This week DeBraun Thomas profiles Robby Cosenza of the group, The Fanged Robot.
Robby Cosenza has lived in many different parts of the country but for most of his life has considered Lexington his home. Music was always around in his home growing up and at the age of 8 he started playing drums. Cosenza says his parents surrounded him with music, but everything changed when a family friend left something for him in his room.
“This guy named Gary, man total hippie, came into my room and said ‘hey I need to drop some furniture off, I’m gonna leave it in your room, maybe a good long time’ and I thought ‘ah, you know, alright’ then he brought a drum set in, an old Slingerland, Ringo kinda swirl wrap thing, and he was like ‘cool’ and I was like ‘oh, great’ and that changed my life… and then he came over and took them back about a year later and my mom took me down to a music store and bought me a set of drums [laughs].”
At 18 Cosenza started touring with many different bands, but over the last few years he’s spent more time playing music in Lexington. He plays in several different groups including Small Batch, Warren Byrom & The Fabled Canelands and the Northside Sheiks just to name a few. In addition to being in many bands, Cosenza also works as a session musician. For the last decade he’s worked alongside Duane Lundy at Shangri-la Productions and has been on countless recordings. Cosenza says what he’s learned working in the studio has made him an even better musician playing live.
“You learn sound design and dynamics and tempo and things like that by doing a lot of session work which carries over to live stuff and you can harness what kind of energy I think you want to, the way that we work with Duane is, we do a lot of live stuff so it’s a big open room and everybody is often rocking like they do on a stage.”
In 2001 Cosenza started the band the Fanged Robot. Unlike his other musical projects, he plays guitar. The band is a vehicle for his original material and has had various different members over the years. The Fanged Robot is releasing an album in 2015 and Cosenza says he has the time of his life in the band.
“Oh, I love it, you know, I get my rocks off just, having a big piece of wood strapped around your waist man, is like, it’s really great, you know that, it’s a necessary outlet for me to do and there’s been times when I haven’t taken it seriously and times where I’ve taken it way too seriously, but we made a really great record.”
Robby Cosenza performs with The Fanged Robot, Small Batch, Warren Byrom & the Fabled Canelands and the Northside Sheiks. More information about Cosenza and his projects can be found on facebook.
