it.” The stage is where that energy and excitement fully plays out and culminates with an explosion of damned good music coupled with CWK’s much talked about antics.

How do these antics serve them when they find themselves headlining a tour after the alternative indie band The Futureheads left them holding the bag? “We decided to make the best of the situation.” Drummer Dave Hide of The Futureheads got a wrist energy, forcing the band to pull out last-minute on the North American tour they were scheduled to play together. Were the Kids apprehensive about stepping up to the plate and handling business for the legions of disappointed fans out there who might have felt cheated by Hide’s blasted Tendonitis? “We weren’t nervous about it. There was a fair amount of confusion, but it’s been going well for us.”

Well indeed. The tour promoters responded to the bands ‘no exceptions attitude’ about leaving fans hanging out to dry (though health is always first, and a considerably understandable argument for canceling a tour) and allowed them to headline the tour with some fellow bands they’d invited along to play some dates with them.

So what sums up the Kids? They are music and art, integrity and passion. What they put into making an album and showcasing it to their fans is what they get back with every step they climb to the top. They are not so much un-bothered by their success, as humbled by it. Catch them in all their humble glory on stage somewhere near you very soon.

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3.25 Copyright (C) 2007 Alain Georgette / Copyright (C) 2006 Frantisek Hliva. All rights reserved."