Written by Willie E. Smith Thursday, 19 June 2008 14:35

Some people have that ear, that connection with music that shows their love for it.

 

 

My name is Willie Smith. I used to write songs, and now I write concert reviews. I have been a college radio DJ, mom-and-pop record store clerk, contributor to fan newsletters and music publications. Before all this and to this day, I am first and foremost a music lover. A cohort in my efforts to organize charity concerts discovered Geoff Koch playing at Cicero's old Sunday night open mic, where I myself cut my teeth. He'd won her over as a fan in the 12 minutes you were allotted to play back then. She insisted we book him for the next benefit show; this was in 2000. At that show I had to step in and help with the sound rig, which was a strange prelude to my landing a job as an A/V tech there three years later. As a result, I had to sit on the event, thus I got to hear Geoff and his songs. He got more than 12 minutes that night, and he only needed the first two.

Some people have that ear, that connection with music that shows their love for it. I've never felt I had to be ambitious about my music because of the Geoff Kochs in my midst in our lovely, ugly town. This confidence has proven to be well founded, given the character behind the songs was genuine and the passion authentic. It didn't hurt that we both liked the then living, breathing, recording Elliott Smith, and most of his bumper stickers were of bands I liked at the time. Heck, he even got me to give Bruce Springsteen a chance after Reagan had so thoroughly ruined my take on him, and Two Live Crew had turned it on its head in what can only seem like the most ridiculous reinterpretation of a political anthem ever. For that, I give Geoff credit.

Sunday, June 22 Geoff is getting more than 12 minutes at Cicero's -- he's the headlining act -- then setting off on a tour that will take him all over this nation of ours ahead of his new record, which lives up to every hope and aspiration I could have ever fostered for his work. I am proud to be from St. Louis when I hear the handful of new songs posted on his MySpace page. I thought it appropriate that the rest of the folks in this town, this country, and -- why restrain myself? -- the whole freakin' Internet deserved a shot at having that same sense of pride and anticipation in knowing what Geoff Koch has pulled off.

So I'd like to introduce you to Geoff, a musician I happen to be a fan of, who was gracious enough to do an interview about his life, his music, and the turns of events that bode well for his future, as well as the iPods and stereos of all those St. Louisans who lead to sold-out Wilco and Ryan Adams shows that hit our town every so often. I've got a tip for you: Practice smiling, he'll give you reasons to. Don't be ashamed; we've got fluoride in the water.

What was your first inspiration to perform or compose music of some sort?

You know, when I was a kid growing up, I'd put on the Karate Kid album (yes, vinyl) and run around the basement singing, "You're the best around! Nuthin's ever gonna bring you down!" So imagine that, and then pretending I was Axl Rose singing all the songs from Appetite for Destruction to my stuffed animals and baseball cards. And then I joined Starship for a while and had several duets with Grace Slick, singing hits like "We Built This City" and "Sarah." I should also mention my run with Motley Crue's "Dr. Feelgood" and Aerosmith's "Pump." So I was at a real young age when I first started pretending to rock. It wasn't until I was around 16 or so when I decided it'd be cool to try to be Kurt Cobain from the "Smells Like Teen Spirit" video for a living, and at that time I really started learning how to play songs on the guitar.

How did your upbringing and environment play into that pursuit?

I was raised by my dad, so after school he'd do his thing upstairs and I'd have the basement to be the arena rock singer. We listened to a lot of great music in the '80s when I was real little. GNR's Lies and U2's Joshua Tree were out on tape and we'd rock out going to and from my baseball games. What is funny about that era of little league baseball, I don't think I've told anybody this, but my best year was also the same summer my dad and I would pop in Extreme's "More Than Words" cassette single or even Paula Abdul's "Rush Rush." How those songs attributed to my success on the field, I'll never know, but they did. That Paula Abdul song is still a very guilty pleasure..

Were you able to find people and places that nurtured your growth as a musician?

I went to a small Lutheran grade school and there were five boys in my class; we ended up liking just about all the same stuff. We didn't know any better at the time, but we sure did get our groove on to Bel Biv Devoe, C&C Music Factory, a little Marky Mark. God, I'm crucifying whatever "indie street cred" I may have accumulated throughout my maturing years. The quality of music certainly did bloom with the advent of grunge; I didn't know anyone in high school who didn't like either Nirvana, Pearl Jam or Soundgarden. Those were the kinds of people I was drawn toward when I wasn't busy with football or watching Beavis and Butthead.

What were some of your most striking memories of that time in your life, positive and negative?

