By Jhoni Jackson
For Athens, Ga., outfit Koko Beware, the weather’s perpetually warm and sunny—the perfect climate for absolute cute to flourish. Laid-back surf nods spruce up the band’s otherwise sparse lo-fi indie-pop canvas, but not to excess. The unembellished palate tempers exclamations like, “You’re a beach babe!” Koko Beware is nonchalantly adorable in that way, even on the peppiest tracks of Something About the Summer, their debut LP. (You can listen to the album in its entirety here.)
At the core of Koko Beware are Ryan and Ashley Beresch, who met early in the shaping of the band and married in the spring of last year. (Aww.) Read their responses to our 5GB series below.
What was the first gig you ever went to?
Ashley: Avril Lavigne. That’s really embarrassing.
Ryan: Bob Dylan when I was a tween.
What is the best gig that you ever played/performed at?
Ryan: Tijuana, I didn’t know what they were saying and they gave our drummer tongue tacos.
Ashley: Yeah, Tijuana was my favorite. It was kinda sketchy at first but we got tons of free food and drinks and a Pepsi cup full of pesos.
What is the best gig you have ever been to?
Ashley: We snuck into a King Tuff show when we were in NYC. They put on an awesome show. There’s a pic somewhere of our bassist just thrashing someone.
Ryan: We went to a Black Lips show a couple weeks ago in Athens, it was for some non-profit organization and was at a bar that looked like a prop set from a crappy movie.
Gig you would most like to play?
Ryan: Daytime Korean television show. If there’s a Korean Telemundo, something like that.
Ashley: I’d really like to go back to Mexico and do Mexico City, Guadalajara, the bigger cities further south.
What would be the lineup for your dream gig?’
Ryan: Playin’ the Babies show is cool because our dog is named after Cassie, but my dream lineup would be to play with The Clean or Mac Demarco.
Ashley: My dream lineup would be The Babies and The Black Lips. And Twerps would be cool too.
Koko Beware opens for The Babies at 529 on Tuesday, Dec. 18. Gold-Bears also support, including DJ Dad (Jeremy of Gold-Bears).
