ON SALE NOW!
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SONGBYRD PRESENTS
Sunday, June 18, 2017
D: 7:00 // S: 8:00 PM
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Los Colognes dates back some 15 years, to Chicago, where Mortenson, Rutherford, and bassist Gordon Persha began playing both together (and apart) in a series of “church bands, punk bands, high school bands, and any other kind of band,” learning the language of playing music with other people from a young age. Mortenson and Rutherford eventually departed from Chicago to Nashville, in search of an atmosphere that supported spontaneous music creation, where oppressive weather and overpopulation wouldn’t make it difficult to get musicians in the same room on a regular basis.
“Jay and I decided to make the move to Nashville in 2010 in search of like-minded musicians,” Mortenson says. “The fact that we are big JJ Cale fans played into it. We were intrigued by his history here, and Emmylou Harris’, and John Prine’s. We figured there had to be ghosts still floating around here, their stories, and maybe players from those sessions.”
In Nashville, the rest of the band took shape, with keys player Micah Hulscher recruited in a piano boogie bar and Persha moving down from Chicago to join the group. The band’s history of playing in rotating bands proved useful as a number of Nashville singer-songwriters needed temporary backing bands for local gigs and tours, making Los Colognes “working musicians,” having graced the stage with the likes of Caitlin Rose, Nikki Lane, Kevin Gordon, Johnny Fritz and RayLand Baxter. With Rose, the band spent half of 2014 touring with her as both backing band and support, allowing them to showcase their original material to Rose’s dedicated audience.
2013’s debut LP, Working Together, saw success on a measured scale. “It was all this random shit that just kept happening,” Rutherford jokes. “Rob Thomas of Matchbox 20 tweeted out that “Working Together” was his song of the day, which was hilarious, and six of the songs were featured in nationwide Starbucks shops multiple times a day for a year.” The band also played Austin City Limits Music Festival (ACL) and The Hangout Beach, Music and Arts Festival, and garnered radio attention from Whisperin’ Bob Harris at BBC Radio 1 London and Greg Vandy at KEXP Radio Seattle.
