Dear Folks,
at first a very big ´Thank You´ for visitin´ our web-site.
How you found it, we don´t know, but fortunately you did and that´s fair enough.
"THE SMOKIN´ SOCKS" ---- "Folk & Roll With Heart, Guts & Soul".
Music that´s pure & raw, highly melodic and severely energetic, performed with an intense spirit of emotion & integrity.
It´s deeply rooted in a tradition spannning from "Delta-Blues" via Woody Guthrie´s "Old-Time Folk" to Bob Dylan, from Chuck Berry via The Rolling Stones /The Faces and Tom Petty to The Black Crowes, from Lynyrd Skynyrd via Bob Marley to Motörhead to Nirvana.
As you might notice, an even longer tradition than "From Hank To Hendrix", as Neil Young once said, who also is one of our important influences.
It first blossomed when back in 1992 school-mates Josey Aldous & Chris Bacon joined for a performance at their college graduation-party.
Callin´ themselves "THE SMOKIN´ SOCKS" they played a few old Bob Dylan songs they both knew, and, pretty delighted by the positive reception, decided to keep on playin´ together.
They worked out a set consisting of songs by Dylan, Woody Guthrie, Bob Marley and others mixed with songs of their own and started buskin´ on street-corners and playin´ clubs, always bein´ well received wherever they went.
In the summer of 1997 Slim Stunner, an experienced Rock´n´Roll guitarist and songwriter, just havin´ dissolved his latest band and a long-time fan of the duo´s music, proposed working together.
Josey & Chris agreed, so in July 1997 the three of them joined forces and „THE SMOKIN´ SOCKS" became a trio.
Workin´ from then on together frequently, we started recordin´ the first original songs in spring 1998, proceedin´ through the year with live-performances and finally settled to record our
„Down-Home" - EP in November 1998.
In the fall of 1999 we decided that it would be nice to have a bit more rhythm to some of our numbers and recruited Cole Thornton, an old buddy with whom each of us had played together on different occasions in the past as percussionist, vocalist & additional mandolinist and Mississippi Trehearn,
an old fellow of Slim, as our bass-player.
After an intense period of rehearsals and recording-sessions, in the summer of 2001 we compiled our debut-CD "THEIR 20th CENTURY CLASSICS" and started playin´ gigs to promote the album.
Sadly, in the fall of 2002, Cole had to quit due to family & business reasons and Mississippi left to his home-town of Lübeck, which is a little too far away to stay a member of the band.
After carryin´on as a three-piece for about 2 years we decided to get bassed-up again, ´cause we felt there was definitely missing some bottom-end in the sound of our music.
So Huey Hooch came into play, a musical companion of Slim for about 20 years, who´s been
workin´with all sorts of bands since his and Slim´s project "Rebel Yell" broke up in 1997, the year Slim joined THE SMOKIN´ SOCKS.
The search for a drummer / percussionist after quite a long while finally ended, at least that was what we thought, when Money Manson, a renowned drum-teacher and veteran of numerous Rock, Blues and Fusion bands in the summer of 2006 agreed to support us on gigs, adding a lot more punch and versality to our music.
But inviting him was a wrong decision, ´cause to play with us someone´s personality´s definitely more important than experience or versality !
And he just wasn´t the right one to get along with, so ... another drummer gone ... !
Anyway ...
In the meantime we are writing & recording new songs, each of them added to "A Work In Progress ..."
in the "LET THE MUSIC DO THE TALKING"-chapter of this site, anytime we believe we´ve got a quite reasonable version on its way.
These we offer to you as free mp3/mp4 downloads just as we do in entirety with our first album
"THEIR 20th CENTURY CLASSICS" !!!.
A new album will be available as a "Real-Audio"-CD once we have finished all
the tracks to appear on it, then containing the final versions of the songs from "A Work In Progress ...",
where afterwards new numbers will be featured.
Please stay tuned and also don´t miss to visit "CHECK THIS OUT", where we´ll provide you with stuff
we believe might be interesting, be it a new video, live-recordings ... whatever ... and, certainly the
dates of our concerts.

So relax, have a good smoke or a drink, or both, if you prefer ... as we do ... & ENJOY YOUR STAY !

Yours truly,
THE SMOKIN´SOCKS