Kubla Khan
In the past five years, Kubla Khan has played everywhere from Peavey Plaza to a pole barn in Wisconsin; suburban basement parties to the Minnesota Zoo; colleges to county fairs. But through it all, it has remained a band dedicated to writing good music, playing great lives shows, and enjoying the entirety of the experience with their audience.
The band started over a few pitchers of beer and a desire to write and play original pop music. Coming out of St. Olaf College, jMatt Keil (drums) and Andy Bast (bass) had a successful touring career with Bobby Llama, a world beat explosion of rockability.
Nathan Eklund (keys) had stopped playing with The Big Wu and hadn’t played live music for a few years. Matt and Nathan got to talking. Andy got to talking. And a few days later the original Kubla Khan trio rehearsed for the first time. Playing their first show at the Fine Line in March of 2002, KK was on its way.
When it was time to enter the Seedy Underbelly in Minneapolis to record its first album “The Things That You Lack,” the trio decided that what the record really needed was some horns. Enter Jeff Nordquist (trumpet), Paul Gronert (sax), and Eric Johnson (trombone). The rest is history. The horns found their place in the music so well, that there was no doubt that the horns needed to be added to the live show. In 2005, Matt “Salty” Hanzelka took over the trombone helm. The final piece of the rock puzzle was added when Stein Malvey joined the band on guitar in 2005. And thus Kubla Khan’s evolution from a pop trio to a 7-piece rocketsra was complete. It was that full line-up that recorded KK’s second album “Lowertown.”