John Koah

John Koah is a songwriter and guitarist who’s spent years playing the kind of rooms where the main “special effect” is that people sit and listen. His shows are built around one voice, one guitar, and songs that live somewhere between folk, rock, and old four-track tape demos—originals and covers that have been with him onstage for a long time.

His new 34-song album, A–Z, Songs From The Tape Deck, grew directly out of those shows, and the live sets still feel like the source material: lyrics up front, stories threaded between songs, occasional deep-cut covers, and arrangements that stay close to how the songs were first carried into small rooms. Onstage, it’s less about production tricks and more about that quiet, focused feeling when a room leans in and lets the music do the talking.