Titus writes:
Surprisingly enough, the Detroit Cobras are from Detroit, Michigan, and were formed in 1994. They are a garage band, whose original line up was Steve Shaw on guitar, Mary Ramirez on guitar, Jeff Meier on bass, Vic Hill on drums and the late Rachel Nagy on vocals, and this band signed up to Sympathy for the Record Industry Records, releasing their first album ‘Mink, Rat or Rabbit’ in 1998. After what seemed one hell of a gap, three years later they released their second LP ‘ Life, Love and Leaving’ . Unlike most of the bands I have featured in this blog, the band mainly chose to do cover versions of records from the 1950’s & 1960’s, and you may remember that when Jack White collaborated with thirteen Michigan-based bands to form his ‘Jack White’s Sympathetic Sounds of Detroit’ compilation album, the Cobras contribution was a cover of Otis Redding’s ‘Shout Bamalama’. Needless to say, Peely championed them.
The iconic London-based Rough Trade Records signed the band, ever mindful that their retro-garage rock sound was very popular in the United Kingdom. An E.P. ‘Seven Easy Pieces’ was released in 2003 and a year later came their third LP ‘Baby’ – this album went against usual Cobras’ protocol, in that it included one original song, ‘Hot Dog (Watch me eat)’. This album became unusual in that the U.S Record Label Bloodshot tagged the tunes on ‘Seven Easy Pieces’ onto ‘Baby’. The same Record Company released the band’s fourth album ‘Tied & True’ in 2007 – for all of you F1 fans, this was the year that the great and the humorous Kimi Raikonnen won his sole drivers’ World Championship.
The band became infamous for constantly changing their line-up, although their classic rock guitar sound always featured Ramirez. The Detroit Cobras spent much of 2008 touring, and in 2009 headlined a tour with the Dex Romweber Duo supporting them. I lost track of them in the immediately succeeding years, although I gather that they still played gigs, usually in their home territory of Detroit. In 2014 they toured the Midwest and then the West Coast of the U.S. In 2018 they broke with tradition, playing a couple of festivals in Germany and Spain, and the following year did an extended European Tour. You won’t be at all surprised to learn that a 2020 tour was cancelled because of the Covid 19 Pandemic. A 2022 tour was also cancelled in January due to the sudden death in New Orleans of co-founder member Rachel Nagy, who was just 48 years old. It was such a sad loss, as Nagy was a captivating performer known for her magnetic voice and unbelievably strong personality. The band put on a Rachel Nagy celebration show in August 2022, which was held in Detroit and the format of this show was so successful that the band reunited to repeat it at many West Coast venues.
The current line-up of the Detroit Cobras is Marcus Durant on lead vocals, Steve Nawara on guitar, Dale Wilson on bass, Kenny Tudrick on drums, and as they say “last, but by no means least” original co-founder Mary Ramirez on guitar. (Mary’s a.k.a. is Mary Cobra, fittingly). To underline me bringing to your attention the constant changing of personnel within the band, no less than 31 members supplementary to the current line-up have played in some form for the Detroit Cobras.
I’ve referred to the LP’s & EP’s released by the band, and they also released nine singles between 1996 and 2018. In addition, Munster Records have released an LP, CD and vinyl 7” single box set entitled ‘The Original Recordings (Singles and Unreleased 1995-97)’ as a compilation. Like I have intimated in previous blogs, as a fan of many years, I am spoilt for choice when just making a request to Lex for just a single track......but I am going to choose (in dedication to Rachel) the Otis Redding penned ‘Shout Bamalama’ from the ‘Life, Love & Leaving’ album, which can be found here.