Noah Kohll & Corey Madden - Color Green Interview
Kohll and Madden both grew up in the 90’s and were influenced by the likes of Hendrix, Prince, The Stones, and The Band’s The Last Waltz. Playing in various projects before meeting each other, the duo would soon hit it off in New York, sharing a mutual fondness for the classic rock bands of the day, they then decided to ultimately invest in their friendship and immediate, artistic chemistry and form one of the coolest bands out right now, Color Green. With the release of their groundbreaking EP, the band would soon link up with the likes of Aquarium Drunkard and ORG Music to release their 2022 full length LP, putting them in direct contact with the sun to take over the system!
When and where were you born? What was your childhood like? When did you first begin to fall in love with music? Was this something that was relevant around your household growing up?
Noah Kohll (NK) - I was born in Omaha, Nebraska in the 90s. For a while I felt a bit like a social outcast that found a lot of difficulty finding an inner circle, my parents divorced when I was six so that caused me to be moving around a lot and thus changing school districts and what not, all of this and a lacking presence of parenting caused me to build an independence that I feel grateful for today, and caused me to be creatively obsessive in finding solace in art and music. My mom worked at a record store and would always drive around listening to Hendrix and Prince, that kinda hooked me, hearing these wild and weird introverted artists expressing themselves through their guitars, my dad on the other hand was a meat-head pharmacist, but he loved AC/DC and The Band, I remember him showing me The Last Waltz at a very young age and I tried to wrap my head around how I could end up like a strung out Danko and Manuel, but besides being fans, no one in my family has a musical bone in their body, I think the exposure to their listening and the fact that music was an escape caused me to be an enamored little freak.
Corey Madden (CM) - I was born in the early 90's in New Jersey. I'm sure I could be filed under classic little shit head with his shit head friends doing shit head things, ya know? I couldn't honestly remember the first thing that drew me to music, but when I was around 12 one of my brother's best friends gave me Squier strat (still own) and that pretty much changed everything for me. I was the worst skateboarder out of my friend group so instead of going out to skate all the time I just stayed home playing guitar 24/7. I don't really think music was always being jammed in my house too much, but in the car is where the action went down. My mom showed me all the classic rock jams and my dad had such an odd taste, but he loved Motown and would eventually be the reason I heard Let it Bleed by The Stones.
Do you have any siblings? What would you and your friends do for fun growing up? Who were some of your earliest influences in your more formative years? When and where did you see your first show and when did it dawn on you that you wanted to be a musician yourself?
NK- I have two older half siblings that are both involved in the world of psychedelic healing, but most of my childhood I was by myself because they were much older than me. I was exposed to live music at an early age, I vaguely remember my first concert, which was in Aspen, Colorado featuring a line up of Neil Young, Tom Petty and Willie Nelson, but I was 2 so I don't remember much of that event. I didn't really find a solid friend group that didn't take advantage of the fact that I had an unmonitored household until I was a freshman in high-school, and we would do classic kid shit, take more psychedelics in a week then you should, listen to The Beatles, try to write songs that didn't sound like garbage, do our best to not get suspended, classic stuff. Besides the Beatles, I would listen to a lot of local music and I started going to house shows at an early age. Folks like David Nance, Noah Sterba and the cocktails, The Prairies, Simon Joyner, and Capgun Coup, really put a mark on my creative viewpoint at an early age. I remember I met my dear old friend Mike Marasco at a record store and I thought he was so cool, so I would skip class and walk down to the now defunct Antiquarium Records in downtown omaha and try to win him over by giving him free pizza and cigarettes, in return he would recommended me the weirdest 7 inches from unread records. groovy private press lps, and byrds adjacent records. He also gifted me Lester Bangs "Psychotic Reactions" when I was a junior in high school, and that really fucked up my opinions still to this day... Thanks Mike!
CM- I have one older brother, who played a huge part in my life. I'm sure my mom made him drag me around, but I would hang out with the "older kids" a lot. He's a rocker and showed me so many things that I still love today. We would fight and be shitty to each other until we sort of had this crazy brotherly bond over Black Sabbath. After that we were like... You know that scene in Predator when Schwarzenegger and Carl Weathers link up again? We're like that. He would show me "DIY" and eventually started taking me to local gigs/basement shows... There's a vague memory of seeing The Casualties at the VFW hall in my hometown. That might have been the first show I went to but the first show I truly remember was the Allman brothers. Between that larger scale gig and watching my brother play/seeing local shows I was hooked.
When and where did you play your first gig and what was that experience like? Did you participate in any groups, or projects prior to Color Green? How did you guys initially meet each other? What initially led to the decision to form the group as well as come up with the name? What was the overall chemistry like during those early jam sessions when you first started playing together?
NK- One of my first gigs was at an all ages club in Omaha called "The Hole", where you literally walked through a hole in the wall to enter. I played drums in a riot grrrl band called The Howl, I think i was 13 years old, if I remember correctly it was pretty atrocious. After that I had a number of projects and escapades, a surf rock band called Adult Films, a psychedelic rock band called Skeleton man, a synth punk band called Tit (spelled with two upside down t's), a noise rock collective called Drillshot but I was mostly active in this band called Coaxed, where we did as many drugs as possible before we played, that band then spawned a project called Navy Gangs that eventually moved to New York and had some traction out there. More recently I have been involved with Young Guv, a solo project of Ben Cook from No Warning, and Surf Curse, a recently "viral" indie rock band. Corey Madden and I met in New York, we worked together delivering coffee beans for stumptown. We had a likeness and fascination for our classic rock heros and an affinity for the band acetone, everything kinda clicked in this extremely organic way that I haven't experienced since or after, a natural happening.
