New Orleans Magazine — Jul 1, 2025
Jesse and Cody McKiernan, Next Wave of New Orleans Blues
The next wave of New Orleans blues is here — genre-fluid, experimental and drenched with emotion. Most children are required to memorize their ABCs by a certain age. For brothers Jesse and Cody McKiernan, their father made them memorize the 12-bar blues.
Growing up listening to blues and rock legends like The Doors, The Beatles and B.B. King, from a young age, the New York City-born brothers gravitated toward music as a creative and emotional outlet.
Jesse started the band Kota Dosa in 2019 as an extension of a London-founded music collective he was a part of under the same name. Since then, it has evolved with bands performing in New York and New Orleans before uniting forces to make the Big Easy its home base in 2024. The band is made of vocalists and guitarists Jesse and Cody, saxophonist Simon Rhett, trumpet player Ben Delgado, drummer Rob Florence, bassist Noah Rozzell and organist Banjo Bergfeld.
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