With two songwriters, six albums, and more than a thousand shows under their belt, The Coffis Brothers have earned their reputation as modern-day torchbearers of all-American rock & roll. It's a sound caught halfway between amplified Americana, acoustic folk, roadhouse R&B, and electrifying roots music, crafted by a pair of California-born siblings who've been sharing the stage since childhood, and the five piece band filled out by Kyle Poppen (guitar), Aidan Collins (bass), and Cory Graves (drums).
That sound reaches a new peak with Kaw-fis Bruth-urs. The band's third collaboration with Bay Area legend (and longtime Mother Hips frontman) Tim Bluhm, who serves as the album's producer, Kaw-fis Bruth-urs finds Jamie and Kellen Coffis letting their guard down, enjoying the creative ride as much as the destination itself. For every signature-sounding song like "Cut Right Through" — a heartland rock anthem built for highway drives and long horizons, as sunny as the band's Golden State homeland and as hook-driven as a Tom Petty classic — there's another track that stretches the band's sound into new territory. The result is The Coffis Brothers' widest-ranging album yet, running the gamut from bluesy, blue-eyed soul ("Face the Music") to jangling, harmony-heavy power pop (“Do You Want To").
"This is what we do, and we're giving ourselves license to evolve and get better at it, too" says Jamie, who was raised in the Santa Cruz Mountains of northern California alongside his mother — a children's musician — and his younger brother. Decades after Jamie and Kellen made their stage debut alongside their mom, singing three-part blood harmonies at a young age, their musical bond has only grown stronger, sharpened by hundreds of live shows as much as their shared DNA. "It's the natural evolution of us performing together and spending so much of our lives together," Kellen adds. "We didn't set out to make anything in one particular direction — we just wanted to make a batch of really great songs."
Great songs, indeed. Looking to jumpstart their creative engines, The Coffis Brothers gave themselves a deadline, booking studio time with Bluhm before the album had even been written. "It was a different process for us," Kellen explains. "When we were coming up with new songs, we didn't have the luxury of stepping out of the room and saying, 'We'll finish it next week.' We had to keep working, and we have enough experience to know how to do that now."
"When we got into the studio, the band had never heard the songs before and we'd never played them live," Jamie adds. "It was liberating because it gave us license to do whatever we wanted. For years, we'd grown really attached to the traditional format of a three-minute song. All of a sudden, we were asking ourselves, 'Well, what if we don't do that?' We still love sounding like us, but we can pursue other ideas if that's where the muse takes us."
Another new addition was The Mother Hips' drummer, John Hofer, who joined the band in the recording studio. His loose, limber feel become a big part of the album's DNA, influencing the tempo shifts in songs like "I Ain't Worthy" — whose driving verses give way to cathartic, half-time choruses — and "Face the Music," which comes to a close with an incendiary instrumental outro. Also playing integral roles in Kaw-fis Bruth-urs' creation were members of The Coffis Brothers' touring band, resulting in a mix familiar faces and new blood, of in-the-moment ideas and brotherly instincts, of studio creativity and road-warrior chemistry.
The musicians recorded the bulk of each song in the same room, playing together in real time, reacting to one another's contributions as each take unfolded. "So many of the records we love were made that way," Jamie points out. "We wanted to capture the sound of a band hanging out in the studio, having fun, being in the moment." Being in the moment didn't stop Jamie and Kellen from taking a look backward with songs like "Family" and "Home," both of which find the brothers ruminating on friendship, family, and the long journey that's brought them to the present. Nostalgia isn't something the brothers usually indulge in — they'd rather focus upon the road ahead — but it's refreshing to hear The Coffis Brothers nod to their shared roots. At the same time, Kaw-fis Bruth-urs defiantly moves the group forward, doubling down on The Coffis Brothers' harmony-drenched rock & roll sound while showcasing just how eclectic that music can be.
"We're in a space now where we feel comfortable stretching ourselves, and that's allowed us to make these songs that we just weren't able to do on past albums," Kellen says. "I don't feel like we're repeating ourselves, or doing something we've already done, but it still sounds like us."
As for the album's phonetically spelled title… well, that's another thing that might not have appeared on previous records. "It's a tongue-in-cheek way of saying, 'This is us, and we're coming to a new realization of who we are as musicians,'" Jamie says. "If we'd come up with that idea a few years ago, we might've dismissed it as being too much of a joke. Maybe we took ourselves too seriously at the beginning, but now we're alright with bringing our guard down a little bit. We can laugh at ourselves. We're having fun, even if this is still serious business."
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