'Rock and Roll Has Always Been a Language to Me' — Kid Congo Interview

On Tuesday (Feb. 24), punk and rock icon Kid Congo joined Loudwire Nights to dive into his latest projects and what's on the horizon. Listen to the full conversation in the player near the end of this article.

"I think playing music is kind of a religion to me in a way," Powers shared with Loudwire Nights host Chuck Armstrong.

"It's a meditation for me. It brings me happiness. It's a great job — it brings other people happiness. Maybe it brings some earaches to some people, but people by and large are happy about it. And rock and roll has always been a language to me."

Powers most recently expressed that love of rock with his relatively unexpected collaboration with French musician Naim Amor. The pair met in Tucson, Ariz., and during the pandemic, decided to work together on what would eventually become their album, Tucson Safari.

"We have a very similar aesthetic and we have similar ideas about what we like and how we approach what we do," Powers explained.

"When Naim approached me, he was saying that he was thinking of those first solo Alan Vega records, kind of rockabilly with drum machines and synthesizers — just very stark sounding. And that spoke to me immediately."

Powers, who is most well-known for his work with the Gun Club, the Cramps and Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, is no stranger to working with other artists and musicians. In fact, that desire to create something with others continues to drive him to this day, whether it's Tucson Safari or Jungle Cruise, an album by Juanita & Juan, a partnership with fellow punk rocker Alice Bag.

"I saw the Bags in the earliest of days," he said about Alice Bag's band that was part of the first generation of punk rock in Los Angeles.

"[They were] always incredible and otherworldly and dangerous and funny and all the great things. All of those people were such characters. Alice especially is frightening, to be honest. People are always like, 'Oh, she's so intense,' when they see her now. I'm like, 'You should have seen her when she was 17.' That was like you run for your life."

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As far as what's next for Powers, he seems to have little interest in dwelling on the past and continues to push forward with new music — including getting ready to work on a new record with his band, Kid Congo and the Pink Monkey Birds.

"We're going to make an album in April, May, and we're going to Alabama to the historic Muscle Shoals to record," Powers said.

"When they came up with that idea, I was just immediately like, yes, of course. We're all about vibe and I love the history and I love, to me, it's going into the unknown."

What Else Did Kid Congo Powers Discuss on Loudwire Nights?

• Why he still enjoys discovering new music: "It doesn't really need to be one particular genre...when hip-hop started, I was all over that because it was new. There wasn't anything like it. That's the thing, when I see something like that — there's nothing like this."
• New music that he's excited about: "I recently fell in love with the group, they've been going for a long time, from Mexico City called Sonido Gallo Negro. They're like a psychedelic cumbia band but really inventive and really great. They're just absolutely wonderful and have amazing artwork and they have a whole vibe. I like things that create a whole world. When a band creates a whole world, someone like Devo or the Cramps or Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, these are people who create a whole world and it's visual, it's audio ... Sonido Gallo Negro are really that for me."
• Whether or not he'll work on a second book following his autobiography, Some New Kind of Kick: A Memoir: "At first, I was like, what am I going to say? Everything's great. I got clean, I've been doing what I want to do. Where's the drama in that? But maybe that is a great thing ... One of the things that I was a little sad about [with my first book] was that I had to really cut short the chapters about the AIDS crisis and the people...there are so many rock people and music people and artists and people I knew who died of AIDS [so] I thought, well, maybe that's a springboard for something new."

Listen to the Full Interview in the Podcast Player Below

Kid Congo Powers joined Loudwire Nights on Tuesday, Feb. 24; the show replays online here, and you can tune in live every weeknight at 7PM ET or on the Loudwire app; you can also see if the show is available on your local radio station and listen to interviews on-demand.