![\"Lee](\"http:\/\/venturarocks.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/LeeKoch_Zoeys_12091.jpg\" "\\"Lee")
<\/a><\/p>\nVentura Rocks:\u00a0 Ok, let\u2019s just get this out of the way right now.\u00a0 Now do you pronounce your last name?<\/strong><\/p>\n Lee: Cook, like C.O.O.K.<\/p>\n Ventura Rocks:\u00a0 Doesn\u2019t look like that at all.<\/strong><\/p>\n Lee:\u00a0 Not at all. K.O.C.H., but I believe I\u2019ve come across other people over the past few years that spell and pronounce their name the same way.\u00a0 I never thought I\u2019d meet another person who spells and pronounces their name the same way except my family.<\/p>\n Ventura Rocks: And where are you from originally?<\/strong><\/p>\n Lee: Temecula, California.<\/p>\n Ventura Rocks:\u00a0Do they have a big music scene there in Temecula?<\/strong><\/p>\n Lee: No. Not at all!\u00a0 There are touring acts who play like at the casinos around there, but that\u2019s about it.\u00a0 And then there are bar bands and cover bands, but there\u2019s no venues like Zoey\u2019s here [in Ventura], where you can pay ten bucks and see a really great band you\u2019ve never heard of.<\/p>\n Ventura Rocks:\u00a0Right!<\/strong><\/p>\n Lee: Actually one day my wife and I hope to do something like that some down there in that area.<\/p>\n VR: Your own club?<\/p>\n Lee:\u00a0 Keep in touch with Polly and Steve [Zoey\u2019s owners].<\/p>\n Ventura Rocks:\u00a0Absolutely!<\/strong><\/p>\n Lee: They\u2019ll show us how to do it out in that area and guide us.<\/p>\n [At this point Nicole Koch stops by and gives hubby a kiss.\u00a0 Nicole is pregnant with their first baby, and she is glowing! After Nicole walks away Lee is now glowing as much as his wife.]<\/p>\n Ventura Rocks:\u00a0Your first?<\/strong><\/p>\n Lee: Yea.\u00a0 We\u2019re about halfway, she\u2019s due February 1st. <\/sup><\/p>\n Ventura Rocks:\u00a0(Don\u2019t you love when the man uses \u201cwe\u201d when referring to pregnancy? Their love for one another is almost tangible!)\u00a0<\/em> Wow! Congratulations!\u00a0 Do you know if it\u2019s a girl or a boy?<\/strong><\/p>\n Lee: No! We\u2019re going to wait. We like surprises.<\/p>\n Ventura Rocks:\u00a0You crazy kids.<\/strong><\/p>\n (laugh)<\/p>\n Ventura Rocks:\u00a0 Well that\u2019s awesome.<\/strong><\/p>\n Lee: Yea, we\u2019re excited.<\/p>\n Ventura Rocks:\u00a0How long have you been married?<\/strong><\/p>\n Lee:\u00a0 Two and half years.<\/p>\n Ventura Rocks:\u00a0Well that\u2019s super cool.<\/strong><\/p>\n Lee: Yea, a lot of pivotal happenings going on right now with music, and obviously a baby; it\u2019s good; it feels like you\u2019re really living life. \u00a0After being on the road, and then getting that news and doing that whole surreal TV thing!<\/p>\n Ventura Rocks:\u00a0 So tell me how the \u201cTV thing\u201d came about.<\/strong><\/p>\n Lee: Well actually I had stepped out of music to pursue a bakery with my wife and my older brother.\u00a0 I have friends who already run one in Temecula so I worked there to educate ourselves so one day we could open one of our own.<\/p>\n Ventura Rocks:\u00a0Now are you a baker or a business people?<\/strong><\/p>\n Lee: Neither.<\/p>\n Ventura Rocks:\u00a0(laughs) I\u2019M A MUSICIAN!<\/strong><\/p>\n Lee: Yea! But we just wanted to try a different avenue and we\u2019re both hard workers and we thought we\u2019d collect some business savvy along the way.\u00a0 We already learned how to bake decently.\u00a0 And then The Voice came along with an email from a guy who manages the runner up from the first season.\u00a0 His girlfriend saw me do a show at Zoey\u2019s, she bought a CD and brought it back home to him and said, \u201cYou gotta listen to this guy\u201d.\u00a0 At that time, his artist, Dia Frampton, was doing really well, she had an indie sort of voice and she ended up taking 2nd<\/sup> place on The Voice.