Chris Koza

Chris Koza - Exit Pesce (self-released)

There are a lot of errors to be made in the role of singer-songwriter (too serious, too goofy, just plain boring), but Koza sidesteps them all on his debut album. It helps that this isn't a one-voice, one-guitar joint. Koza's talented friends add texture, happy to provide crisp percussion, bleating horns, and even some la-las and da-das. The singer himself is charming but not too conversational, the kind of troubadour who will tell you a story without expecting you to sing along. On the bouncier songs, you will anyway. (Lindsey Thomas) - City Pages (12/14/05)

For emerging musicians, record label reps, and gaggles of college radio staffers, New York's CMJ Music Marathon is a great (if expensive) opportunity to network. They talk shop, swap business cards, and push demos. They charm. They schmooze. And where is the Twin Cities contingent? Cloistered away in the cramped upstairs lounge of Mo Pitkin's, a restaurant in the Village. We're watching the Plastic Constellations and milling around tables where an intern from the Current offers free stickers. It's like being at the Turf Club if it had a smoking ban; it's like--Minneapolis.

Escaping this home away from home, Chris Koza finds a table downstairs, next to a wall strewn with caricatures of the restaurant's celebrity regulars, including a mysterious bearded man nicknamed "Bimbo." Koza isn't a natural-born Midwesterner but retains honorary status, having pinballed between the Twin Cities, New York, and Portland since graduating from St. Olaf in 2001. The night before, he performed at the Alphabet Lounge, a terracotta-colored shoebox on the Lower East Side, with few preconceptions.

"It was really nothing more than performing at an out-of-town gig where most people have no clue who you are," he says. "I didn't have any expectations or delusions of a freak discovery, a suit in the back with an expense account and a town car, or some local star looking to christen something new and unknown."

It's a shame that some indie label bigwig (if there is such a thing) wasn't in the room. He would have discovered a singer with the rare composite of elements that frequently paves the way for folk-pop success. Songwriting that touches on Dylan, Simon, and, to grab that key college demographic, Smith? Check. Cute, spectacled, and nonthreatening? Mmhmm. Catchy name? Could be. Z's a hot letter, although Jason Mraz may have already ruined it. A music industry Svengali would also have to accept that Chris Koza is not a singular entity but a group of musicians who Koza emphasizes are all equally important to the act. As recently as last year, Koza played slightly heavier art-rock in the Channels with Luke Anderson, Justin Blair, and Peter Sieve. When Koza decided to record a solo album, the rest of the band graciously accepted backup duty, helping Koza create Exit Pesce (self-released) in the hallway of his old Dinkytown apartment and now working on a follow-up at Pachyderm Studios.

Koza's occasional female accomplices steal the debut album's title track, starting with a sample of Caroline Kent's innocuous la-las and building to the gale force of JoAnna James's spectral howl. James and Koza started collaborating last year after she asked him to play her CD-release show, and now they tease each other like siblings. She wanders downstairs during the interview and they're soon engaged in a staring contest. When her phone starts vibrating, James cries foul, and Koza taunts, "Oh, is it someone calling to say you lost?"

Most of the album stays grounded in traditional acoustic songcraft. Sparse percussion and solemn guitar accompany "Chicago Avenue," commemorating Koza's time as a resident at 38th and Elliot, an area that grew on the hesitant singer: "Just maybe I'll stick around longer than I intend/Just maybe I'll miss this place like a wish." But the album's best tracks are the ones that bounce; "Tired Eyes" and "Winning the Lottery" are bright spots that demand repeated listens. The former, with its bursts of trumpet bleats and plunking piano, chugs along like one of the less morose tracks on Elliott Smith's Figure 8. Koza only occasionally steps into overly folksy territory. "South South Dakota" sounds like a lost Woody Guthrie tune that pleads for more states to break apart and secede, if only to produce work for those long-unemployed flag makers. While Exit Pesce is riddled with wistful references to sand, ships, and saltwater, "South South Dakota" is the only track that comes right out and says it: "My heart is not alone in longing for the colors of the distant shore."

When I question his allegiance to the coastless scene that just voted him one of its best new artists, he laughs nervously. "I'm a Midwesterner by choice, sometimes by determination or obligation. But the beach is nice," he says. "Right now there's a lot going on in the Twin Cities and I have a lot of friends there. But that's not to say I'm going to stop writing lyrics about the coast."

