March 24, 1973: Singer-songwriter Michael Koren

 

Meet a reluctant performer who’d really rather be behind the scenes. 

March 24, 1973

Michael Koren Grows Up the Musical Scale 

YOU’D EXPECT the Korens would be, well, not exactly pleased with their son Michael’s decision to drop out of his major in speech therapy at Ohio University, especially when he was doing so well.

          Not that he wanted to quit school, you understand. Ohio had just opened an experimental program and Michael thought his senior year would be better spent songwriting. He’d work under the guidance of a professor and get a general studies degree.

          “It was really a good program for me,” he remarks. “My folks thought it was destined that I be a speech therapist, but we’ve had many conversations about it and they know exactly what I want to do. They’ve even gotten very protective of what I’m doing since I’ve gotten good reviews.”

* * *

MICHAEL’S FATHER, in fact, has proudly collected and copied a couple of them from January. The one from Case Western Reserve in Cleveland that ranks him with other budding coffeehouse performers who went on to stardom.

          And the one from University of Michigan describing him as a cross between Cat Stevens and Donovan, both of these inside a folder which shows Michael walking carefree down an archetypal country dirt road, guitar over his shoulder.

          Since graduation last June, he’s been on the Ohio coffeehouse circuit, being booked by another Ohio U. student who does that sort of thing between studies.

          The jobs came slow at first, fast after the first of the year, and it was enough to put 27,000 miles on Michael’s year-old Toyota station wagon.

* * *

IT ALSO SHARPENED the determination that flickers under his almost-shy politeness and inlaid his boyish enthusiasm with a magnetic sort of self-realization, both of which become evident as he talked one gray afternoon in the sunporch of his parents’ North Buffalo home.

          “One of the reasons I’m back here,” he’s saying, “aside from regaining my sanity after being on the road, is to work on those Nashville studio tracks, add some harmonies and some cowbell.”

          His tape recorder’s set up in the Koren’s elegant dining room and the Nashville demo tape is in it, the one that noted country fiddler Vassar Clements helped him so much with (see box).

          The trouble with the Nashville tape is that the sound isn’t alive enough. “The engineer made the vocal kind of trebly,” Michael explains, “and I like a round sound.

          “I’m going back to Cincinnati for a while to record, then I’m going to compile all my tapes and come up with a true demo.”

* * *

THE DEMO will be the key to the next step he’s mapped for his career – New York City, where he expects to find a music publisher, a manager and a record contract.

          His greatest ambition at the age of 22, however, is not to be a star performer, but to get behind the scenes, directing with his ideas. He’d like to be a producer.

          “The thing I enjoyed most about the Nashville session,” he says, “was that I produced it. I like arranging things in different ways.”

          Michael Koren started piano lessons when he was six (his mother having been a semi-professional pianist), but soon was learning popular songs on his own and ignoring his teacher.

          These days his sets include a rollicking honky-tonk piano section with songs like The Beatles’ “I Call Your Name” and The Blues Project’s “I Can’t Keep From Cryin.’”

* * *

AT 10, HE WAS into music store guitar lessons, playing “Louie, Louie” and the like with neighborhood friends. He also endured some classical guitar instruction.

          “I was in three different bands in high school at Park School,” he says. “For two years, I was in Static Code, which played around this area. We used to go around in a little red van and my father would drive us. My father – he’s my champion, my promo man.

          “I started writing songs in college almost out necessity, I think. You know how it is when you’re on your own, cooped up in a dorm room with an acoustic guitar.

          “I always enjoyed the lyrical melodic stuff, so I got into acoustic and started performing acoustically around Ohio U.

* * *

“I AUDITIONED for the big night club there, the one that brings in national acts, in my sophomore year. They liked it and I played there. I was mostly into songwriting then, though. I’m always into long-range thinking and then I thought I should write songs to have a backing for later on.”

          Most of the songs from that period are quiet and searching, like his “A Mountain to Climb” (“That’s what I have to do in the music business,” he says), culminating in a lyrical number he wrote for his roommate’s wedding. He played it as part of the services.

          Since he’s finished school, his songs, like the recently-finished “Daddy’s Playin’ in a Boogie Band,” have come out predominately uptempo, showing the results of his experiments with changing rhythms.

