Interview // Color Green
Photo by James Matthew
Color Green is the cosmic American rock group formed by Noah Kohll and Corey Madden who released their superb debut EP last year with Maximum Exposure. Kohll joins us to describe the origins and functionality of his new band, the spiritual guidance of Jerry Garcia, the importance of artistic collaboration, and what’s upcoming for Color Green.
Tell us about the origins of Color Green and how the new EP took form.
Color Green formed between Corey Madden and I around the summer of 2018. We were both delivering coffee throughout NYC. We would spend days driving around the city listening to WFMU and organizing trades with record stores for bags of coffee beans. I remember around that time, Light In The Attic reissued some Acetone recordings. Amongst myself, Corey was the only person I knew who also resonated deeply with those recordings. Through talks of that, we decided to start a recording project, no solid plans or anything of what to do with them, but more like a loose improvised melting pot of these sonic happenings that were influencing our daily lives.
We were both in periods of transition at the time of recording the album. I recently moved out of a living situation with an ex-girlfriend and was aimlessly living around Ridgewood. Corey was gearing up to leave NYC to move to LA as well, so there were a lot of moving parts. We would meet up in the Mystery Lights basement studio I was living in and we would record improvised jams on my Tascam 488 once or twice a week. It was honestly electric, we had a harmonious way of playing with each other that feels very rare these days, and through that we formed "Night" and "Redeux," the first and last songs of the EP. For the other two tracks, "Newspaper Headline" and "In My Mind," we brought in separately, which sort of encapsulates the emotional transition that we were both going through during that time. After building off the tracks ourselves, we had the pleasure of having our pal Jon "Catfish" Delorme lay down some ethereal steel while at the same keeping him loaded up with whatever coping mechanisms we were using at the time, if ya catch what I’m fishing, heh.
Ultimately we sat on the recordings for a while. We were not that sure what we were going to do with them, until I played them for Tony Price of Maximum Exposure, Ben Cook of Young Guv, and my girlfriend during the time, Bobbie Lovesong. The three of them really helped push the vision into full form and this project wouldn't exist without their support.
You’ve mentioned that the EP draws on emotions harvested from time spent in different parts of California. Can you describe some of those spaces and how those environments impacted the music and your recording process?
In physical form, the EP was recorded in Ridgewood, Queens in a swampy basement, but I can attest to things on a higher conscious plane that the great Western open wide absolutely influenced the sonic explorations of the record. Corey and I have spent most of our lives grinding through the backbones of America touring for a plethora of groups. Through those seemingly endless drives, late night chiefing smokes, downing cold ones, eating garbage food, and sleeping on floors formed a certain perspective that I assume a lot of fellow hired guns and working class musicians resonate with.
You spend a lot of time looking out windows. You don't really see the cities you play that much. Mostly you are riding that white line, so once you cross the threshold of space in western Nebraska, into the Rocky Mountains, and then being spit out in the post-apocalyptic beauty of California something happens to your mind. You ultimately feel free, but like a sort of freedom that is bound to the suspended ambiguity of the human condition. It kind of reminds me of the consistent metaphorical jargon that Gene Clark would spit on "No Other;" this idea of a pessimistic hopefulness, the feeling of being dragged in the slime of the proverbial universal slug, and not being able to do anything else but to hang out and hang on, ‘cause you ain’t got nowhere to go except wherever you are being dragged....
How do you and Corey Madden, the other half of the project, split the songwriting duties for Color Green? How does the collaboration extend into the recording and production side of the project?
The process of writing for Color Green is extremely organic. Either Corey or myself will come in with an idea, a riff, or a fully written song, and we will pick it apart and refine it until it sits in the right place. We also base our writing off of freeform improvisation, kind of playing ideas off each other. The melodic harmony that we sometimes pull out of each other is really wild and we always tend to be on the same page with our ideas which makes working in the studio and producing a breeze. I think the most notable aspect about our dynamic is that we trust each other about our decisions and our taste even though sometimes we don't agree on everything.
I remember recently when we were recording with our friend Johnny Kosmo at Slime House Studios, Kosmo was recording a Wurlitzer part for a section of a new song. I was on one side of his ear and Corey was at the other. I kept trying to get Mr. Kosmo to rip a little like Brent Mydland and I was egging him on. Corey on the other side was trying to get him to be real minimal and laid back and somehow Mr. Kosmo took both of our interpretations and met them in the middle and it worked out perfectly. We always tend to be really good at finding that sweet spot of space and noise.
