Knox Hamilton to 'Work It Out' in LR

Central Arkansas trio Knox Hamilton's new album, The Heights, is an infectious blend of epic, indie pop-rock, and the band is celebrating its release with a Saturday show at the Rev Room.

"It's so exciting to be playing back at home," says drummer Cobo Copeland, who is joined by his singer-bassist brother, Boots, and guitarist Drew Buffington in the group, which started in earnest about five years ago.

"We just played Vino's every once in a while," he says of Knox Hamilton's early days. "But we never were an actual band."

There were a few digital-only EPs, but Copeland, 29, says none of the members thought there was much of a future for the outfit.

"Work It Out" changed all of that, though. The song, which is the sixth track on The Heights, is a soaring, ambitious anthem that showed the band had a genuine knack for catchy popcraft.

"The first time we heard it we said, 'This sounds more like a song than anything else we've ever done,'" Copeland says from his North Little Rock home. "We knew that was a little different."

Hollywood-based label Prospect Park eventually heard the group and is releasing The Heights which, yes, was named for the Little Rock neighborhood, and was recorded in Arkansas at Blue Chair Studios, El Paso, Texas, and Los Angeles.

Along with "Work It Out," the band shines on the dancy "Set It on Fire," the driving opening track "We Get Back" and a pumped-up take on "Never My Love," the 1967 hit by The Association.

"Washed up Together," the album's second song, gained a bit of notoriety last year after Katy Perry tweeted about her admiration of the track's video, which showed band members and others in a large plastic bag with the air vacuumed out of it, creating a comic and slightly creepy smushed-up effect on their faces. It has been seen more than 1,000,000 times on You Tube.

The group hopes to make more videos, Copeland says, perhaps with local connections: "We want to use people from around here to showcase Little Rock. We may try to do some stuff on our own and I'm sure the label has some stuff planed."

The Copeland brothers, sons of a minister, moved to North Little Rock with their family when Cobo was 14 and Boots was 15. They started playing music at their father's church in Sherman, Texas.

"We had, like, 20 people [in the church] and the only music we had was from my mom," Copeland says. "She has a spectacular voice. Boots was on the drums, but when I got old enough, he moved to the bass and I played drums. We were, maybe, 8 and 9."

This spring the group hits the road to support The Heights. From Little Rock, they will make the rounds at South by Southwest in Austin, Texas, and continue west.

"We'll do over a month of touring and then we're working on a headlining or co-headlining tour after that," Copeland says. "There are a lot of dates to be played after the album comes out and we're gonna be pushing it as hard as we can."

Weekend on 03/09/2017