Jeff Christensen/Associated Press
Jared Followill of the band Kings of Leon performs at the Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival in Manchester, Tenn. Friday, June 11, 2010.
Jeff Christensen/Associated Press
Jared Followill of the band Kings of Leon performs at the Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival in Manchester, Tenn. Friday, June 11, 2010.
Kings of Leon is still on the road promoting its 2008 CD, “Only by the Night,” which features the Grammy-winning “Use Somebody.” But the band is itching to break out new material.
The Nashville rockers completed a new album in May and are touring while awaiting its release, with a show the band members describe as beautiful, big and bold.
“Hopefully, we can match that with our music,” singer-guitarist Caleb Followill says. “We will play as much as we can. We will play the stuff that just feels best live.”
But Followill says the band has to be careful about playing those new songs for fear of giving them too much exposure.
“You don’t want people to listen to the songs on YouTube for eight months, and when they come out, it loses a lot of the romance of hearing the record for the first time,” he says. “But we get antsy, we get sick of playing the old songs as much as we do, so I’m sure a couple will sneak out.”
His brother, bassist Jared Followill, adds, “We want to enjoy the concert as much as everyone else, and for us to go out there and play ‘Molly’s Chambers’ and ’Sex on Fire’ and stuff we’ve played so many times is not going to get us as excited as seeing their faces when we debut a new song.”
On the coming album, the band got to explore new forms of its music.
“I truly feel like with each album, we’re getting closer to what it is that we want to do in a band,” Caleb Followill says. “On this album, we have fiddle and we have lap steel, trumpet, all kinds of stuff. There are a lot of elements you may have never heard on Kings of Leon.”
What’s not coming anytime soon is the rumored remix album.
“We put the remix album on hold until we feel it’s necessary,” Followill says. “We don’t want to saturate the market too much and have too many things out there to where people are just like, ’To hell with Kings of Leon — they are everywhere.” ’
Kings of Leon, a band that once thrived on its underground following, has a lot going on these days.
“When we first started, none of us really knew how to play,” Jared Followill says. “Those early shows are what taught us how to play our instruments, what taught us how to form songs.”
But now, Kings of Leon are about as mainstream as it gets, with big hits, top record sales and popular music videos.
“We now have a wider audience and a lot more attention,” Caleb Followill says. “I think now the real test is to see if they want to continue on the journey with us and go where we want to go musically.”
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