Album Notes

The Sugar Kings is the pipedream of MP3.com legend Mickey Dean (the first, & arguably the cutest, MP3.com Country Artist of the Year) in collaboration with critically acclaimed (Rolling Stone & Village Voice) singer/songwriter Robert Bobby, resulting in a collection of songs that practically define AMERICANA. In fact, some people have said that this cd puts the ERIC in AMERICANA.

This cd was recorded in the heart of Lancaster County Amish Country & features the "I'm getting paid by the note' guitar wizardry of Mickey Dean & his talking guitar along with the "how does he sing so good with his tongue planted so firmly in his cheek" vocal stylings of
Robert Bobby. Together with a crackerjack rhythm section comprised of Mike Bitts of Innocense Mission fame on bass & Jeff Stoner, late of the Susquehanna River Band, on drums, they put out a honky tonkin' sound that is definitely six of one & a half a dozen of another.

Many people have asked us about the name "The Sugar Kings" & indeed this is an interesting story. As you might expect, most of the good names have already been taken. We never thought that a name like the Sugar Kings would be available to us. In fact, we first had thought about
naming the band "The Bicarbonate of Soda Kings" thinking that that name would surely be available. However to our surprise, our legal department discovered that there were already several aging polka bands by that name. We were devastated & the project almost came to a standstill. We finally called in that psychologist guy that worked with Metallica (you know, they did a movie about that) and he said "Boys-if you could have any name for your band, what would it be?" To a man, we all replied "The Sugar Kings" but we were sure a really cool name like that must have been taken already. As it turns out, & here is where the psychology really comes into play, a lot of the best band names aren't really taken after all. It is the same dynamic that goes on with the really pretty girl in high school not getting asked out on dates because all the boys think that she is so pretty that she won't go out with them. (Footnote*-in our case-that really was true-
the pretty girls wouldn't go out with us but this is more about the phenomena than our actual high school situations). Anyway, to continue the analogy, most of the good band names actually haven't been taken because everybody thinks they have been taken. This is akin to a Yogi-ism.
And that is how we were able to land "The Sugar Kings" name.

I sent our cd to a Canadian web radio station "Dagwood radio" that had named my F*U*B*A*R cd their independent cd of the year in 2003 & they have recently gone from an independent format to contemporary country. They wrote back that our Sugar Kings cd didn't fit into the
contemporary country format-that it sounded like music from 15 years ago. Speaking for the Sugar Kings-we consider that a high compliment. Better yet-25 years ago.

If you have read this far-you should just flat out buy the dang cd. Thanks. Robert Bobby