Matt Koziol Finds Inspiration On The Streets of London At Holler's Saloon Stage At C2C Festival 2024
By Holly Smith
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Matt Koziol delivered a raucous, blues-tinged set peppered with the anecdotes that have made his name as a storyteller worth raising hell with on Holler's Saloon Stage at the C2C Festival 2024.
Fresh off the release of his new single 'Old Fashioned' with 49 Winchester's Isaac Gibson, which he performed to glee from the crowd, Matt revealed that the band had originally mistaken him for a bouncer when he played with them in Chicago. "I'd got there early and I was helping them bring in their gear. They started handing me their IDs. They said 'you're the bouncer right?' I said 'no, I'm the guy who played before you'. But now we've all become really good friends".
"Have you guys started drinking yet because I have and I haven't had breakfast," Matt asked before launching into his set. Filled with favourites 'You Better Run, Son' and 'Ghost In This House', the latter will feature Vince Gill when it is released on Koziol's upcoming album Last of The Old Dogs, out on 5th April.
"I'm about to happily ruin your day" he quipped as he performed the album's tear-jerker title track. A poignant reflection on the passing of his family dog Grace, even the fact that one of Koziol's co-writers is "deathly allergic to dogs" couldn't stop the early afternoon crowd from getting suitably misty-eyed.
The bellow-voiced singer also spoke about the inspiration he'd found on the streets of London on his first ever trip to the big smoke, and how it inspired him to cover one of his own hometown's most famous sons, Bruce Springsteen. "The biggest surprise is that I'm originally from New Jersey," he joked.
"I'm staying near the Shakespeare Globe, Parliament and Buckingham Palace. Springsteen had a really great concert where he does a song called 'My Hometown'. It just kept coming on my headphones. This is the farthest I've been from my hometown or my house in Nashville and it just made me so grateful that I get to do this for a living".
Koziol did have some advice for the Brits though: "you need to teach your bartenders how to pour doubles in this town because that is a real shame. They need to stop measuring stuff".
For more on C2C Festival 2024, see below:
