Greg Koch

Milwaukee native Greg Koch has forged a successful career as “a guitar player’s guitarist.” He is not only a fiercely creative player with a whole trick bag of impressive techniques, ranging from Albert Lee chicken-pickin’ to Albert King string-bending to all-out Hendrixian abandon, he is also is a clinician for Fishman Transducers and his wildly popular “guitar test drive” videos (4,000 to date) for Wildwood Guitars of Louisville, Colorado have generated 50 million views. Koch also has a signature axe which was released in 2019 by Reverend Guitars, named the Greg Koch Signature Gristlemaster. The guitar colors were given somewhat humorous names like: Kochwork Orange, and Blucifer. He is also a best-selling method book author and video instructor for music publisher Hal Leonard and a contributing columnist for a variety of guitar magazines including Guitar Player. Guitar great Steve Vai, who released Koch’s 2001 album The Grip on his own Favored Nations label, heaped praise on his fellow guitarist: “Greg Koch is one of those rare guitarists that can blend various styles with a light-hearted approach and a tremendous amount of technique. Hearing him play is inspiring to a guitar player to try to achieve greatness on the instrument.”

Dylan Koch gravitated to the drums early on in his life, using kitchen utensils to play along with music as soon as he could walk. After digesting an early diet of Ginger Baker, Keith Moon, Mitch Mitchell, and John Bonham, Dylan was mentored by the legendary Tom Brechtlein (Chick Corea/Robben Ford). In high school, Dylan participated in the Jazz Institute at the Wisconsin Conservatory of Music and furthered his studies at the McNally Smith School of Music in the Twin Cities. While still in his teens, he performed with young guitar guns Tallan Noble Latz and Jared James Nichols and has performed alongside his father with such artists as Robben Ford, Little Feat’s Paul Barrere, Jon Cleary, David Grissom, Roscoe Beck, and Malford Milligan. Dylan was recently nominated for drummer of the year by the Wisconsin Area Music Awards (WAMI). Says proud papa Koch, “This is the third official recording with the kid. And what’s great about it is, you can’t teach the grease. And he gets it. He gets the filth. I guess he’s just got my filthy DNA.”

Hailing from the Twin Cities area, Toby Lee Marshall came from a musical family, playing piano for years until falling under the spell of the sound of the organ while at a baseball game at age seven. His fascination for the Hammond B3 took hold after his Dad took him to see Steve Cherewan playing with Dr. Mambo’s Combo during their legendary residency at Bunker’s in Minneapolis. Steve mentored Toby in the ways of the B3 and he hit the ground running, landing a gig with bluesman Lonnie Brooks while still a teen. He would go on to travel the world as a member of Bernard Allison’s band. Following a long hiatus from music, Toby has returned to the music scene with a vengeance in the smoking Koch-Marshall Trio. “Toby had actually retired from music,” Koch explained. “He decided to stop touring for several years to help raise his two young kids. But now he’s so excited to be playing in this trio because it’s just such a perfect format for him to let his freak flag fly. It’s the perfect combination of this kind of churchy, bluesy, funky, jazzy, rock, chicken-pickin’ thing, and he fits right in.”

While 2017’s Toby Arrives heralded the coming out party of Minneapolis-based Hammond B-3 organ burner Toby Lee Marshall, the Koch Marshall Trio takes things up a notch on their genre-hopping follow-up, From The Up’Nuh. Their first release on Koch Marshall Productions not only showcases Marshall’s incendiary organ playing alongside the fiendish fretboard work of Wauwatosa-based guitar master Greg Koch and the power-pocket playing of his drummer son Dylan, it also reflects the remarkable chemistry they established on the road in the wake of Toby Arrives.

“We were gigging a lot right up until the lockdown,” said Koch, who has been been described as “scary good” by guitar phenom Joe Bonamassa and named one of the “Top Ten Unsung Guitarists” by Fender Guitars. “We were doing shows on the West Coast and in Texas quite a bit and touring with the band in Europe. People were coming out to our gigs, and the response was real good. And then COVID hit.”

While half of From The Up’Nuh was already in process before COVID-19 altered the musical landscape, the rest was done during lockdown at engineer Steve Hamilton’s Makin’ Sausage Music studio in Milwaukee. This blues-drenched outing travels from rock-tinged workouts like the potent instrumentals “Luna Girl” and “The Tussle” to the Booker T & The MGs-styled “Funky Klaus,” the jazzy uptempo swinger “Brushes,” a R&B/ gospel-flavored “Soul Stroll” and the Zappa-esque “Nubby the Hoarder Man.” Add in Koch’s toe-curling tip o’ the hat to towering influences Albert King (“Drowning on Dry Land”) and Johnny Guitar Watson (“Real Mother For Ya”) and a humorous Covid-centric vocal number (“QuaranTonne,” a shuffle blues anthem about trying to lose all the weight gained during lockdown) and you’ve got classic gristle from the Koch Marshall Trio.

“The band has really come into its own,” said Koch, who has 18 releases as a leader on multiple record labels, all showcasing his unique take on a variety of American guitar styles. “We’ve been doing live streams during the pandemic and people are digging on it. Everyone’s chomping at the bit to get back on the road again. So we just need to get this album out there and let people know that it exists. We’ve already pre-sold a ton of copies of that thing, and it’s not even officially out yet. They’re arriving by mid-April and we’re going to sign them and get them out by the end of April. And it won’t go live digitally until April 30.”

Guitar fans can expect a torrent of slick chicken-picking, grimace-inducing string-bending and urgent gristle tones from master Koch when From The Up’Nuh finally hits on Koch Marshall Productions.

[Bill Milkowski]