Fair enough. With his show out of the way on the first night of the conference, Koza has plenty of time to enjoy the country's east side, including its greasy sidewalk pizza ("My body feels like a bloated sponge. You don't want to shake my hand right now") and neighborhood basketball ("While waiting for a friend on the Lower West Side, I got into a couple pickup games. Since I wear glasses, I have this little elastic activity band I have to wear. I get a lot of Kurt Rambis shout-outs"). He's also excited about the Rhymesayers showcase, Atmosphere and Brother Ali in - City Pages (Picked 2 Click/15th Annual)

For some dumb reason, Koza's album Exit Pesce didn't hit me when it first came out earlier this year, but now I'm convinced that he's the best singer-songwriter to come out of Minneapolis in the last couple of years. His lyrics get a bit too "poetic" in spots (I skip the overburdened "Pheasants" and "South South Dakota"), but hey, he's young, and he comes up with melodies you haven't quite heard before and sings and arranges them with heart and brains. He's an indie-alt-folkie, more or less, Elliott Smith in a better mood, Ron Sexsmith with energy and without the MOR production gloss, but he has also spent some valuable time with Paul Simon records. His sprightly "Tired Eyes" isn't as good as Neil Young's song of the same name, but it's very good, and his sprightlier "Winning the Lottery"--I should be forced to spend the rest of my life alone on an island with Gene Shalit for what follows--is just the ticket. But seriously, check him out.

~dylan hicks - City Pages

Wandering Roads, empty rooms, fond memories, things lost and things found.  These thoughts and images only hint at the emotional tapestry woven on Chris Koza's debut album, Exit Pesce.  It's a beautiful, uplifting work that will penetrate even the thickest veneers of cynicism and snobbery for one simple reason:  Koza is so goddamn sincere.  Artists like Elliot Smith, Iron & Wine, M.Ward, Bright Eyes and Nick Drake stand above other songwriters because their songs are born of genuine passion and joy.  If Koza continues writing songs like these, his name will be bandied about in that company.

More impressive than his skill as a songwriter is Koza's sense of ensamble, which is more apparent, oddly enough, on the quieter songs.  "Civil War Letters," "Pheasants" and "South South Dakota"(the album's sleeper hit) could have easily been solo songs.  But by sprinkling subtle keyboards, accompanying strings and trace background vocals they become rich, almost overwhelming pieces that out Koza as much more than a guy with a guitar.

Koza is also confident, even jovial, leading a whole band.  The title track, "Exit Pesce," fuses a brooding bluegrass melody with keyboards and gospel vocals to create a reverie that is mildly haunting and catchy as hell.  Songs like "Tired Eyes," "Winning the Lottery" and "Trip to Poughkeepsie" are unabashedly upbeat - a delightful departure from the genre's usual meloncholy.  Though you'll have to forgive the moment on track 1 where he breaks into a "Top Gun" guitar solo - it's not pleasant.  But the only real disappointment is that this Portland native is currently based int he Twin Cities of Minnesota, leaving us no opportunity to see Koza bring this album to life on stage.  Of course, that's all the more reason to rush to CdBaby right now and get your fix anyway you can.

~mason west (8/05) - Music Liberation Project (Portland)

He's got a voice that's reminiscent of a young Paul Simon, and his music comfortably rides the line between pop and folk, boasting immediately memorable music matched against image-rich lyrics.

-- Joe Nickell (August 2005) - The Missoulian

I'd heard his old band The Channels in 2002, but after that, Chris Koza kind of slipped off my radar. Then suddenly, in the Spring of 2005, his debut album "Exit Pesce" somehow ended up in my car stereo, and I was impressed.

Koza's songwriting on this album recalls a unique mixture of Paul Simon, Elliot Smith, and songs like "Julia" from the Beatles' "White Album." The cover of Exit Pexce - Taoist, alien-like, intertwining fetal figures - stand out on store shelves now, but it was actually released in late 2004, without much publicity or fanfare.

Chris Koza's band is comprised of the same musicians that made up The Channels: Justin Blair (also of The New Congress) on bass; Peter Sieve on electric guitar; and Luke Anderson on drums and percussion. Even if The Channels morphed into Chris Koza primarily to avoid confusion with other groups of the same name, renaming the band was a brilliant marketing move because it helps Koza's songwriting, which speaks from an individual, rather than a band perspective, shine through. Koza insists that the name change wasn’t a conscious marketing effort. He explained it was done because what he and the band are doing now sounds so far from The Channels. “I was ready to just play that music anywhere regardless of what was going to happen with the rest of the band,” he said when I sat down with him and the rest of the band at the Hexagon Bar in early October.

