Cub Koda 1948-2000 Check out the Cub Koda Interview and Discography On July 1st, 2000 the world lost a great music talent, and I lost a great friend Mr. Cub Koda to complications from kidney disease. From his work on his many outstanding solo recordings, and with the classic bands Brownsville Station, The Point, The Houserockers, Blackfoot, & many others, Cub Koda has left a major mark on music with a rich musical legacy that will inspire & captivate musicians & fans of great music for many generations to come. As a guitarist, songwriter, vocalist, frontman, & producer, he was as brilliant as they come. And with his work as a serious music journalist he has played a significant role in historically preserving the work of many of his musical heroes. But above all Cub was a great human being, loyal, honest, (Two rare traits in the music business) courageous(For the past few years Cub went through a lot with his kidney disease & diabetes, and through it I never heard him complain, he always remained upbeat & optimistic, and he kept on working)and very humorous(his emails would leave you in tears & a stomach-ache from laughter) and he was a devoted husband to his wife Lady J. Koda. Cub I'm sure that you are up there in Heaven jamming with many of your musical heroes like Muddy Waters, Hound Dog Taylor, Howlin' Wolf, Albert King, Elvis Presley, and Robert Johnson, & I'm sure that they they are proud of the integrity & honor that you displayed toward the blues, rock-a-billy, rock-n-roll, & roots based music throughout your whole career as a musician & journalist. Cub you were a great friend, hero & mentor, and you'll always have a special place in my heart. Love Ya Cub. - Darin Scott TuneUp Magazine P.S And yes Cub is still "Smokin In The Boys Room." "I consider myself fortunate to have experienced and worked with the 'spiritual being' who coined himself Cub Koda. This is my treasure - I will have it forever - my love for you Cub is immeasurable." - Thomas 'Doc' Cavalier Manager and good friend of Cub's for many years "On De Road" with the Cubmaster... by Bruce Nazarian Somewhere around 1975, while living the restless life of a musician, my life changed permanently... I was introduced to the band called Brownsville Station, and invited to join.. and nothing has been the same ever since! In addition to the powerful forces of Henry Weck on Drums, and Michael Lutz on Bass, the wacky guy with the round glasses, Cub Koda, rounded out the most amazing musical power trio since Cream. Typecast on vinyl by the success of the teenage party tunes that were recorded and cut, Brownsville (as we were later known) never had the chance to shed its spandex-driven, amp-humping "Kings of the Party" image long enough to show our audiences the other side of the band... fueled by the love of roots music and the blues that Cub held dear, tempered by the pop songwriting sensibilities of Michael Lutz, and powered in nuclear fashion by "H-Bomb" Weck (who I firmly believes holds the all-time record for the most Remo drumheads brutally murdered in a single lifetime career), BS should have been taken seriously as a power band, but instead never had the chance to deliver to its audience...BUT... I do have some great memories of the Cubmaster, and H-Bomb, and Michael and our times on the road... Sorry, most of them are X-rated and cannot be shared in this forum, but in typical rock and roll style, many of the memories are about the music...and about Cub... Watching the Cubmaster work a crowd was nothing short of a living lesson in show biz. While we held the groove stompin' in the background, Cub would work the crowd into a frenzy, until eventually we would peel off into some COMPLETELY obscure Robert Junior Lockwood blues riff that most of our audience probably never heard before... I am positive they never heard it at 150 Decibels with Marshall stacks screamin' the top of their heads off, anyway (but that's part of the fun, isn't it). Sometimes I would swear that Cub was a black entertainer born into a white man's body... with all the pizazz of James Brown, Cub could dance the stage in a shim-sham-shimmy, and then deliver a full-stage power dive worth of the Who! Brownsville was a band who earned their encores with sheer sweat and drive - I do't think we ever delivered a show with less than 200% enthusiasm! Cub was a dear friend from the first day we met throughout all the decades in between. In addition to being a first rate music historian, and student of all things blues-ical, Cub was probably the loudest guitar player I ever knew - no, not his AMPS, his HANDS! He could take an ordinary Fender Deluxe reverb and make it sound like a Marshall stack on 12! We used to carry some tiny practice amps on the road for warmup in dressing rooms, and I swear, the damn things would bounce up and down every time he would play a few chords...me, I could barely make it break a sweat - but Cub seemed to have a magical holdon those things, and could make them sit up and bark, or beg forgiveness... Cub remembered more riffs than I could possibly ever have forgotten - if he decided to cut loose during an encore, we could have easily done an HOUR on stage with loving renditions of the entire history of western blues music, and the audience probably would have thought we were making it up... I will miss the crazy laughs, the times we yacked until dawn, drinkin' coffee and talkin' shit about musicians we knew and knew about and loved... and one thing is very, very clear... Michael "Cub" Koda was first, last, and always, a "blues man", and a unique human and my friend... Cub, give Jimi back his Strat, and quit showin' off...you don't have to prove you belong now, you've earned it with 50 hard years of hard rockin! I love ya, buddy, and I'll miss you always... and...oh yeah - thanks for the nickname..."Beezer." Bruce "Beezer" Nazarian Guitar player for Brownsville Station, Automatix among others. Bruce is now involved in sound editing and scoring for television and movies. Check out his web site at gnomedigital.com.