CM- My first show was at the "Bloomfield Ave Cafe", I saw so many gigs there, so it was very intimidating to play there as a teenager. The show sucked and I can guarantee we were a horrible band haha. I've played in a variety of bands over the years, but most recently since moving to LA a somewhat short lived band Richard Rose, Grave Flowers Bongo Band, Paranoiac and most recently a self named solo project. With Color Green, we really only had about 1, or 2 jams at my practice space in Brooklyn at the time, Noah on drums and me on guitar. It was a natural fit and I think we both knew we could do something cool.
Tell me about writing and recording the band’s magnificent EP in 2021. I’ve been unable to lay this down since I first heard it and I must say “In My Mind” is one of the best songs I’ve heard in a long time. What was the process and approach to crafting these tracks? Would you mind giving a brief background to these tracks and what you guys wanted to achieve and express?
NK- Thanks for the compliment! Our EP was written in a basement in Ridgewood, Queens in 2018 as Corey and I were going through a major transitional time in our life. I think most of the songs were written in ways that came as I have said before, organically. It was all about the process of examining what was happening in our immediate life, and trying to look at the tools of our favorite songwriters before us as muses to craft an idea or expression. We didn't have any goals while making it, we had no idea that people would even listen to it, we were just doing it to do, out of the love for creating.
CM- I think we had 90% of "Night" down just between those jams we did. I remember that feeling really special. Yea to what Noah said, there really wasn't a goal we just did for ourselves ultimately. "In My Mind" was probably the first song I wrote that wasn't rooted in this kind of loud rock guitar vibe, so personally for me It felt cool to spread out more, appreciate the kind words.
You released two other singles with the folks over at ORG Music and Maximum Exposure as well before your 2022 LP. Tell me about writing and recording this album. You guys really put together a wonderful ensemble of musicians together to help bring this to life! How did you guys want to approach this material that's different from the previous works as a duo? How much did having other folks influence not only the music, but the overall reality of expressing your art?
NK- I was on tour with Young Guv filling in on bass when the world shut down. Ben, Tony (of Maximum Exposure), Bobbie Lovesong and I had no place to go, so we ended up winging it to Taos, eventually ending up in an earthship where we hunkered down for 9 months, going on hikes and writing music. Corey and our friend Mike Kriebel joined us to get out of the hell of Los Angeles, which inspired Corey and I to write a new album, following the release of our EP on Tony's label. In terms of a different approach, we decided to record it a lil more high-fi in our friend Jonny Kosmo's studio in Highland Park, which is where we ended up after our time in New Mexico. The collective surroundings regarding artistic influence has been attested to since the birth of humanity, and I feel deeply that the greatest forms are made within a collective, or community of people that you are akin to, I'll always stand by that.
CM- I was In NJ dealing with some very heavy family stuff and eventually drove out to Taos, which was so needed and would lead to us shaping the first LP. So when we landed back in LA it was time for us to get cracking and tie up loose ends of what we wrote and finally see everything sort of align. We spent a lot of time in Noah's shed in LA writing and rewriting.
I’d love to know some of the back history to tracks such as “Ain’t It Sad”, “Bell Of Silence”, “Blizzed Out” and “Ill Fitting Suit”. You guys worked with the wonderful folks over at AD on this release. How has that experience been like for you guys?
NK- Most of the songs were written in between Taos and Los Angeles, with some bursts of roadside motels claiming fame to some of the conception. I moved into a closet when I got to Los Angeles, I actually still live in the closet to this day, but included in that deal is a decent sized shed, the shed has become a place for us to grease out lyrical inspiration as well as sonic affirmations. Bell Of Silence was written in about a span of 5 hours, it was the last song written for the record and most of the instrumentation was recorded in the beloved shed. Corey and I ate LSD and listened to the original demo of it while sitting in an off-path field in topanga, I recall it really solidified the feeling that we were tapping into things that we were creatively yearning for. The basis of all of this is conversation of concept then following through at the best of your abilities, that's how I think "Ill Fitting Suit" and "Blizzed Out" worked out to their end. A lot of "what ifs and why don't we" are included in the process, and obviously everything swirling around your face within all senses has an effect on what is being put out creatively.
CM- Ain't it sad might be the only piece of music that had pre-existing parts to it. It finally had a home in Color Green that made sense. Like most people, we both have an affinity to cruising around, blasting music and just taking scenes in, so it's sort of a love letter to that and the art of hanging out. I think Noah and I can both agree that AD has been an absolute pleasure to work with, we haven't felt anything, but support from Justin, the team, and Andrew from ORG. It's really cool to make close friends along the way that resonate with the music.
What have you guys been up to more recently? Are you working on anything new for Spring/Summer? Is there anything else you would like to further share with the readers?
NK- We just finished up our second record, which is really exciting and we have plans for some touring later this summer as well a show at Gold Diggers in May. We have a lot of things in the works at the moment to prepare us for an epic 2024, so stay tuned!
