Koch Marshall Trip

About the Band: Koch Marshall Trio
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.”

Koch Marshall Trio to Release
From The Up’Nuh
Second organ trio outing from
guitar fiend Greg Koch pulls out all the stops
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 followup, 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

KOCH MARSHALL TRIO

“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
Bill Milkowski is a contributor to Down Beat and Jazziz magazines. He
is also the author of “JACO: The Extraordinary and Tragic Life of Jaco
Pastorius” and co-author of “Here And Now! The Autobiography of
Pat Martino” (both Backbeat Books)