KONGOS share their story in new documentary series, 'Bus Call,' mixing heartbreak and hilarity

The thing about bringing a camera crew along to document your every waking hour on the road, says Jesse Kongos, is “you literally can’t predict what’s gonna happen on any given day. You just hope that the camera catches it.”

One thing the camera does catch in the 10-part documentary series following KONGOS as they tour the world in support of “Egomaniac” is their reaction to Epic Records withdrawing support from the song that was supposed to be that album’s second single.

Epic Records deals a deathly blow

"We’re at a label that deals in pop and hip-hop," Jesse says. "And the attention span that’s required to let a rock band grow is hard to come by in this industry. It’s very snap, snap, snap – 'What’s next?' A rock band needs a more sustained campaign."

The decision to bury the single is a crushing blow that effectively means their first album since signing to Epic, the label that gave you Michael Jackson's "Thriller" and Mariah Carey, is dead in the water.

And that was some difficult footage to sit through the first time he saw it, says Jesse, who sings and drums for KONGOS.

“It was annoying, depressing, frustrating, quite a negative feeling watching yourself be upset about this stuff that’s happening to you,” he says.

“Bus Call – Life On Tour”

Because the brothers had hundreds of hours of footage to edit down into the version of their story that the audience will see in “Bus Call – Life On Tour,” he couldn’t just watch it once.

“You watch it two times, three times,” Jesse says. “Then you cut it, move phrases around. And all of the sudden, you stop looking at yourself and you look at this character you’re editing. There’s a complete disconnect.”

It’s pointed out that it would be OK if he did view the label’s decision as tragic.

Is it truly tragic? It's just the music business

“He’s just saying in the context of real tragedy, you know, it’s music,” says Johnny, his brother, who plays accordion and keyboards.

“But yeah, we have put our entire lives into this band. When we believe in something and it’s kind of on a whim that a decision is made and all of the sudden our entire album gets tossed aside, we’re definitely very upset about it.”

On the other hand, he says, “It’s also kind of a very common story. You know, we’re not the only band that this has happened to.”

'Come With Me Now'

KONGOS signed to Epic Records in 2014 on the strength of a breakthrough single that remains their biggest hit, "Come with Me Now."

The double-platinum triumph spent five weeks at No. 1 at alternative radio after achieving the quickest ascent to the top of that chart by any band in history.

Epic’s first move was to re-release the single and its parent album, “Lunatic,” which the brothers, who spent their early years in London and South Africa before moving to Paradise Valley, had recorded in the family basement on their father’s gear.

They're a family band

The four members of KONGOS – Johnny, Jesse, Danny and Dylan – are the sons of British singer-songwriter John Kongos (best known for "He's Gonna Step on You Again," a 1971 hit Happy Mondays covered in the '90s).

There are some great scenes in “Bus Call” of John Kongos teaching the boys at a very early age to play and sing.

After signing to Epic, it seemed like all those years of working on the skills their father handed down were paying off at last.

And that feeling got stronger when “Take It From Me,” the lead single from their first release since signing to the label, “Egomaniac,” became their second Top 10 entry on Billboard’s alternative songs chart.

'Egomaniac'

Then they headed out on tour to do their part in the promotion of the album while capturing footage for their documentary.

The rest was up to Epic.

And as Jesse replies with a laugh when asked how he felt things had gone with “Egomaniac,” “I think they went just bad enough that it gave us an interesting show.”

It also provided what Jesse calls “a bit of a reality check.”

“Come With Me Now” was such a massive hit, he says, that there was “a lot of peripheral success surrounding it that we learned doesn’t always translate to a hardcore fan base. There’s a lot of people who come out to hear the one song and won’t come again.”

It helped them hone in, Jesse says, on “the sustained push that is needed to take a career from a song to a lifetime touring act.”

How do you grow an audience?

“Bus Call” is part of that push.

As Jesse says, “We definitely want the audience to be a TV-watching audience. I mean, we want our fans to watch it but we can’t preach to the choir. That’s how our career will flatline. So we’re trying to reach other people.”

That’s why the docuseries tends to focus on the human elements behind the music, from the drama of the disappointments to the shared camaraderie between the brothers and their crew to what it feels like to be on the road with a mid-level rock band.

And for all the pathos of the more dramatic moments, there’s a lot of humor in the mix.

They didn’t use their band name in the title of the series. It’s just “Bus Call.”

