Date Signed: May 2022
Label: RED Creative Records
Type of Music: Modern Country
Management: TBA
Booking: Meredith Jones - CAA
Legal: Sarah Smith - Keller Turner Andrews & Ghanem, PLLC
Publicity: Olivia Del Valle - Shorefire Media
Web: mattkoziol.com
A&R: John Cantu
The path to singer-songwriter Matt Koziol’s debut release Wildhorse has been a stylistically long and winding road. The bearded troubadour had invested a good deal of his career exploring different musical avenues to find who he was as an artist. He’s a trained operatic vocalist that began in his native New Jersey performing in coffeehouses at 14. That was the start of a career that took him to California and, eventually, Nashville, TN.
“I spent a lot of my early- to mid-20s writing with people out in California,” says Koziol. “People would always ask me, ‘what’s your sound?’—I had been traveling with bands to places like Nashville and knew I liked a lot of different kinds of music.” A childhood fan of Elvis Presley, gospel, R&B and bluegrass, in addition to his father’s James Taylor and Jackson Browne records, Koziol found his lane in the country field.
Establishing roots in Nashville seemed like a logical move for the 30-something artist. Playing in town and attending writing sessions helped him network, eventually leading to a publishing deal in 2019 with Prescription Songs and a record deal in 2021 with RED Creative Group.
“Before my record came out, I put on a showcase at my producer Matt Odmark’s studio,” says Koziol. We set up a beautiful night with bourbon tasting, catered BBQ and a short set from my band. The team from Creative Arts Agency (CAA) was there. That was a pivotal moment where Meredith Jones and I started working together.” Apparently, RED A&R rep John Cantu was telling Jones about Koziol and that opened the door to a working relationship with the booking agency.
“After my record came out, I found out Meredith had been asking about me and what I was doing,” explains Koziol. “When I finally met her she told me she was celebrating Christmas with her family and that she’d be sprinkling my music into her home playlist for them to hear. She told me every time one of my songs came on folks were asking who it was. And that’s how she knew we should work together. She told me ‘I see you, I hear your music and you’re not faking it.’ I wanna help show people that authenticity.”
