There were a few Nosmo Kings in history, including a few bands, a popular
English variety artist (birth name H. Vernon Watson) and a movie with that
name from 1995. It¹s even the name of an anti-smoking children¹s activity
book.

"Nosmo King" is a funny play on words, after all, constructed from the words
"No smoking." And, considering their wit and good sense of humor, it's the
fitting name of a Mankato band formed in 2006 by longtime area musicians.
The Nosmo King Band - made up of Don Waylett, keys; Steve White, guitar and
vocals; Jim Siatsis, drums and vocals; Carl Rosendale, bass and vocals; and
Tim Secott, guitar and vocals - plays blues-rock music at area bars and
clubs. And they are the newest addition to The Free Press' Meet the Band
family.

Here's a bit about the band from Secott:

Free Press: What's a good night on stage like?
Tim Secott: The mix is perfect, the volume is just shy of disrupting the
flight patterns of small insects, the dance floor is full, the wait staff is
sweating, the cook is swearing, the owner is smiling, and we're in a groove
from which no one can escape. Man, that¹s a good night.

FP: How would you describe your sound?
TS: I think the best way to describe it would be to call it classic
blues-rock. Most of our repertoire is stuff you might hear on classic
rock-format satellite radio, but it's really easy to hear the blues roots in
the music we play.

FP: Who are some of your influences?
TS: If you consider influences as being those musicians who inspired us to
pick up instruments and who we wanted to sound like, I'd have to say that
our influences are all over the map: The Beatles, Allman Brothers, The
Faces, Clapton, The Stones, Poco, The Band, Hedley Lamarr, Delbert
McClinton, Neil Young, and on and on, to list some of the standard names,
but there are so many more.

However, all of the local musicians we've ever known should really be
considered as major influences. Case in point: when I was learning to play
guitar, it was an unspoken requirement that you had to know how to play the
acoustic guitar part to "Stairway to Heaven" if you had any hope of being
considered a guitar player.
In my neighborhood, there was one guy who'd learned it - Arrigo Giorgini -
and I picked it up by watching him. Learning how Rigo played that part made
it easier for me to play so many other things. Now, when it comes to talent,
Jimmy Page and Rigo really don¹t belong in the same sentence, but Rigo had a
far greater influence on my ability to play.
That kind of influence continues. It's why we sit near the band when we go
out: "How the heck is he doing that?"

FP: Do you play covers or do you write your own stuff?
TS: Right now, we play covers. We do a few songs that everybody knows, but
many of our songs could be considered to be "off the beaten path" - songs by
lesser-known artists, back cuts, and covers of covers - and we like to mix a
lot of these into our sets for the night. We have a couple of songs of our
own that we¹ll be taking for a shake-down cruise in the next month or so.

FP: What¹s the chemistry like among the bandmates, and what effect does that
have on your music?
TS: We're all a pretty agreeable lot, for starters. We're all empty-nesters,
or nearly so, our wives get along famously, and we practice at Don's, which
has a nice dry-bar and a stocked refrigerator.
It's easy to laugh with each other, and many of the songs we do have that
tongue-in-cheek quality. We have our share of inside jokes, and they show up
from time to time at gigs, off-mic or heavily edited.

FP: Is there a common thread that runs through many of your songs?
TS: I don't think so, other than the fact that none of the songs extol the
virtue of leading a clean, upright life. Wow, how did we miss that?

FP: Have you recorded, and are you working on anything new?
TS: Yes, we've recorded a couple of our songs for a demo. The process
continues at a snail's pace, but it suits our schedules.

FP: If you ever made the cover of Rolling Stone, what other bands would you
want to be compared to?
TS: That's hard to answer without sounding glib or pretentious, but here
goes: early ZZ Top, The Black Crowes, Savoy Brown, perhaps Son Volt, with
the impish part of Dr. Hook and the Medicine Show mixed in. Since we¹ve
played to a couple of near-empty houses, maybe the title of the article
should be "The Best Band You¹ve Never Heard."

FP: Where's your favorite place to play in Mankato and why?
TS: Any place that has good traffic through the night is a great place to
play, because whether people come in at 9 p.m. or 1 a.m., we can usually
keep them for at least a couple of rounds and interact with them. There are
a couple of places like that in town, but we won¹t kiss and tell.

FP: How do you unwind after a show?
TS: Packing up pretty much helps to bring us back to reality, and if we're
still amped up, we get omelets and coffee. What could be more normal than
that?