About

Tapping the deepest roots of rock n roll, Primal Kings take your favorite audio dishes and deconstruct them, using the tastiest ingredients to create a flavor that is brand new and yet somehow familiar. Their debut, eponymous, record comes to the table awash in aromas of primitive grooves grown in dark, fertile tonal dirt, and gives us a generous helping of heartfelt reflections of lives well lived … warts and all. It excites the pallet while it satisfies like our most beloved comfort food.

Primal Kings was forged in the fires of a 5 year quest to create a full length, fully analog, LP. The journey began when indie, blues/roots/rock singer songwriter, Chris Wilson enlisted the help of veteran engineer/producer, Lenise Bent (Aja, Breakfast in America, Tusk, Autoamerican) to help him capture the raw energy of the band, then known as the Barrelhouse Kings, that had been wowing audiences in LA clubs. The lineup then included incendiary guitarist Jed Ojeda, thunderous drummer Paul Cassarino, and infinitely inventive bassist, Roger Upchurch, and it was this 4 piece unit that walked into Entourage Studios for a 2 and half day marathon session that yielded the primary tracks for the album.

What followed was the long journey toward completion of a fully realized record. Along the way, Wilson recruited his long time writing and performing partner, Scott Pontius, a strong analog engineer in his own right, to lend his musical, vocal, and technical talents to the cause. The journey was long and arduous, and some were lost along the way. Cutting tracks by hook or by crook, cobbling together gear, and even going so far as to weld together DIY plate reverb units, is not for the feint of heart; and in the end only Wilson, Bent, Upchurch, and Pontius remained. The result was the creation of Elsewhere Studios, and the birth of Primal Kings.

Now, armed with digital masters honed by Warren Sokol at Universal Mastering, Wilson, Upchurch and Pontius set out to retake the stage, as Primal Kings, in support of the album they have so lovingly fostered, and to raise the funds to complete their dream of pressing vinyl and releasing a truly analog LP. With a live show that channels the raw energy that sparked it all, while faithfully representing their carefully crafted debut album, Primal Kings shows will leave you simultaneously satisfied, and craving more.