Dan Kouba

When Dan Kouba writes a song it always comes from his heart. The former well driller is a recovering alcoholic and didn’t play music until he had his second heart surgery in 2015. His doctor gave him a book that was about music as a stress relief, so Kouba sold his companies and called a friend and asked if he could teach him to play guitar.

Kouba’s goal after learning to play guitar was to play Johnny Cash’s song, “Wayfaring Stranger,” for his grandchildren at Thanksgiving. “I didn’t think I’d make it ‘til Christmas,” he admits. “Now my stress is gone and I feel 20 years younger.”
“When I write about something, I’m either proud of or upset about it!” 

One of the things that sets Kouba apart is when he sings a song that he has written, he draws from the emotion of the story he wrote and gives it all that emotion when he performs it. “I’m not just going through the motion, the emotion is real,” he says. “I think you can hear that in the way I sing the song.”