Bryan Atchison and Neil Olstad of Koo Koo stopped by The Current’s Morning Show to share more about their upcoming tours, and their brand new (and first) album of covers, Koovers.

Listen to the full interview in the player above, and find a complete transcript below.

Interview Transcript

Jill Riley: You're listening to The Current's Morning Show. All right, it's Thursday. It's October 29. Listen, you're starting your day with your morning soundtrack, and we do hope that the music helps you with your morning routine. If you woke up on the wrong side of the bed, that we are getting you in the right direction. And if none of that is working, I think what's going to work for you is a special appearance and a fun conversation with a couple guys that just love to party, and who doesn't love a party of all ages? You know what? It's so nice to see the both of you, Bryan and Neil of Koo Koo are in the house, and we have a covers album to talk about. Excuse me, not a covers album; it's a Koovers album.

Bryan Atchison: We almost named it something different. Wouldn't that have been atrocious?

Jill Riley: No, I think this is perfect. It is absolutely perfect.

Neil Olstad: Yeah, sometimes you just go with you know the obvious thing. You know, often you'd like to reach for something more than the most obvious idea, but in this situation, you just have to do it. You just have to do Koovers.

Jill Riley: The universe handed you a gift, and you went with it.

Neil Olstad: Yeah, we wear it on our shirts, so we got to do it.

Jill Riley: Well, the Koovers album is your first album of covers, and it is out now.

Neil Olstad: Just goes to show how desperate we are. We're at that stage. We've been a band for 18 years, and now it's time.

Jill Riley: So what made you decide? All right, it's time for us to do a covers "Koovers" album.

Neil Olstad: That's right. It was like we said, been around a long time, and this is something we haven't done before. And yeah, we like to do concept records, and we like to have themes and stuff like that. And so this was one that we hadn't gone for before.

Bryan Atchison: It's been on the list for a while.

Neil Olstad: We have a big list of stuff to do.

Jill Riley: Yeah, well, I imagine that the list of songs to cover would be pretty long because I know. I mean, you are both fans of music. You like to party, so you're fans of music. So how do you select the songs? How do you narrow it down? What was your approach to "What songs are we going to cover in the style of Koo Koo?”

Bryan Atchison: Well, we couldn't pick anything with cussing.

Jill Riley: Okay, true.

Bryan Atchison: And we didn't want to switch any lyrics. We didn't want to Kidz Bop it. So that limits a little bit. Then we wanted it something that would fit with us that would be unique and fun and but didn't have to be upbeat, like we covered a couple ballads and cranked up the tempo a little bit. Neil what else?

Neil Olstad: A wide variety of genres and eras, we didn't want it to all be like "oh songs we grew up with" or just "modern stuff," so we wanted to cover a wide range and but that leads to a big long list so it was kind of hard to narrow them down but it was also really fun, it was just fun to work with our producer Neil Zumwald who's a Minnesota native as well, formerly of Zebra Zebra, around here and he produced a lot of our music. So it was like let's try this and like Brian said he would take you know Journey's "Faithfully" and double time it and make it sound like a chiptune song and stuff like that. So it's just fun to play with all these different genres and put them in the Koo Koo dance party style.

Bryan Atchison: I had wondered what you were gonna do with Journey, and I just saw Journey. I'm like, oh, "Don't Stop Believing," I wonder if that's the pick. And I went "Faithfully," okay. But I love how it sounds like yes, the tempo is way kicked up, but it kind of sounds like a video game.

Neil Olstad: That's right.

Bryan Atchison: Exactly. We didn't do a cover. We didn't do a country cover. We didn't get to that, and our metal cover didn't pass copyright. We had a Disney cover. A couple of them didn't make the list because we couldn't get it. We couldn't push it over the copyright legal.

Bryan Atchison: Yeah.

Neil Olstad: There's a whole different set of hoops you got to jump through when you didn't write the song and you want to put it out. So we learned some behind the scenes things with this release.

Bryan Atchison: We always need more time to do work on that. Yeah.

Jill Riley: Well, you know what? Learning a little something is also a part of partying.

Neil Olstad: Exactly. Exactly. There it is.

Jill Riley: But you talk about a wide range of music. I mean, just spanning back to, quite frankly, maybe the grandparents and the great-grandparents, when it comes to who is going to enjoy this, because I'm like "Yakety-Yak". Yeah. All right.

Neil Olstad: That song's like 60 years old.

Bryan Atchison: We didn't know that song was about cleaning up your room. I just always thought of it as like a fun party song from The Great Outdoors movie.

Neil Olstad: No, but the whole thing is about chores. It's about working at your house to clean up your place.

Bryan Atchison: Yeah, maybe a bummer song for family.

Neil Olstad: Yeah, it's kind of a scolding song of like “you better do this, or else.” But it's fun anyway, and it has fun saxophone in it, and I really like that one.

Jill Riley: As a family, we got to keep the house clean. We got to keep things in order. And you know what? Don't sass me.

Bryan Atchison: No sass.

Neil Olstad: Don't talk back.

Jill Riley: I feel like there's a song on this Koovers album that had the Shrek effect. So "All Star," that seems like a pretty good choice for you guys.