Publicity began to accelerate at a pretty rapid pace for Koza in 2005. Pulse wrote a glowing review in February, expressing surprise similar to my own at how the album had seemingly come out of nowhere. Koza popped up more and more frequently on notable bills around town, whooing the crowd at First Avenue, for example, with an inspired rendition of “Let’s Dance” at the annual Rock for Pussy David Bowie Tribute in April. Koza played the HowWasTheShow.com anniversary party in June, along with Vicious Vicious and JoAnna James, his sometimes collaborator, backup singer and violinist. In September, Koza received a Minnesota Music Award for Best New Artist or Group of 2005 and also picked up a Critic’s Choice mention. The following month, Koza and the guys received enough votes to rank seventh in the City Pages Picked to Click tally. It has been a very good year.

As individual critics and fans continue to come to the conclusion that Koza’s work is of remarkably high quality, I turned the question back on him and inquired what factors determine great music. He told me he’s sometimes tipped off that a song is worth listening to if he chuckles or laughs to himself while listening. Not necessarily when songs are aiming to be funny, but when there’s “something in the arrangement, or maybe something in the vocal delivery, or maybe a clever vocal line or lyric that come together and makes me feel like I was walking down a flight of stairs and I missed a step,” Koza said.

Looking at Koza’s rise in less than a year, from a virtually unknown to one of the more critically acclaimed performers in town, you’d think he had some sort of grand plan since the age of four and has been relentlessly pursuing it ever since. He denies this as well, but confessed, “When I was a senior in high school, I pledged that if nothing happened in nine years, I’d quit,” he said “That would have been this past summer.” Going forward, he told me the goal is more about how he evolves as a musician and how the performance of the music changes.

The interview that spawned this article yielded useful advice for any number of bands. Elaborating on the band’s mission, for example, Koza said: “It’s less of ‘we need to be here’ in x number of years…it’s more ‘does it feel good, does it feel like we’re growing, and do I feel like I’m getting better?” He continued, “If there are detours that need to be made to get to a place where we feel we are doing what we need to be doing, I don’t see that as anything but an opportunity to try and evolve another part of your craft.”

Koza’s manager Sonya Southward helped secure him a spot a the CMJ Music Festival in New York City in September. Again taking an experiential approach to the festival appearance, Koza said, “we didn’t go to try and win over a bunch of new fans…We went just to play to whoever was going to be there.” The band has applied to appear at the South by Southwest Music and Media Conference and Festival in Austin in 2006.

The band is currently recording their next album at Pachyderm Recording Studio in Canon Falls, Minnesota, and if the future continues to be so successful for Koza and his band, as I imagine it will, the forthcoming release could birth even bigger things.

-- David de Young (November 2005)
- Rift Magazine

" Some people write about music in terms of technique, instrumentation, or six degrees of separation-stage-sharing-name-dropping. Although inportant, these matters are never my focus. Partly because I'm often times not knowledgable enough to pull in off, but mostly because it's not what makes music meaningful to me. A musicians's ability to effortlessly stir my senses is my measurement of aptitude. I choose to write about the way music makes me feel.

Chris Koza, a Portland, OR born and raised Midwest transplant describes his music as part pop and part folk; "acoustically based songwriting meets autumn roads, summer fields, city streets, haunted houses and the pedestrian postures of strangers and friends."

The description is not overly poetic; his music is very much affective; moody and melancholy, while conveying a sense of honest retrospection with simple clarity.

"Sometimes it seems like a ridiculous thing to try and do, convey through song and lyric an emotion or a point of view," Koza said. "When I'm drifting around and taking it all in, it seems that music is the medium which best relates the abstract thoughts I'm having."

His efforts evoke a universal form of reflection, taking you to a place between happy and sad where you're conscious of the passing of time, and would prefer to measure with granules slipping through in an hourglass, or by mile markers on a deserted highway.

Like any accomplished musician, Koza's influences are expansive and varied. He cites the Velvet Undergroung, Django Reinhardt, Wilco and David Bowie as inspiration.

Koza played the roles of songwriter, composer and engineer for his debut solo album which was released in October of last year. The collection features the backup vocals of St. Paul darling JoAnna James, and members of his band, formerly called the Channels, now referred to collectively as "Chris Koza." and has received abundant praise from media in and beyond the Twin Cities.

The Pulse of the Twin Cites called it an "under-the-radar-musical-stunner" and suggested that with the right breaks, Koza could have a "Mason Jennings-like following in the Twin Cities and beyond."

Koza's music is trend-evading, ambiguous to a place in time in a Nick Drake sort of way. In 20 years should a Chris Koza album be uncovered in a time capsule it would sound deceptively unaged, and effectively instill the same sense of pleasant nostalgia.
- Volume One Magazine (Megan Zabel)

" Once in a great while a local disc crosses my desk with little to no advance hype and ends up blowing a lot of the higher profile releases in my frubby little hands clear out of the water. Chris Koza's debut album, Exit Pesce is a perfect example of this under-the-radar-musical-stunner phenomenon.

