NEW ARTIST SPOTLIGHT: Darren Kozelsky
Robert L. Doerschuk
October 27, 2009
Produced by J. R. Rodriguez and Phil O´Donnell, Arrivals & Departures, Darren Kozelsky´s debut on Major Seventh Entertainment, conveys a restless, rough-edged energy. Backed by the band he´s fronted in clubs all along the Lone Star circuit, Kozelsky sounds right at home with steel-sweetened ballads as well as rowdy showstoppers, delivering these 14 songs (and one extended version of "When I Get There") with urgent but good-spirited intensity.
He discovered Country Music as a child while working at his dad´s car shop in Ballinger, Texas. Their radio pumped a stream of Merle Haggard, George Jones, Willie Nelson, George Strait and a singer who is honored on Kozelsky´s single, "Seven Vern Gosdins Ago." Written by Liz Hengber and Arlos Smith, this waltz-time lament profiles a casualty of romance who would be doing just fine if only that jukebox would stop playing heartbreak songs. Kozelsky tells this story perfectly, with a sensitivity to its pathos and humor that applies equally well to the next track, "When I Get There" by Monty Criswell and Wade Kirby, when he belts the climactic line, "I want to go where the beer is cheap," with completely believable conviction.
Finding material this suitable was more important to Kozelsky than packing the album with original songs for their own sake. "I´m not going to put a song on the record simply because I wrote it," he said. "I´m not going to force something. If it´s something that I relate to then I´m totally comfortable cutting it."
Kozelsky did join with Seth Borsellino and Chris Claridy to write the title track, on which lessons of life unfold along images of trains rolling toward horizons as distant as the edges of Texas itself. This superb writing hopefully forecasts what´s to come from this gifted artist.
2009 CMA Close Up® News Service / Country Music Association®, Inc.
He discovered Country Music as a child while working at his dad´s car shop in Ballinger, Texas. Their radio pumped a stream of Merle Haggard, George Jones, Willie Nelson, George Strait and a singer who is honored on Kozelsky´s single, "Seven Vern Gosdins Ago." Written by Liz Hengber and Arlos Smith, this waltz-time lament profiles a casualty of romance who would be doing just fine if only that jukebox would stop playing heartbreak songs. Kozelsky tells this story perfectly, with a sensitivity to its pathos and humor that applies equally well to the next track, "When I Get There" by Monty Criswell and Wade Kirby, when he belts the climactic line, "I want to go where the beer is cheap," with completely believable conviction.
Finding material this suitable was more important to Kozelsky than packing the album with original songs for their own sake. "I´m not going to put a song on the record simply because I wrote it," he said. "I´m not going to force something. If it´s something that I relate to then I´m totally comfortable cutting it."
Kozelsky did join with Seth Borsellino and Chris Claridy to write the title track, on which lessons of life unfold along images of trains rolling toward horizons as distant as the edges of Texas itself. This superb writing hopefully forecasts what´s to come from this gifted artist.
2009 CMA Close Up® News Service / Country Music Association®, Inc.
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