About

Though Scott Collins doesn’t say that going to Graceland to see Elvis Presley in his coffin influenced his future as a musician, it’s hard to believe it didn’t have an undeniable effect on his 3-year-old self. For Kim Collins, her future career as a singer/songwriter may have been a bit more predestined. For Kim, who grew up with a mother who was a singer and guitarist in a folk band, The Travelers, in the sixties, it was probably bred in the bone.

Kim (vocals/mandolin/accordion/guitar/drums), who had her own rock band, Kim’s Fable, for over 10 years before she and Scott founded The Smoking Flowers, cites influences that range from Led Zeppelin to The Beatles to Gillian Welch. For Scott (vocals/guitar), the answer ultimately comes down to just two words: Neil Young.

The two played and toured together for several years in an edgy alt-country band, Pale Blue Dot, before they ever truly wrote their first song together, “Someday.” Out of that, the couple says, came The Smoking Flowers, Kim and Scott Collins’s East Nashville-based band, a hybrid blend of rock, blues, country, and an American sound Kim calls Southern Gothic folk.

The band began with a musical collaboration, while the marriage began at Nashville’s iconic music venue, 12th and Porter. Kim was managing there when Scott, visiting his family in Nashville, came in to see about a job for the summer. Feeling an immediate attraction for her future husband, she told him he didn’t need to fill out an application, and shortly after that, Scott packed up his life in New York City and moved to Tennessee permanently.

Married for 11 years, with two cats and one dog (all rescue animals), both Kim and Scott say that their songwriting stems from personal experience and relationships—with family, friends and the world. Of their collaboration, Scott says that it’s innate and intuitive. When it happens, he says, they just let it flow, letting what he calls Kim’s “almost-Brian Wilson knack for harmonies” take over.

When you listen to The Smoking Flowers, leave any preconceived notions behind, because if you think you’re listening to country, they’ll switch to rock. Or they’ll lull you in with a gentle waltz tempo, then come in with vocals that are reminiscent of punk. And the exquisite harmonies will certainly grab you. For this husband-and-wife duo, living together, working together, writing together and playing together unite to form a sound that’s distinctly theirs.

Press

“Husband-wife duo Scott and Kim Collins, a.k.a. The Smoking Flowers from East Nashville, Tennessee, have forged a new direction. Also founding members of Pale Blue Dot, an enthusiastic and edgy rock alt-country band, Scott and Kim have branched out on their own, carrying forward where Gram Parsons and Emmylou Harris left off in their day. The Smoking Flowers have delivered beautifully produced, sometimes moody, Americana/Country songs with knockout harmonies in their debut album “Sweet as Port”. Less traditional than your classic country-folk duo, they triumph on a new style by bringing a punk-attitude and energy to their highly infectious songs. Kim has a fierce and dynamic voice, but with the ability to produce tenderness, displayed beautifully on the dragging ballad Whiskey Tongue and the Buddy-and-Julie-esque tandem Crime To Fall. The dark and threatening Female Casanova, accompanied by a howling violin, is a highpoint on this wonderfully attractive debut album.”
—Wiebren Rijkeboer, AltCountry.NL

“Kim and Scott Collins’ new project The Smoking Flowers finds the wife-and-husband duo shedding the rock edge of their other band Pale Blue Dot for a pared-down acoustic sound that highlights their uniquely sympathetic vocals, which are front-and-center on their debut SWEET AS PORT. Hearing the lazy strumming, harmonica and Scott’s high tenor on the first 30 seconds of “Someday”, it’s difficult not to think of Neil Young, but when Kim enters shortly after, the song finds its own place, with warm, ragged, lived-in harmonies that can only come from many years of playing (and in this case living) together. The otherworldly singing and haunting mandolin of “Female Casanova” suggest equal parts Joanna Newsom and Led Zeppelin’s "Battle of Evermore," while the carnival-midway accordion and cherubic, Victrola-esque vocal track of "Falling" tweak the mystical factor even higher. SWEET AS PORT is—dare we say—charming, without crossing over into twee.”
—Jack Silverman, The Nashville Scene

“We can say something beautiful about every song on this record. The Smoking Flowers from Nashville have an abundance of talent. ...The album cover for “Sweet as Port” is an enigmatic drawing of Kim and Scott looking more like indians than your typical Nashville cowboys, which makes all the more sense because they succeed in creating a very unique alternative folk and country sound without one dose of lap or pedal steel. “Where there’s smoke, there’s fire” goes the saying, and this is definitely true for The Smoking Flowers, who will hopefully keep burning their musical fire for a long time to come.”
—Freddy Celis, Rootstime.BE