All Blues: Greg Koch Connects with Devon Allman and Revisits His Record Collection
photo: CJ Foeckler
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As Greg Koch prepared to release his first album for Devon Allman’s label, he faced a quandary.
Allman wanted to start things out by issuing a record that would serve as an introduction to Koch’s music by offering a retrospective of the material that the guitarist’s guitarist had released over the preceding three decades.
Koch recalls, “At this point, I’ve got over 20 records, and Devon said, ‘Why don’t you pick out a dozen tunes and we’ll put that out.’ So I told him: ‘Dude, my stuff is all over the map.’”
“There’s always been a soft underbelly of blues because, to me, it’s all the same,” he continues. “But other people have responded, ‘Is that blues? Is that rock? Is that jazz?’ That’s when I said to him: ‘A lot of folks come up to the merch table after we get done playing and ask what our bluesiest record is.’ I tell them the same thing: ‘They all have blues on them.’ I’d always felt that the blues form has been done a million times, so I might as well add stuff to it and make something different.”
“I guess I’ve always been a wise-ass about that, alienating the people who just wanted the three-chord interpretations,” Koch laughs. “So I suggested to Devon: ‘Why don’t we just make it easy. I’ll go into the back catalog and pick out songs that are as much three-chord blues songs as possible. He liked that idea and there was enough of that stuff to put together this release.”
The aptly titled Blues, which Allman’s Create Records released in November, presents a series of Koch originals, along with songs written by Muddy Waters, Freddie King, T-Bone Walker and Jimi Hendrix. These artists all represent stages of Koch’s musical evolution.
While growing up in Wisconsin, he explains, “I was the youngest of seven. My brother was the oldest of seven, but there were five girls in between, so we roomed together. I listened to all of his records, and I remember, from a very early age, being enamored with Hendrix. When I still had to take naps, I would insist that they put on Axis: Bold as Love. I remember making cardboard cutouts of Hendrix’s Strat.”
Koch’s Hendrix enthusiasm eventually led him to dig deeper. He remembers, “I did a report on him when I was in third grade. This neighbor, who was a little older, was a huge Hendrix fanatic and had a book that I used as a reference. Every time I read anything about Hendrix, I saw the names Muddy Waters, B.B. King, Freddie King, Howlin’ Wolf and Albert King. Then as I got older, it was important for me to connect the dots if I was going to get my mind around what fascinated me about Hendrix, Eric Clapton, Duane Allman, Dickey Betts, Mike Bloomfield, Jeff Beck, Jimmy Page, Johnny Winter and so on.”
As Koch continued to develop, he expanded into jazz realms. Some of Hendrix’s phrasings on Electric Ladyland connected the budding guitarist to Kenny Burrell and then George Benson. From there, it was Robben Ford and Larry Carlton. Then came Mike Stern, John Scofield and Allan Holdsworth.
All of this informed his efforts with Greg Koch and the Tone Controls, who released a self-titled album in 1993. “We were very popular at the time in Wisconsin, but we found it difficult to expand because we didn’t fit into a particular mold. We’d hear that we were too blues for this and too rock for that. We didn’t have a home and we were not interested in any kind of commercial presentation. We were like, ‘No, if you’re good, you play and things will happen.’”
While Koch attained growing recognition for his music, he simultaneously garnered awareness for his work as an educator.
“At one point, I got married and, all of a sudden, I had two kids,” he explains. “I was playing in my band and doing jingle sessions in Chicago, while also Mr. Momming it because my wife had the superior day gig with the benefits and the real money. Then, at one point, when we were going to have our third kid, she was like, ‘If it’s possible, could you fire up your game a little bit so that I could maybe stay home with the kids, even if just for a year? That would be awesome.’”
He eventually was able to accomplish this goal when a Fender rep witnessed Koch in action at the music store where he worked and invited him to lead a guitar clinic. Koch’s enthusiasm, humor and know how made for a winning combo and soon prompted an offer from Milwaukee-based Hal Leonard to update their signature Guitar Method books.
“The first one I did was on the blues,” he notes. “Then I did a Stevie Ray Vaughan Signature Licks DVD for them [in 2003], which focused on his riffs and solos. Since I grew up listening to Albert King, B.B. King, Freddie King and Hendrix, I had that familiarity. Again, whatever it took for my wife to stay home with those savages.”
Over the two decades to follow, Koch has continued to balance the life of a touring and recording artist, while producing instructional materials.
Allman reached out to Koch on Instagram after watching a few of the 4,000 videos he has created for Wildwood Guitars. The two began talking about gear and soon struck up a friendship.
Allman then attended a St. Louis appearance by the Koch Marshall Trio, which also consists of Koch’s son Dylan on drums (a savage player) and Toby Lee Marshall (a wily veteran who gigged with Lonnie Brooks as a teen).
“When he saw us, he was like, ‘What’s happening here? Why isn’t this place totally packed?’” Koch recollects. “He had a bunch of ideas about how to expand our listenership. We have a big Hendrix-related project we’re still talking about, but first he wanted to raise the band’s profile with this record.”
Blues also features two previously unreleased Muddy Waters covers that Koch had recorded during COVID. Allman’s enthusiasm for these tracks led to the addition of Larry McCray on “Can’t Be Satisfied,” as well as Jimmy Hall and The Memphis Horns on “Can’t Lose What You Never Had.”
Koch, who recently opened 10 shows for The Allman Betts Band and is currently touring with Devon Allman’s Blues Summit, remains exuberant about the state of his own group. The guitarist reveals, “We’ve started gravitating toward more high energy iterations of my back catalog now that we’re promoting this blues record. There’s more vocal stuff along with the hallmark, crazy instrumental tunes that I used to do back in the day. It’s really taken off, and it’s been an absolute blast to go out there and just pummel.”
As he considers the album as a whole, Koch observes, “What’s wild is that some people are telling me: ‘It’s weird to hear you play normal music, but I love it!’ Others are letting me know how much they enjoy a particular version of a song and I think to myself: ‘Man, that’s 30 years old.’ But as Devon would say, ‘It’s new to everybody who hasn’t heard it.’ He’s absolutely right about that.”