“I don’t think our name carries enough weight to really be the drawing factor,” Jesse says. “There’s not enough people aware of us to go, ‘Oh, I’m going to watch the KONGOS documentary.’ But I would watch a documentary about someone I don’t know because the content is engaging.”

"A handful of truths left behind"

It’s a proper documentary, not a scripted reality show, although as Jesse says, there may be a handful of truths left behind on the cutting room floor.

“The truth is an interesting concept in this world, because nothing we’ve shown didn’t happen," Jesse says.

"It's what you leave out that determines context. In any documentary, somebody chose what to show and how to show it. And I feel like we’ve done a pretty good job of marrying the actual truth with the truth that we wanted to show."

And that truth, he says, revolves around the strength of brotherhood and family.

"We feel there's a story to tell," Johnny says, "about family, about the history with our dad. It’s a difficult story for people to tell, because it is a longer story. You can’t fit in a soundbite. So we figured let’s try to tell it ourselves. Because we know the story."

Hundreds of hours of footage

It was interesting watching their story unfold in the hundreds of hours of footage as they pieced it all together.

"You realize that everything is, in a sense, is a bit of an act," Johnny says. "I mean, obviously Shakespeare said that. That’s a well-known philosophical concept. But you start becoming a lot more aware of that when you start seeing yourself on camera."

KONGOS started to bring cameras on the road in 2014, but the bulk of the footage in "Bus Call" begins in 2016.

"So there’s two years of footage where I feel like we were getting used to the camera," Jesse says, "where everyone was playing to the camera, very aware of the camera and we only wanted to capture the celebrating and the big crowds."

And then, in reviewing that footage, Jesse says, they realized it was really boring.

'Let it be'

"That’s when we decided 'Let’s get into it like the camera’s not there.' Let the camera record everything. We know that we control the footage so if something happens that we don’t like, we can keep it and not put it out. That gave us the confidence to just let it be."

A Netflix documentary series?

The ultimate end game, Johnny says, would be to see the series featured on Netflix where people could stumble across it and give it a chance, discovering KONGOS and their music in the process.

“If we were to put this out ourselves on YouTube, we are gonna end up ultimately preaching to the choir,” Johnny says, “whereas if you could get it on a streaming service where people might see a description that says follows A BAND, not necessarily a band they’ve heard of, you might get an entirely different viewing audience. That’s really what we’re aiming for, a TV viewer that’s going to discover us through this.”

Jesse adds, “We’re confident that we can get the show onto Netflix or Amazon Prime. The question is, ‘Will they be interested enough to feature it and actually get some eyeballs on it?’ We can drive traffic to one of those sites, but ideally what we would like is for someone to jump on board and say ‘Hey, you should watch this.’”

Those who do tune in will also hear new KONGOS music, some of which is set to be included on their followup to “Egomaniac.”

An early taste of '1929'

As Jesse reports, “We announced a new album called ‘1929’ that’s coming out later this year. And we’re working right now on the details of how to roll it out, but ‘Bus Call’ and the new album will be linked. Some of the songs will be in the show in snippets. And the concept of the album is kind of connected to ‘Bus Call,’ but it’s its own thing.”

Part of the thinking behind this whole endeavor, Johnny says, is how not to do what didn’t work with “Egomaniac” again, where a rock band releases a traditional album supported by radio singles.

“That feels a little outdated perhaps,” he says, “or not sustainable enough for what we’re trying to accomplish. It’s one thing when Beyonce puts an album out. Obviously, everybody’s eyeballs are on it. But another rock band putting out another album is going to get a very thin sliver of attention. So we want to have as many avenues as possible for people to digest our content.”

Learning from past mistakes

In the meantime, they've been working hard on putting what they learned from the mistakes they may have made of "Egomaniac" into the making of this next release.

"I’m proud of all the music we’ve made," Jesse says. "At the same time, I can see the influence the runaway success of 'Lunatic' had on 'Egomaniac.' We were in our head. There were a lot of people in our heads."

They came to realize, Jesse says, that when they made the songs that made them famous, "no one in the world knew us, we had zero going on."

They were just four brothers working on their music in their bedrooms.

"And that led to what that album was," Jesse says. "You’re in a different mindset when people are expecting something. So we tried to get back to shutting the world out and just going into our studio or our bedroom and writing again."

Reach the reporter at ed.masley@arizonarepublic.com or 602-444-4495. Twitter.com/EdMasley.

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