Funk band Cool Cool Cool makes Roaring Fork Valley debut on Friday

Sometimes the very thing you intend not to do is what you end up doing — something the members of the funk band Cool Cool Cool, who are playing The Arts Campus at Willits (TACAW) on Friday night, know something about.

“All the members of this group started in a band called Turkuaz, and we toured for many years, but that ended shortly after the pandemic,” said Chris Brouwers, who plays trumpet, keyboard, and synthesizer. “We left that group and fully intended on not starting a new band together. We said, ‘We’ve done that. We enjoyed it,’ but we’re gonna go on and do other things.”

But that stance was short-lived. Brouwers explained that while the band members were separated, they continued to get requests from friends and fans to play shows. After playing a few successful “random” shows where they were mostly covering other musicians because they hadn’t written any original songs yet, the group decided to form a new band and offhandedly named it Cool Cool Cool.

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And while it’s tempting to think that the band’s name is a nod to a specific pop culture reference, the truth is that it is more about their general attitude toward touring and performing.

“When you’re on the road and you’re touring, sometimes times are tough. You show up to a venue, and the sound engineer is an hour late, and they don’t have any hospitality for you, or they double booked a show with another band, and you have to fit all your equipment on the floor in front of the stage. And it’s like, ‘OK, this is what we’re dealing with tonight, guys.’ And the response would be, ‘cool, cool, cool.’ The show must go on, and that’s kind of been our motto is: don’t let other people get you down,” Brouwers explained.

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That laid-back, having-a-good-time vibe is an integral part of their sound. It’s difficult to fit a modern band into a single genre these days, especially a band like Cool Cool Cool who are fronted by two female vocalists and incorporates elements of funk, house, disco, rock and roll, jazz, and R&B into their shows. In the end, the main goal is to make the audience move.

“We really try to be a dance band. Everything, we do, as a group is so that people can dance along and have a good time, he said.

The band has spent a lot of time on the road together and even though they are now scattered across the country in different cities and states, their long collaboration and relationship make it easier to come together and perform.

Brouwers said he is excited to be back in Colorado this week but especially looking forward to playing in the Roaring Fork Valley at TACAW for the first time.

“We’ve always had great experiences all throughout Colorado,” he said. “I hope everyone that comes out and sees the show says, ‘Wow, I didn’t know that I was gonna see that kind of show at this place. When I came here for this night, I thought it’d be fun, but I didn’t realize it would be like that.”

Sarah Girgis is the Arts and Entertainment Editor for The Aspen Times. She can be reached at 970-429-9151 or sgirgis@aspentimes.com.