Come one! Come all! Well, up to 35 people anyway. Limited seats are available for Chris + Pete's concert Saturday November 8th in St. Paul, MN in the Summit Hill Neighborhood. This is a house we haven't played before and we are beyond grateful and looking forward to welcoming those house-concert-goers who are daring enough to make the trip.

DETAILS:

Saturday November 8th doors: 7:15pm music: 8:00pm (2 sets) curfew: 9:45/10pm ALL AGES welcome tickets are $25

• some beer and wine will be available, complimentary
• guests are invited to bring a snack to share
• address will be shared upon purchase.
• anyone purchasing a ticket will receive a free download for Chris's latest solo album

BIO ::

Composer / Performer Chris Koza is an internationally-recognized Americana artist. Chris has toured the US extensively, sharing the stage with Gordon Lightfoot, Brandi Carlile, Ingrid Michaelson, Andrew Bird, Lissie, Stephen Kellogg, and many others. His music appears regularly on ABC’s General Hospital, 60 Minutes, and Good Morning America. His song (Rogue Valley) The Wolves and the Ravens was featured in Ben Stiller’s film The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, and is currently hovering around 20 million streams on Spotify alone.

Chris embraces classic Americana with a contemporary feel and utilizes a wide range of textures in creating music rooted in folk and pop, with an emphasis on storytelling. Subtle synthesizers, rich harmonies and pop-music sensibilities interweave with acoustic and electric guitars, earthy pianos, and familiar rhythms. For every song that sounds like it could be strummed from a boxcar clacking slowly across a grassy midwestern plain, there's a tune sailing from a city rooftop, echoing across a valley of streets and traffic, or a melody twisting and shimmering like a dim frequency deep into the starry night.

Longtime friend and guitarist Peter Sieve joins Chris for this house concert. The pair have been playing and performing music together since meeting over acoustic guitars in the dorms as Freshmen years ago at St. Olaf College. They’ve been at various festivals including SXSW, Iceland Airwaves and CMJ, and have covered long stretches of highway; storytellers in pursuit of a stage.

Solo, with Rogue Valley, and his moniker Nobody Kid, Chris has self-produced, written, and released seventeen albums and EP's. 2026 will see a release of both Chris Koza and Rogue Valley albums, and select performances throughout Minnesota, Colorado, California and Oregon.

SOCIAL MEDIA LINKS:

Website: https://bit.ly/32OFrwI
Facebook: https://bit.ly/39lfHdF
Instagram: https://bit.ly/2IlWyfU

On Sleepwalkers part 1, Singer-Songwriter Chris Koza scours the SKUF bin for hidden gems and deep cuts, assimilating the shifting narrative of the personal past through media, memories, dreams and possibilities enduringly almost-within-reach. Chris's first solo album since 2014's "In Real Time" is bursting at the seams with sweeping electric guitars and pulsing pianos, while a Roland Sh-101 and Juno-106 subtly lurk in the background. Sleepwalkers part 1 is at its core Americana music in the city; a collection of ten songs following a transit map of dynamic acoustic guitar, expressive vocals, and poetic lyrics that at once ponder, observe, dismiss and celebrate the awkwardness, curiosity, and clarity of youth.

There is the diner you are in, then the diner of your dreams where you see yourself sitting always; constructed of contradictory and corroborating minutia. There is the music over the jukebox; a sound collage of the fleetingly familiar and the unborn. There is the way that the light from a neon sign catches the rainfall and is reflected in wet streets which is both true and transformed. A Sleepwalker is someone who haunts or is haunted by the flux of memory and its overlay with the physical moment.

Sleepwalkers is a double album released in 2-parts. Strategically, given the evolving nature of attention spans and the sheer volume of artistic output available at any given moment, a 2-part release allows for a longer window of opportunity to reach a greater audience with new music. Artistically, part 1 and part 2 function independently in their production and stylistic choices, though complimentary and as singular narrative concept.

Basic tracks were recorded at Wild Sound Studio in NE Minneapolis and engineered by Steve Kaul. Cody McKinney (bass), Richard Medek (drums), and Peter Sieve (electric guitar) along with Chris (acoustic guitar, rhodes, piano) comprised the live band. Additional tracking and overdubs by Chris at Little Radios, also in NE Minneapolis. Guest vocals include Alicia Christenson, Becky Shaheen, and John Munson. Part 1 was mixed by Brad Bivens and mastered by Tom Garneau.

In the midwinter of 2020, Chris embarked on a writing retreat near Bearhead State Park in Northern Minnesota. At night, the subzero temperatures welcomed stars by the thousands and by day, the bright sunlight cut through frigid air and tall evergreens.

Each sunrise, Nellie and Arlo - two loyal schnauzers - nestled in close to help mitigate the chill creeping into the cabin as the fire from the previous night dwindled into coals. The cabin, set on a hill, faced Horseshoe Lake, and the vibrant hues of first light brought with it the promise of adventure, meditation, and music.

Chris sketched out ideas during morning walks on the Taconite Trail; gathered melodies while crossing the frozen lake to the unnamed island near the eastern shore; imagined textures while chopping firewood in the late afternoons; and found harmony under the later brilliance of the evening sky.

From the beginning, these songs were intended as a instrumental response to Horseshoe Lake: a soundtrack of place. Over the weeks to follow, as the world locked down amidst a deadly and frightening pandemic, Chris fleshed out arrangements for guitar, upright bass, violin, piano, and drums. As it was impossible to bring a band together to perform the music in the same space, each of the musicians had to record their performances remotely.

On Horseshoe Lake is composed and arranged by Chris Koza (guitars and vocals), and performed by Josh Misner (Jeremy Messersmith, Ondera) on violin and viola, John Munson (New Standards, Semisonic) on upright bass, Bryan Nichols (Dead Man Winter, Donna Grantis) on piano, and Alex Young (Michael Shynes, Fathom Lane) on drums and percussion. In addition to eleven instrumental compositions, the final song is a jolly sing-a-long in true campfire fashion; a song to sing when we can all gather again in-person at our favorite places. For the finale, On Horseshoe Lake, Justin Lansing (Okee Dokee Brothers) joins the band on banjo and a choir of nearly 40 singers, crowdsourced through an invitation on social media, contributed spirited vocals.

The album was mixed by Paul Marino and mastered by Tom Nunes. Accompanying the album is a book of poetry and writings by Chris. With scant exceptions all of the photography used in the album artwork and accompanying book is used with permission from the archives of Minnesota photographer Lucy Hawthorne.