Cub Koda: Still Smokin'

It's been a while since Cub Koda has been caught "Smokin' In The Boy's Room" with Brownsville Station, but trust us, he's kept busy.
   Songwriter's Monthly: Besides songwriting and performing, you also have a successful career as a writer. You've got an album coming out and a book coming out, how do you handle it all?
   Cub Koda: It is pretty much a seven day week around here, I won't kid you for 5 seconds about that, but it keeps it interesting for me. Come next year I will be celebrating 35 years in show business. I cut my first record in 1963 with my band in high school, The Del-Tino's, and I've been at it ever since. The liner note assignments and the "Vinyl Junkie" column [Discoveries] is something that's been going on for a good 20 years of that 35 years. I realize that I occupy a semi-unique niche in that regard, so now what I'm trying to do is combine the two and find a nice comfortable pattern where I can create and grow in all of those directions.

Liner Notes

   SM: Let's start with the liner notes aspect, how did you get started doing that?
   CK: The first batch of liner notes that I did was in 1975 for Chess Records -- at the time they were owned by All Platinum, this is back in the old vinyl days. I did a couple of two-record sets on Sonny Boy Williamson. Then I did the single Dale Hawkins disc for them. That was still when I was in Brownsville Station. Then I didn't do much in the way of writing liner notes except for friends with local records. It really started happening again around the early 1990s when I began doing liner notes for Rhino. Then the whole thing just kind of snowballed, and the next thing I know, I'm looking up at my wall here in my office/studio at my first journalism award from Living Blues magazine for doing the AVI Exello liner notes packages. Looking over at my wall over here I have close to 50 CDs with my name on them.
   SM: Where do your writing skills come from?
   CK: All of my writing strictly comes from a passion for that type of music or a particular artist. I've always maintained that there are writers who are way better writers than I am or who know way more about other artists than I do, but what makes my writing unique and different is the fact that I come from the passion of a fan -- someone who gets turned on by the magic of a laser beam hitting a disc or a needle hitting a phonograph record.
   SM: So are you pretty much a sought after commodity in this business?
   CK: I guess I am because just when I think I'm never going to be doing another one of these things, the phone will ring. For instance, Rhino has a 15 volume Blues Master series: Blues Harmonica, Slide Guitar and Blues Originals. They called me up a few weeks ago to inform me that two of the packages that I did are the best selling packages in the series, so now they would like me to do volume 2 for slide guitar and harmonica.

Blues For Dummies

   SM: Could you tell us a little bit about your current writing assignments?
   CK: If you've seen the "Dummies" series that IDG has out, it's in that format. This is the first of three music titles that they're edging into. It's for the average person who might know B.B. King is and who might have heard of Stevie Ray Vaughan, but to that person Howlin' Wolf is just a black face on a postage stamp. It's ground level basic without talking sown to the audience. There's a whole audience out there now that's coming to that music and this will be a nice guide book for them to get into it, hippin' them to the best recordings and the best clubs to go see blues at -- the important artists, the notable artists o maybe aren't legendary but deserve mention.
   SM: How did you decide who to include?
   CK: I did the All Music Guide to the Blues book last year for Miller Freeman -- I was the chief editor on that -- and I've since come to learn there is no such thing as "the definitive blues book." All you can really do is pass your passions on to the reader and let them make their own decision.
   SM: When will this project be completed?
   CK: It will be our in April, but we're getting a little bit of a tailwind on it because Lonnie Brooks my co-author on it -- is of course a blues legend in his own right recording for Alligator -- but Lonnie just got back from Toronto, filming a cameo appearance in the new Blues Brothers 2,000 movie. And Dan Aykroyd is going to be writing a quick forward to this book as well.

Songwriting

   SM: What is your take on songwriting?
   CK: On one day of the 30 Years Of  Rock And Roll tour I was on [featuring all the great rock and roll artists] while we were riding on the bus we played this game called Who do you think you really are? When you're up on stage and you're singing your tunes or you're making your record, you're influenced by someone you strive to be in your head -- even if you don't have any aspect of that person's make up musically or otherwise in your thing -- they were inspiration to you and that's who you always strive to be. When it comes to songwriting, it comes down to one name for me, Ellie Greenwich. She's my absolute songwriting heroine. When I write songs I find myself utilizing the blueprint of those Brill Building classics that she wote and writing songs that, not necessarily are like that,but songs that have that directness, that honesty and that simplicity that really drives what I consider to be hit record material.
   SM: I have to ask, words or music? Which comes first?
   CK: You always gotta have the words first. What are you trying to say? I find that if I come up with a snappy guitar riff the words end up suffering because you're trying to come up with lyrics that fit this riff.
   SM: How long does it take you to write a song?
   CK: I find that the ones you have to labor over never seem to have that edge that something that just sort of tumbles out fully formed when the muse strikes has. "Smokin' In The Boys Room" is a perfect example, that song was written in 25 minutes.
  Cub's got more liner notes coming out on various projects, a new book called Blues For Dummies soon to be available, and a new album tentatively titled Present Time. The man's a workaholic! Check out some of his fine material in the up coming months. You'll be glad you did.