Negatively, I was on the outside at that time, as far as the "in" crowd, I'd say. There was the guy I went to high school with who looked like Eddie Vedder, and he was in bands with the best guitarist in school. Me, I looked nothing like Kurt Cobain, plus I played sports; of course apparently you can't be a punk rock purist if you spend your time on other things. I think that's worked itself out to be a positive; it made me want to be a better guitarist, it made me fight harder for the music I thought I could make just as good if not better than the guys who were a bit more connected or advanced than I was at the time.

At what point did you realize your love for music could become a major pursuit?

There'd been a couple phases of my life when my desire to pursue music was overwhelming, but I just wasn't a happy, or emotionally balanced person to really make a run at music as a career last. All I knew from a pretty early age was that music was something I loved to do, from pretending I was Daniel LaRusso about to kick the shit out of the Cobra Kai guy with the soundtrack blasting in my ears, to maturing as a guitarist to the point when I was interested in making my own melodies. The most recent pursuit has stuck, and don't ask me why -- I'm sure you could find someone who knows me who could tell you I'm a basket case! -- but really I can point to a show I did with John Maxfield and your old band at this café on Washington Avenue around Thanksgiving of 2004. I hadn't played a show in years and I was sitting on a handful of OK songs and, with some encouragement, I played that show and met John that night. He ended up recording my first CD, and so my professional career was really set into motion around that time.

What role do you think creating a fan community and expressing yourself though personal narratives on MySpace has influenced your continued growth as an artist, as well as your developing fan base?

I don't know if this is gonna answer the question because I'm not that smart with words; too many words per question or sentence and I just kind of black out. Let's see. Well, in a sense, the MySpace page is a performance. You're offering or communicating something. You can tell a lot about a person by their page. Just one look at mine and you'll see it's not all tricked out with the bells and whistles. It's taken me three years to getting around to knowing the right people who've told me how to copy and paste HTML code so now it's jazzed with some banners. I do sort of have some kind of odd fantasy that I keep track of. It's really not meant to be an ego thing, but I keep good track of where I've played and who I've played with. It seems to me that maybe if this career were to end tomorrow and I'd have to pursue other passions, maybe one day I'd look back and be proud of how hard I worked for something I believed in so much. And plus, sometimes it's just cool to look at some of those cities and each venue/city has their own file of memories. So Savannah will always make me shake my head, or New York City will remind me of Ground Zero. And then you can also have fun reminiscing about the people you've met in those cities. And really maybe that's the big thing for me, because my favorite cities to go to are nearly all the ones I have or have met amazing people in. It sure does enhance that trip to New Orleans by yourself when you can come away from it with two new incredible relationships with people you would have absolutely never met in your whole life. So seeing my show and band list makes me remember those people, and makes me smile remembering stories about them and I'm reminded how fortunate I am to have met such glorious people who are walking the earth at the exact same time as me.

When or how did the doors open that allowed you to transition from recording solo to putting together an album with full instrumentation?

That was about as random and lucky as it gets, or call it a huge "God thing." What happened was I'd been talking to Mike and the musicians in the St. Louis band Gentleman Auction House about recording my next CD; I'm taking you back to summer of 2007. We'd tried to line things up, logistically, but the project ended up to be too big of a beast; it would have taken way, way too much time to pull off. And with GAH recording things and touring as well, there was even less time to work with. So I think toward the end of last year we all kind of knew we wouldn't be able to line everything up, and right around then [Wilco's original drummer] Ken Coomer emailed me back. I'd emailed Ken in December; I found him on MySpace and just shot him a note telling him I appreciate the music he was a part of with Wilco, one of my favorite bands. Mid-January rolls around and I get the email from Mike saying the record with them just couldn't happen, and I think literally the next day, Ken emailed me back and from there we started a dialogue about a record. He invited me to come to Nashville and record with him and his co-producer, Charlie Brocco, and when I was done blinking, I was heading back to St. Louis in mid-April, having just recorded my next record with those guys in Nashville.

What did it feel like to go from putting together arrangements for voice and guitar, piano and harmonic to these fleshed out tunes for the upcoming album?

I remember standing in my room recording guitar parts with the headphones on, Ken in his room on the drums, and Charlie in the booth, and there were several moments when I was just smiling so big, playing my songs with Ken freakin' Coomer in this really nice Nashville studio; it took just a little bit for that over-excitement to be contained properly. I knew not too long into recording there that I just wasn't going to be able to walk around the studios for 12 days pinching myself, thinking how incredible this all was and how fast it was all happening. So I learned pretty quick how to keep the appropriate focus, and nail parts when it was my time, and when it was time to switch gears and worry about mixes, knock that out of the park, too. We were all very good about knowing when to laugh and let off some steam, or take a coffee break or order something to eat. Just like we knew it was time to take things seriously when anyone had the headphones on.

