Jeff Cozy

REVIEW BY:  Eddie Allen

A Brief Sermon On Jeff Cozy’s New CD, "Everything For Love"   By: Eddie Allen

Ike and Mamie Eisenhower were in the White House when Jeff Cozy’s grandfather, a clarinetist in a WWI military band, bought him a toy drum festooned with an American Indian scene as was portrayed in movies and on television of the 1950s. The drumheads were circles of rubber laced together, top and bottom, by a cord that stretched them tightly over a metal cylinder. When an altercation with an older brother resulted in a broken drum stick his grandfather gave him a small jackknife. With it, the fledgling percussionist could fashion his own mallets with which to bludgeon the drum (or siblings), as needed. 

Thus, a seed was planted, fertile soil was dampened, and the tree that is Jeff Cozy has grown and matured. And it’s been bearing tasty fruit, season after season, for a long time now. Cozy’s newly released CD, “Everything For Love,” is fruit of an heirloom variety, a compilation of eleven songs that in some cases have been works in progress for a long time. Others are new. 

In recent years, the hue and cry that is visited upon every aging human life slowed Cozy’s output some. And as if the universal issues of health challenges, family tragedies, and reversals of fortune weren’t enough, he was dealt blows that, for many of us, would be fatal. Somehow Cozy has emerged with new inspiration. No matter the hardship, he has never abandoned his unrelenting advocacy for optimism and the spread of human love in all its forms. He does it with music. 

It's noteworthy that Cozy has employed no less than three generations of gifted musicians to support this lush recording. Herein lies a veritable Who's Who of the finest working musicians we all know and love. Thanks to tracks from his studio vault we can again hear the enormously popular entertainer and actor, Hal Atkinson, and the masterful guitarist, George McCune, with whom Cozy often collaborated. Both have now joined the ancestors in rock and roll heaven. 

Each song on this recording is a chapter in Cozy's book of love. I've read it several times over the past few days. I don't want to play the role of spoiler but here are a couple of my favorite parts. 

On the track “True Love,” Cozy’s symphonious odyssey drifts peacefully to its destination on the departed Atkinson’s flute interwoven with the young Ryan Howe’s piano. The musical recluse, Joel Allen, contributes a lovely guitar movement and shares harmony duties with McCune. 

Jeff Cozy can sing. Beautifully. He could always sing. His love for the drums launched his musical flight and he later added the guitar to his instrumental repertoire, but it's his voice that took him from the heartland to both coasts and back in the halcyon days of pop-rock in the 1970s. 

On “Lonely Nights” that voice defies the years it has accumulated. Here, Cozy has penned the best kind of love song. Simple. Tender. Longing. Then he delivers it with a delicate muscularity that can put a lump in the throat of even the most fervently dedicated of curmudgeons. 

It was Sir Paul McCartney (sure to be cast as Cozy’s stunt double for the biopic) who asked the musical question, “What’s wrong with that?” when raising the possibility of filling the world with silly love songs. Certainly Cozy is on board with the Sir Paul's general idea but not so much with the silly part. A case in point is “Dirty Water (Freak Show),” a not-so-gentle reminder that sometimes love sucks. The curmudgeon in the last paragraph fell in love this one. 

Cozy has produced a timely piece of work. In its first minutes this may not seem the case, it might catch you off guard. Maybe you were just reading the latest awful news of the world before you gave it the first listen, the news that was worse than the day before and left your stomach in a knot and your heart trying to escape through your throat. 

If that were the case, the bullish optimism of “Everything For Love” may seem hard to fathom. But stop. Breathe deeply. Now breathe again. We’ve all been living compressed lives for a couple of years. There is good medicine here. 

Lastly, Cozy’s “Wage Peace” is a song the world needs and deserves to hear. Now and again and again. It is offered as a prayer and should be received as a gift. 

Rise above hatred, amplify love, Stand by your families and everyone you love. 

The world is changing right before our eyes as we search for truth through a veil of lies 

You know deep down, you know what’s right, Let’s all wage peace in our hearts tonight. 

All around the world the candles glow. In the hearts of millions of people the message grows, 

The future is made by what we do today. We can walk in love it’s a brand new day. 

Jeff Cozy is a musical cartographer. “Everything For Love” is the roadmap he has drawn to navigate the landscape of human love. Get on the bus. You’re going to enjoy the trip.