They Grow on You

Thankfully, the band leavens its approach with humor and on-stage shtick, which has helped the group gain ground across the South. "We're like a damn comedy routine," Moore says. "We've developed this rapport on stage; we're like Laurel and Hardy between songs. I have so many people ask for bootlegs that say, 'Man, please don't take out the stuff between songs.' It's entertainment, and it goes a long way."

Despite this goofiness, Moore says the band has been lumped into the same camp as bands like critical darlings Wilco and Son Volt. He makes it clear he doesn't think he and his pals belong there.

The Kudzu Kings' humorous blend of humor and high-level playing is slowly taking over the South.

Details

Widespread Panic
with Kudzu Kings
4 p.m. Sunday, June 25
Red Rocks Amphitheatre
$33.25
303-830-8497

Kudzu Kings
with Big Ass Truck and the Get Away People
9 p.m. Thursday, June 22
Fox Theatre
1135 13th Street, Boulder
$12
303-443-3399

Kudzu Kings
with special guests
10 p.m. Friday, June 23, and Saturday, June 24
Gothic Theatre
3263 South Broadway
$6
303-380-2333

Related Content

• How a plan for open space near Stapleton became open season on prairie dogs
  May 9, 2013
• Video: How to understand what prairie dogs are saying -- and if they think you're fat
  May 10, 2013
• Leafing Out
  May 9, 2013
• Save the Earth
  April 18, 2013
• Wolverine, the sequel: Feds propose to bring tough weasel back to Colorado
  May 6, 2013

More About

• Kudzu Kings
• Tate Moore
• Tommy Bryan Ledford
• Plants
• Nature and the Environment

"A lot of those bands take themselves too seriously," he says, "and everything is so depressing."

"We're not terribly serious, that's for sure," Woolworth says. "When you write songs, it's like an approach to life: You take the good with the bad, and hopefully, you can convey it all and still laugh about it in the end. The idea is to loosen it up."

That's something the Kings do nicely, and their sound is a welcome dose of greenery in the sometimes bland, browned-out genres they so adroitly straddle. That the band's catalogue is being welcomed across their homeland is making the group's name that much more appropriate.

"Let me put it to you this way," Woolworth says of his band's kudzu kinship. "If you look at where we started and where we spread to, it's a natural connection. We've been south and east, but not very far north, because it's not a very hospitable climate. But where it's hospitable for kudzu to grow, you can find the Kudzu Kings, too. The only thing unnatural about us," he notes, "is that we've crossed the Mississippi."