          Partly from being on the road, partly because it’s his quieter efforts have gone into a “musical fantasy” along the lines of “The Wizard of Oz” and partly because a music publisher who liked his soft numbers wanted to hear some fast stuff.

* * *

THE PHOTOGRAPHER tries to get Michael to smile and has little success.

          “I don’t smile,” he tells the cameraman. “I was going to warn you about that. Cameras tend to bring out the morose in me.

          “I’m the serious, determined, reflective musician. (He grins.) I kid around a lot on stage, but when I’m offstage I’m usually pretty serious.

          “I’ve been doing well on my own, especially lately. In fact, things have always gone well, even in high school. It’s mostly a matter of being prepared to play so you can do a good job.

          “I’m solo by necessity right now. Otherwise I’d have a bass and other things. I played before Dave Bromberg’s group at Ohio U. and there was such a contrast between them and me playing up there alone. You have to be a full person to pull it off.

* * *

“AT FIRST, I would think, well, who am I to push my things on people, but that’s been changed by the way audiences received it. I’m kind of afraid of coming across too strong. Musicians have that stereotype, the ego.

          “The way I push it is with my music. I’d prefer to let somebody else push the other things. I’m not a high-type person at all. You ask if I’m good and I’ll say: ‘Please listen’ rather than ‘Yeah, you oughta hear me.’”

          Michael’s father comes home, asks how the interview went and pauses to talk with the reporter as Michael disappears upstairs to change for a tennis date.

          “You can see how dedicated he is about this,” Mr. Koren says. “His mother and I have a lot of faith in him.” 

The box/sidebar: 

His First Recording in Nashville 

          Someone at Ohio University played a tape of Michael Koren and his songs to Nashville fiddler Vassar Clements when he was at the school with the Earl Scruggs Revue.

          Vassar was interested, interested enough so that a month or so before Michael graduated, he went to Nashville to look up Vassar and see about getting his songs published. He found him in the most logical spot, backstage at Grand Ole Opry.

* * *

“HE SAID he’d listen to my songs,” Michael recounts, “and a day later he drove over to my rooming house. After he heard them, he wanted to publish them and play on the demo tape. Needless to say, I sorta flipped out a little bit. He usually just plays on masters, not demos.

          “Vassar got me a studio at a reduced rate, got me some studio musicians and we practiced before the session. Vassar was just good to talk to about the music business. He played on about six things.

          “The only unfortunate thing was that was my first time in a studio. I didn’t quite do the job I’d hoped I would’ve done.

          “I just sing and play and not very much more than that. You learn at the expense of money. I did it in two days and it was literally thrown together.

          “I had to write out the lead sheets for the studio musicians. I did that in the rooming house. There’s a number system down there which takes the place of notation. One is C, four is F, five is G.

* * *

“MY MANAGER in Ohio, Paul Yeskel, sent out some records of the demo, you know, to college coffeehouse chairmen. Even though they were pressed poorly, people started getting off on them.

          “Records are like a picture, I feel. It takes a shot of you at one point and you get branded with it. That’s why I hate to be called a folk performer. If people were to hear me, it’d be a different kind of experience.”

* * * * *

FOOTNOTE: Eventually Michael made records – a 10-inch, seven-song LP on the Mark Custom Recording Service label, which has that photo of him walking down a country road, and a single released on Lenny Silver’s Amherst Records – “On This Day” b/w “Mama Told Junior.”

But studio work turned out to be his primary passion. By 1977, he was in Vancouver, where he started KoKo Productions and Sound Studios with another Ko guy named Wayne Kozak. Among other things, they produced the theme song for Vancouver’s Expo ’86 and 10 years of commercial spots for Mattel. Kozak left in 1999 to start his own studio and KoKo lasted until 2016. Since then Michael’s continued independently as an audio producer and broadcast consultant. He’s still playing tennis, too. I found a blog where he talks about his favorite racquet.

          His father, Murray M. Koren, was a sales and marketing executive for the family business, Buffalo Wholesale Dry Goods and EMCO stores, and died in 2018, having reached the ripe old age of 99.