Bryan Atchison: That was pretty right down the middle for us. You know what I mean? That was kind of a no brainer. I had the Smash Mouth CD. I bought it when I was a kid, and I had that, and the Jimmy Eat World Bleed American record, and I listened to that almost all summer.

Jill Riley: That is an era. Bryan and Neil of Koo Koo are here, and we're talking about the new covers album, which is out now, and it's called Koovers. Spanning genres, spanning eras, and all with that special Koo Koo touch to them, that Koo Koo magic. Well, you know, I wish we would have time to break down every single song.

Neil Olstad: Let's break down the list.

Bryan Atchison: Do you have a song we missed? What did we miss, Jill?

Jill Riley: I mean, no. I was like, gosh, I wish they would have covered Celine Dion. You know, I was like so disappointed. And then I read the list again, and I went, wait a minute, it's on there.

Bryan Atchison: When we were thinking, are we gonna do "My Heart Will Go On?" But we went in a different direction. That's another CD I had a lot. I remember watching like a ABC special on Celine Dion. I was like, who is this woman? She speaks to me. That just shows you my theater boy brain.

Jill Riley: No, I love it. Again, we're spanning all over because you know what? When it comes to a party, why have barriers in the way? That's how I feel. So if you want to check out this new covers album, it's called Koovers from Koo Koo. Bryan and Neil at The Current. You know we are going to hear one of the songs coming up. But I'm curious. I saw you guys are headed to Boston next month. What do you guys got planned for the rest of the year?

Neil Olstad: Yeah, we're playing a one-off show over there. Playing some school shows, some private shows. So we were out there. So like, let's also put on a public show. So yeah, we got that's our last public show of the year, I believe. So yeah, lots of school shows right now, private style. And then yeah, next year we're hitting the road hard, playing all over the country, weekends from January to May. Lots of shows coming up.

Bryan Atchison: Playing 28 cities.

Jill Riley: Nice. And you have a music festival in in that.

Bryan Atchison: Oh yeah, we got we get to play Treefort [Festival]. In Boise.

Jill Riley: Yep. All right.

Bryan Atchison: Have you been to that festival?

Jill Riley: No, I've heard of it.

Bryan Atchison: We've tried to get on there for years, and finally they're like, "Okay, let's respond to your email."

Jill Riley: And a response is just the beginning. So Treefort Festival as well. So hey, Neil, you mentioned school shows, can I ask you guys a little bit more about that? Is that something that is new? Have you kind of put out a call like, hey, you know, you want a performance at your school? Like, can people request that from you guys?

Neil Olstad: Yeah, it's harder for us to do that. We need to lstring them together. It's hard for us to do like a one-off school show. So sometimes we used to play school shows a lot more in the past, but now we're like 100 a year. Now we're going back to it like strategically. You know, like if we can come to one area, or mostly just here in the Twin Cities where we're from, where we can do like a whole week and bring the PA and set it up. So it's kind of a weird thing where it's hard to do just one. You know, you need to set it up for a longer period to make it worth it. But yeah, they're fun to do every now and then, but it's not really like sustainable to do it always.

Jill Riley: Understood, understood.

Bryan Atchison: Because you have to bring a PA. Because gym speakers are not dependable.

Jill Riley: No, they're not, and not everyone is ready to sit quietly before the show starts. Because it's going to get wild. It's going to get wild in that gymnasium.

Bryan Atchison: We have songs that request screaming, and they don't contain it to the specific eight bars that we ask for the screen. It just like goes, but just like a kindergartner is like [screams] forever.

Jill Riley: Just get everybody wound up, and then you guys are like, "Well, I suppose we got to get going."

Bryan Atchison: You play 30 minutes; that's all they can hack, and there we go.

Neil Olstad: It works best like at the end of the day, where it's like, "All right, get on the bus now, goodbye." You know. So sometimes we got to play early in the morning. I guess that works too because then they're just set up and ready to go for the whole day.

Bryan Atchison: Yesterday, 6:45 a.m. loaded.

Neil Olstad: We were early yesterday, but we like the end of the day ones because then the kids are just have more energy and like ready to get out of here. You know, ready to do this and leave.

Jill Riley: I love that. My son is in fifth grade now. When he was in pre-K, his pre-K teacher, huge fan of you guys, and I was always a little sheepish about being like, I know them. And I just thought that would have been like quite a flex, you know. If he needed like a little bit of a wing man to put him in good favor with his teacher, but he was doing well.

Bryan Atchison: We would have given the call. We would have sent some T-shirts.

Jill Riley: Oh yeah, we spend a lot of time singing Pop See Koo.

Bryan Atchison: You got it.

Jill Riley: During that COVID iPad learning.

Bryan Atchison: That's the jam.

Jill Riley: Yeah. All right. Well, Koo Koo, Bryan, and Neil. The new covers album is called Koovers. It is out. Good luck with the rest of the year. Have a fun Halloween.

Neil Olstad: Thanks. We will.

Bryan Atchison: Thank you for having us, Jill and Nil. You two are so lovely.

Credits

Guests – Bran Atchison, Neil Olstad
Host – Jill Riley
Producer – Nilufer Arsala
Digital Producer - Natalia Toledo

External Link

Koo Koo – Official Website