\u00a0 So her manager sent me this email, and I wrote back and said, \u201cThanks anyway, but I\u2019m getting into baking and I\u2019m not really going to perform music anymore.\u00a0 You know, I\u2019ll always write, but not perform anymore.<\/p>\n Ventura Rocks:\u00a0You were really thinking you\u2019d never perform again?<\/strong><\/p>\n Lee:\u00a0 Yea, I had actually quit.\u00a0 I performed my last show at Zoey\u2019s as a performing musician.<\/p>\n Ventura Rocks:\u00a0Wasn\u2019t that hard?<\/strong><\/p>\n Lee: Kind of, but I never get too hung up on stuff. \u00a0You hear people say that they\u2019re going to make it no matter what, against all odds, and that\u2019s great, more power to them. I love hearing success stories.\u00a0 But I don\u2019t really beat things over the head.\u00a0 I kind of do it until it gets exhausting.<\/p>\n Ventura Rocks:\u00a0Do it as long as it feels right?<\/strong><\/p>\n Lee:\u00a0 Yea, I think I just felt stuck doing the local bar scene and I had come full circuit. \u00a0I love all those places and I\u2019m so happy I got to meet all the great people I had, but I think I was just done after five years of doing it. I did an album I was really proud of and I said I did my music thing, now let\u2019s see what else I can do. \u00a0I’d still do music for myself, my family and my friends.<\/p>\n Ventura Rocks:\u00a0So you said no to The Voice.<\/strong><\/p>\n Lee: Yea, I said no, and then he got back to me again and he said it seems like you have nothing to lose, why don\u2019t you \u00a0try it out and maybe it will get you a couple of cool shows and sell some CDs from it, and get you a little bit of exposure.\u00a0 So I said, Yea, he\u2019s right, it would probably be fun and what if I actually got on TV; that would be a trip! \u00a0Something to tell my kids. And so it happened\u2026barely, by the skin of my teeth.\u00a0 There were 120 people that it got whittled down to that did the blind audition. I probably was like the 90th<\/sup> person to go and by then I thought all the teams would be full, but I grabbed the 48th<\/sup> spot out of 48th<\/sup>.<\/p>\n As soon as I made it onto a team, Nicole and I agreed that that was kind of the push we would need, the exposure we would need to get back into music and give it one more go. For all that to happen and to not try to jump back into music, it would almost be arrogant in a way. \u00a0Oh yea I could do this, but I\u2019m not gonna\u2026 you know, people would kill to get that kind of exposure.<\/p>\n Ventura Rocks:\u00a0Absolutely.<\/strong><\/p>\n Lee:\u00a0 It would almost disrespect the people that have been so supportive of my music by not pursuing it again. \u00a0And I thought, that\u2019s not really my style. A lot of people had my back and a lot of people really supported me during the show. So the only thing to do, and the right thing to do would be hit the road again.\u00a0 We hit the road in March, so that we\u2019d be cross country while my episodes were airing, and that\u2019s exactly how it played out.\u00a0 A lot of people recognized me because the show was fresh, and I got to play a lot of venues that I would not have been able to otherwise. I pulled The Voice card and even if it\u2019s not my idea of validation of good music. It\u2019s still other people\u2019s.\u00a0 If someone famous tells them it\u2019s good, then they believe it\u2019s good. If that\u2019s how they think of me as a good musician, then I\u2019ll take it and I\u2019ll go play for them and share my original stuff.\u00a0 That was my main goal, to get my written stuff out there.<\/p>\n Ventura Rocks:\u00a0What size audiences have you been playing for?<\/strong><\/p>\n Lee: Some festivals with about 1200 people, but I\u2019m use to 50-100. So anytime there\u2019s a few hundred people, that\u2019s a good size crowd for me. \u00a0I\u2019m still an unknown in the industry for sure, even after being on national TV.