Gary James' Interview With Ken Koch Of Pink Floyd Tribute
Us And Floyd



Kenneth Koch plays guitar for Long Island's premier Pink Floyd tribute group, Us And Floyd. The group covers songs from Pink Floyd's vast catalog of albums including "Atom Heart Mother", "Meddle", "Dark Side Of The Moon", "Wish You Were Here", "Animals", "The Wall" and "The Final Cut". As one fan put it, "I really feel like I saw Pink Floyd last night, light show and all." Guitarist Kenneth Koch spoke with us about his band.

Q - I'm going to guess that you're one of the lucky musicians because you don't have to work a day job. Would I be correct in saying that?

A - No, that's not correct. I don't do music full-time. Everybody in the band is pretty much part time. We all have day jobs. We do this pretty much on the weekends.

Q - You were in a top tri-state wedding band?

A - I was, yeah. I was in a wedding band for about ten years.

Q - You must have been making pretty good money.

A - Yeah, definitely. The wedding thing was a good money maker.

Q - When you're in a cover band, you get to play the music of a lot of different bands. In a tribute band, it's the music of just one band. Doesn't that get boring after a while?

A - Well no, not really. Pink Floyd is the music I grew up with. They're my favorite band. I never really get tired of listening to that music. It's fun to play. There's a lot of different versions of different songs that we do, for instance 'live' versions, some bootleg versions, things like that. There's just so much material.

Q - Are you the guy that put Us And Floyd together?

A - Actually, our vocalist Scott Goldberg placed an ad on Craig's List back in 2010 when he was calling for an audition of a Pink Floyd tribute. There were about five or six people that responded. We all went down and started playing. We didn't have a keyboard player at that time, so a couple of months later we added Steve Macarelli, our keyboard player and that's when we were able to start moving forward and learn all the material, getting all the pieces in place. In the beginning we had a bunch of personnel changes. It actually took us two years before we were able to start doing shows.

Q - Have you taken this band out of state?

A - Not yet. We actually play mostly on Long Island. We've played in Manhattan before. We played at The Cutting Room in New York City. But mainly we've been in Long Island.

Q - How many times have you seen Pink Floyd in concert?

A - I actually never got to see Pink Floyd. I'm hoping that David Gilmour is going to tour. He will be putting out a new solo album next year (2015), so I'm hoping he tours. Some of the other members in the band have seen them, like the 1977 Animals tour, a couple of guys saw The Wall tour in 1988 and a couple of guys saw the Roger Waters tour in 1980, but I haven't personally seen them.

Q - Do you think Pink Floyd knows about Us And Floyd?

A - I haven't seen any evidence of that. I don't know if they do. I know Roger Waters has a place out here on Long Island, so I mean it's possible, but we haven't heard from anybody.

Q - Your ambition then is to take Us And Floyd out of Long Island and make it a full-time venture?

A - Yeah, definitely. I don't know about making if full-time, but we definitely would like to get outside of Long Island, possibly the tri-state area or East Coast. We're looking for a booking agent that can make that happen.

Official Website: www.PinkFloydTributeBandNY.com



© Gary James. All rights reserved.