On eight tracks of warm sophisticated folk-pop, Koza makes music that holds serious appeal for both the studious indie-rock listener or fan of classic Jackson Browne - in other words, me. Whether dabbling in McCartney-esque pop-pomp the trumpet abatted: "Tired Eyes" or studio-sexed-up-white-boy-blues "Exit Pesce" the album shows impressive range as Koza's pleasant voice rounds out cagey acoustic licks throughout.

With a few of the right breaks it's easy to envision Koza having a Mason Jennings-like following in the Twin Cities and beyond."
- Pulse of the Twin Cities (Rob van Alstyne)

On the weekend before he released the CD that should make him a star, Chris Koza probably should've been rehearsing with his band or working on a press kit or something like that. Instead, the Twin Cities' most promising new singer/songwriter was in International Falls, Minn., playing a gig at a community center for a crowd of people twice his age.
"My girlfriend's parents live up there," Koza, 26, explained. "It was a different kind of crowd. Different is good."

This little anecdote should tell you two things about the local tunesmith, who became a hot commodity last year off his debut CD, "Exit Pesce." One is that he's up for new experiences. That's the reason he's now living in the Twin Cities and not his native Portland, Ore., which he left after high school. It's also why he didn't just rehash "Exit Pesce's" winning formula for his second CD, "Patterns."

The other lesson from last weekend is that this guy has an appeal that's as broad and catch-all as the widely known definition of pornography: You'll know it when you hear him.

Folks up in International Falls dig Koza, and so do Radio K listeners. And so do I.

Week in and week out, I write about acts that I think deserve recognition. And while I absolutely mean it every time, I have no misconception that the Stnnng, P.O.S., Metallagher or some of the other nefarious acts I've raved about are going to appeal to mass audiences.

Koza is different. Even more than Mason Jennings -- the local songwriter he's most akin to -- I'd say he could fit in (and improve) the playlist at Cities 97 or go down well at Taste of Minnesota. At the same time, I'd recommend him to the snobbiest music listeners I know.

That crossover appeal is trumpeted beautifully on "Patterns," which Koza is promoting with a release party Saturday at the Turf Club.

Unlike the largely acoustic "Exit Pesce," this disc makes great use of Koza's reliable live band, which has been with him since even before his first album. They all previously performed together as a group called the Channels, which they formed while attending St. Olaf College.

"I loved playing as the Channels, but when I started writing my own songs I realized I'm not one of those people who can front different operations," Koza said. "I'd rather be a little more all over the place under a single persona."

Recorded at Pachyderm Studio -- a sharp contrast to the apartment where Koza's first CD was made -- "Patterns" utilizes the band to create wistful, rollicking folk-pop arrangements for the CD opener "Midnight Rose" and the would-be pop hit "Candle in the Dark." But the disc has plenty of darker tones, too, such as the march-like intro of "View From a Pier" and the stormy climax of "Divine Andromedary."

The latter tune features some MVP violin parts from JoAnna James, who accompanies and sings back up with Koza when she's not doing her own gigs.

In the end, though, the best thing about the disc is what also earned "Exit Pesce" so many accolades: Koza's soft, warm voice (think: Beck doing Paul Simon) and his obscure and poetic but nonetheless accessible and melodic songwriting talent (think: Jeff Tweedy doing Brian Wilson).

Some of Koza's best lines are romantic or self-reflecting, like his ode to youth in "Goldmine": "Smoking in abandoned lots / With crowded minds and hungry thoughts." He also can be vaguely political and idealistic, as in "Look Left, Look Right": "I must be dumb, I don't understand where money comes from / And why it's so hard to spend it on lessons instead of transgressions."

In person, Koza is as pleasant and unpretentious as his songs. When a ruthlessly nosy mom and daughter sitting a table over from our interview asked for his autograph, he gave them an aw-shucks smile to go with his signature.

"That's honestly the first time that's happened," he said.

It was doubtful that the giggly autograph seekers even knew Koza's music. But chances are pretty good -- great, actually -- that they'll like him when they hear him. - Star Tribune (3/30/06)

If there was any doubt Chris Koza also deserves a "best new act" slot following the buzz over his debut CD, "Exit Pesce," he settled them in front of a visibly impressed crowd last Friday at the Nomad. The high point of his set was the starry-eyed "Winning the Lottery." - Star Tribune, Minneapolis