This natural balance also goes into our lyric writing. The chemistry of our friendship, humor and depth transfers well onto paper. We do it the same way we make our music. Usually at first it’s spontaneous and followed by a slow refinement. Reading poetry and smoking weed helps too...
Photo by Tessa Binder
The music and culture of the Grateful Dead has been expressed as something that'd guided you as an artist and individual. What are your earliest memories with the Dead that began to shape your love of Jerry and the gang? What parts of Color Green feel most influenced by the Dead?
I could honestly write an essay on this and people who know me well have heard me blabber on and on about how the Grateful Dead and Jerry Garcia saved my life. There have been lots of moments within the past where I felt completely lost, unmotivated and down right depressed and popping on some random live show from 1982 or what have you has brought me back from the gutter.
I recall being exposed to the Dead at a very early age. My older siblings’ father was a head. He attended lots of shows in the 70s when he was going to school in Berkeley running an underground far left newspaper. I have these vague memories of staring at the cover of American Beauty and being extremely dumbfounded by the psychedelic mandala of the art that kinda terrifying in its own way and that being juxtaposed with the warm sunshine glow of hearing “Box of Rain” on the turntable. That notion of the balance of the light and dark always has resonated deeply within me and I feel that the Dead and Jerry have a pinpointed mastery on expressing all things strange, beautiful and weird within this life. It honestly blows my mind even thinking about it now because I went from deeply interested, to my rebellious and angry adolescence where I deeply attested the Dead, and back to an endless obsession of all things Dead and Dead-adjacent while studying ethnomusicology at The New School.
There is also something to be said about the vibrational frequency that seeps through the sonic pathways with this type of music, especially in the way that Jerry Garcia plays guitar. The dedication and focus and downright basic worship through the collective consciousness of the Deadhead world is extremely powerful, and that creates an even more complex and dynamic feel for his music. For some, hearing his playing is literally like being one step closer to the divine, or seeing the Dalai Lama in person. In stark contrast with this divine nature there is also an extreme humbling aspect of the band's work in the sense that their imperfections lead to their draw. I can’t tell you all the countless times I’m listening to some live Dead set and their harmonies, timing, tuning and downright melodies are off, but there is comfort in knowing that even the greatest players in the world are biffing it hard on stage in front of thousands of people. I try to remind myself of this every time I have to play live, It also goes in tune with the basic philosophy I live in this life, which is the saying “Even Jerry Flubs.”
Color Green’s music has a shared love/hate relation with the Dead. I am the Jerry champion in the band and Corey is more of a Duane Allman head. I’m constantly finding performances where the Allman Brothers and the Grateful Dead are sharing members or jamming together on stage, and in my mind that’s the butter where Green is churned. The continuation and exploration of the weirdness of what it means to be American and how exactly that fits in this day and age is consistent within the exploration of the music we are making.
Aside from Color Green, you work alongside many other groups such as Dark Tea, Young Guv, and Current Joys. What are some things that you've learned as an artist and recording musician from your time spent working and performing with those folks?
Personally, I think the art and act of collaboration can stir the cauldron of musical harmony to the highest degree of fruitfulness, something which I believe is hard to achieve while working alone. I feel extremely fortunate to have people in my life that are at all times inspiring within the creative field, and that they trust me to help lift their work to a higher vibration. D.I.Y. and independent music wouldn't exist without the community that surrounds it, and the support within it is one of the strongest forces of nature I have ever reckoned with.
Working within these groups taught me lessons within my life that not only apply to the music itself but also expands beyond, into the forcefields of life itself, and throughout all of it, the greatest aspect of community is that we all try to reach for the same thing which is exploring and relating with the relationships we have with the self, one another, and the environments we are exposed to on daily basis. On a more practical level, working with my close friends and mentors provides a keen sense of listening, the ability to hear what others are doing, to know how to fit in with their aesthetic, and weave in and out of theirs with mine to further push and explore their musical creations to levels that might not exist without the freedom of expression. Even though sometimes ideas might not translate well, there is usually an openness to hear one another out. Overall, cycling back into Color Green, playing with these people creates an openness within myself to let ideas from others be taken as opportunities and not as ways to compromise the vision of what I am trying to create. Nothing should be taken for granted in the world of our musical community.
What's next for Color Green?
We just finished up recording our full length LP and it is currently in the mastering state, which is very exciting. It was recorded all on tape with Johnny Kosmo and had Young Guv produce the vocals. It sounds straight symphonic to say the least and I'm looking forward to people being able to hear it. Other than that, we are hoping to start gigging soon, whenever that may happen, all in all I can say is just stay tuned...
Purchase Color Green’s debut self-titled EP out now via Maximum Exposure.