Brothers Shannon and Spence Koehler grew up in the hinterlands of California.
South of Yosemite, 20 minutes from the nearest gas station, a half mile to mailbox.
Closer to hand were their mother’s Led Zeppelin records.
By the time he was 12 Spence Koehler had heard the call of those
records, as well as a friend’s Grateful Dead and Cream stash, and
started playing guitar.
That left his younger brother at loose ends. “My brother didn’t very
often want to play catch,” Shannon Koehler said in a recent telephone
interview. “So I learned drums to have somebody to hang out with.”
Now as the core of the San Francisco band The Stone Foxes, they’re not just hanging out anymore.
For over three years, The Stone Foxes which also includes bassist Aaron
Mort have been hitting the circuit hard, That includes being the
Saturday night headliner at the Black Swamp Arts Festival. The rock
quartet hits the stage at 9:50 a.m. Sept. 9.
The past year has been especially rocking. The band put out its
sophomore release “Bears & Bulls” a year ago, just missing the
chance to get booked on the festival circuit. They also reworked Slim
Harpo’s “I’m a King Bee” for a Jack Daniels Honey Liquor commercial. Now
they’re making up for lost time.
That included its first swing to the East Coast with gigs in New York City and Boston.
And it’ll bring them to the Main Stage of the Black Swamp Arts Festival.
The band’s current lineup is a switch from the ban that first came to
the fore. Guitarist Avi Vinocur has departed, and in his place the band
has added Elliott Peltzman, who brings organ, electric piano and a depth
of musical knowledge, to the mix.
His addition is evident on the two singles the band released earlier in the summer, “Serious People” and
“Psycho.”
Those, Koehler said, really capture the band’s current sound. “We’re
zeroing in on a good sound,” Koehler said. The band has a reputation for
covering a lot of ground stylistically, he said. And based on the first
and to a lesser extent the second album, that’s deserved, as they
touched on folk and country.
“At our core,” Koehler said, “we’re a hard hitting, gritty blues band…
We like to go between that Americana and heavy blues area. “
That’s a sound that truly comes to life on stage.
“We always play our songs live before we have to record them,” he said.
“It’s the interaction between you and the listeners you don’t get in the
studio.”