What should long time friends and fans expect who haven't heard your work since the live recording?

If they're bracing for hearing the songs nearly identical to the way I've heard them in my head for years, then I'd say they're on the right track. As a solo performer, I was the band, you know? There's a time to really play percussively and then pull back. All the special nuances and emphasis on dynamics, I've felt I had to communicate as best as I could with just a voice and guitar. One of the other things I had to learn on the fly in Nashville was how not to play like a solo performer anymore. That took some doing sometimes to barely strum a big guitar part I'd been aggressive with my whole life so that it wouldn't trip over the other two guitars we were gonna put on the song later. I had to really trust Ken and Charlie and lean on their experience and advice. Trust, when accomplished, is a very freeing thing. Those guys never let me down once. They had tremendous ideas, and nearly every time I didn't want to try them, but I would try them, and hate what I just did for about 20 minutes. They'd love it, of course. But eventually the song would start to take shape and I'd realize then where they'd been coming from.

For folks who are just hearing your music for the first time, how would you introduce yourself, in a musical sense?

There's always name-dropping. I'm careful not to say John Mayer because 8 out of 10 adults I talk with who aren't musical, when they hear I'm a singer-songwriter, they all just immediately think, "Oh, like John Mayer?!" No, not really like him much at all. I like to drop the names of the songwriters and bands I've been influenced by, like Elliott Smith, Wilco, R.E.M., Ryan Adams. And then there are the comparisons people have made about me, like Jeff Buckley, Bright Eyes, or even Howie Day. What's interesting to me is that I've never really listened to Jeff Buckley, Bright Eyes or Howie Day. Maybe because I have a loop station that makes me Howie Day? Not sure. Perhaps being compared to a famous musician can't be all that bad, but I've heard more stories about Howie Day trying to lay anything that moves than stories about how amazing his songs are, so I tend to block out that comparison. Not saying I belong in a monastery, but you know...

When you were working on this record, did you have anything as a particular personal inspiration musically or thematically?

I knew there would be space and potential for greatness on "Say You Will" and "I Lost Count." I'd been hearing those songs pretty close to how they ended up for months and years, respectively. The musical earthquakes at the end of those songs were in some small way inspired by a song called "Horseracing" by The Scotland Yard Gospel Choir, now performing as Brighton, MA. I wanted to throw the kitchen sink at those parts because I knew whatever we did would fit. Those parts are musical representations of the asymmetrical, manic angst and/or euphoria of feelings of loss, yearning, regret, inability to stop time, etc. I can't list all the things I think about when I play those parts because, well, there's a lot, and two, those parts aren't meant to be explained too clearly. One of the things that makes those parts most beautiful to me is that I believe we've done a good job letting them speak for themselves. They are what they are, and the listener is still free to interpret the song as they see fit, and whatever those moments of chaos and dissonance mean to them are valid.

Will your tour be solo or will there be any full band dates?

100% solo, as far as I can see. There will be some cities with some surprise guests here and there, but I am driving the country by myself.

If there was an ideal audience you hoped to reach with this record, who would it be and what do you hope to communicate to them?

I hope I can reach the kind of music listener who can appreciate not every song sounding the same. I hope I can keep the attention of the listener, in a day and age when attentions spans are small and the desire for immediate gratification is large. My most favorite albums are the ones you can play front to back and appreciate the album as a whole. Sure, you have your favorites and your least favorites, but nothing makes you come close to turning it off. Capturing attention is just about the highest compliment I, or any musician, could receive, I'd say. Because we're there to engage, and have moments with the people in the same space and time as we are. I hope the listeners can identify in some way with each song on the record. They wouldn't have been recorded if we thought they'd harm the album as a whole. There's a very specific order to the record, too, which is important to me. I set the album up with the hopes that the song order would encourage repeat listens, and that no one got too tired of a particular part of it. I didn't want to lump all the rockers in the first half and then go ballad on ya for the last half. I'm proud of the balance of the record; songs are able to stand on their own as strong songs;, there really aren't songs on this record that were meant to be fast-forwarded through 'til you can get to the epic monster, or whatever. So if someone sits down with this record with the intention of listening to it all the way through, front to back, and gives it time for thought, attention and enjoyment, I don't see how anyone will walk away from it unsatisfied.

If you want to hear some of Geoff's music, head over to http://www.myspace.com/geoffreykochmusic.