\u00a0 A lot of people are on national TV nowadays, it gets played up and a lot of the other contestants are like, “As soon as I get on NBC, I\u2019ll be famous.\u00a0 It\u2019s surefire.”\u00a0 But I didn\u2019t\u2019 think that going into it. There were a lot of people that were let down as they were getting eliminated, but I was totally content because I knew I would just run with the momentum until it stopped and then hopefully we had built our own organic momentum.\u00a0 That\u2019s kind of where it\u2019s going.<\/p>\n Ventura Rocks:\u00a0 You already had so many people who believed in you.<\/strong><\/p>\n Lee: Yea definitely, the fans I do have, are super supportive, they\u2019re like super fans\u2026but not in a weird way like where they stalk me. I know most of them personally and they have become friends, some of my best friends these days are people that we\u2019ve met at shows.\u00a0 We just kept in touch and they really connected with my lyrics we usually have a lot in common, it\u2019s just really cool. \u00a0\u00a0So I just got to show some respect to them by continuing to do this music. \u00a0Like I said, I will always write, but I\u2019m going to keep recording and performing for those people who want to come out; they really long to hear me play these songs, which is really flattering.<\/p>\n Ventura Rocks:\u00a0You have a new project you\u2019re working on now?<\/strong><\/p>\n Lee:\u00a0 A new album.\u00a0 I\u2019m going to go in next month where I did my debut album with Jesse Siebenberg and use pretty much the same formula, I\u2019m going to introduce about 10-12 new songs. And we\u2019re just going to build them with some great musicians that we know and some new ones who have freed up recently.<\/p>\n Ventura Rocks:\u00a0 So the tour is wrapping up?<\/strong><\/p>\n Lee:\u00a0 The tours been great.\u00a0 We\u2019ve been on the road since March; we went up to Alaska, across the South to the East coast and back to do this West coast tour for the last two months. \u00a0\u00a0So from March until now, mid September, we\u2019ve only been home for about a month.<\/p>\n Ventura Rocks:\u00a0You\u2019re wife has been on the road with you?<\/strong><\/p>\n Lee:\u00a0 Oh yeah.\u00a0 That\u2019s the only way we\u2019d do it. As long as we\u2019re together whether it\u2019s baking or music, we just want to be together, and now with our little baby.\u00a0 Any extra money that we raise from this fundraiser that we\u2019re doing through Kickstarter, which is done in four days\u2026<\/p>\n Ventura Rocks:\u00a0 How far are you away from your goal?<\/strong><\/p>\n Lee:\u00a0 We\u2019re two-thirds.\u00a0 We\u2019re at 16 grand, we need 24.\u00a0 If we do go over, by the grace of God, we\u2019re going to put it towards a small motor home and take the baby out after the next album is done, and just keep doing this as a family.\u00a0 And whatever musicians are brave enough to come along with the baby\u2026we\u2019ll see!<\/p>\n We hope it’s for a very long time.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Interview with Lee Koch 9\/19\/12 Ventura Rocks sat down with Lee Koch just after his sound check before his show at Zoey\u2019s recently. Ventura Rocks:\u00a0 Ok, let\u2019s just get this out of the way right now.\u00a0 Now do you pronounce … Continue reading
\n<\/a><\/em><\/strong> Note:\u00a0 <\/em><\/strong><\/em><\/strong><\/em><\/strong>L<\/em><\/strong><\/em><\/strong>ee mad<\/em><\/strong><\/em><\/strong>e is target on his birthday 46 hours before the deadline.\u00a0 Total pledges after all was said and done were $25,360. \u00a0Looking forward to the new release and watching Lee hit the road with family in tow…as long as it feels right.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n