Allen Coté keeps the music flowing at home and abroad

There isn't a shortage of good musicians in Milwaukee. Some of them are homegrown talents and some come to the Cream City from elsewhere.

Allen Coté is one of the latter. Born and raised in Texas, Coté moved to America's Dairyland and found a bubbling music scene, endearing personalities and marital bliss.

In return, he has given Milwaukee – and Wisconsin – another quality musician that can flow with the best of them, and this has led to Coté playing live and recording with dozens of people locally.

However, his music isn't just reserved for the metro-Milwaukee area, as he continues to write tunes that penetrate beyond the borders of Southeastern Wisconsin.

In addition to writing music with other people and for his own artistic endeavors, Coté also handles the music duties for the PBS show "Wisconsin Foodie."

One of his most exciting and recent accomplishments is creating a five-minute chunk of music for a live theater production in Brisbane, Australia, that premiered this Tuesday and can be seen again at 2 a.m. Thursday and Saturday.

What makes this event so intriguing is that it's an international collaborative effort and will feature five different troops performing to the music simultaneously. More information about the showing can be found here, and information about the Skype broadcast can be found here.

I recently asked Coté about his music and his projects.

OnMilwaukee.com: How many instruments do you play?

Allen Coté: With any degree of proficiency? I'm mostly self-taught on everything besides guitar, so I don't consider myself much of a player, but to this point I have performed or recorded with guitar, bass, lap steel, ukulele, mandolin, piano, harmonica and various ethnic percussion.

I learned the basics of Cuban percussion and Javanese Gamelan in college and did some work with tablas until I started to develop a (benign) tumor in my thumb, which waylaid me for a few years until I could afford surgery. I'm currently trying to teach myself clarinet and am restoring a Chinese ruan, and I just found out a friend of mine is moving and giving me her cello, so there's another project.

OMC: When did you begin making music?

AC: I first started learning guitar when I was around 10 years old. My first lessons were from an ancient Nashville session guitarist named Noel Lovett, who lived in a tiny shack behind the railroad tracks in New Braunfels, Texas.

He used to tell me about sessions he'd done – all of which I was far too young and uncool to recognize at the time. My first paying gig was 50 bucks and a T-shirt for filling in on bass with a somewhat older Christian rock band at a festival – there were 500 people there, and I was 14 – I thought I was a rock star, but looking back, I'm more than a little embarrassed.

OMC: What led you toward music?

AC: One of my earliest memories is of skipping down the hill at Zilker Park in Austin, Texas on the Fourth of July at 5 years old, playing air guitar to REO Speedwagon – Zilker used to have crazy Fourth celebrations. I should have known then.

A few years later, while my family and life were going through some major changes, I swiped the Beatles' "Abbey Road" and self-titled albums from my mom, and listened to them religiously – quite literally – that sh*t changed my life in ways I still can't fully explain. Shortly thereafter I decided to give guitar a shot.

OMC: You have played with many people. Who are some of those artists?

AC: That's sometimes hard to remember, for many reasons. To the best of my knowledge, I have recorded on albums, EPs or singles with The Championship, Juniper Tar, Chris DeMay, Pezzettino, The Wildbirds, Quinn Scharber, Jonathan Burks, West of East, Trapper Schoepp and the Shades, The Maze, Jonathan Spottiswoode, Geri X, Rene Reyes, Right on John, melaniejane and some others at the Steel Bridge festival a few years ago.

There were a couple of solo albums I recorded with a backing band a few years back, all crazy session cats in Austin – demo recordings that landed my former employer a sweet Nashville gig and landed me in Milwaukee – early stuff with Elevator Music for the Insane, an incredibly self-destructive college band that somehow landed a NXNE showcase, only to break up before the festival.

I've also performed with The Vega Star, Hayward Williams, Whitney Mann and God knows how many bands back in Texas. Played in the live house band at a monthly hip-hop showcase and jam session at the legendary Victory Grill – still have the belt-buckle that James Brown/George Clinton bassist Corey "Funkafangez" Stoot gave me when he jammed with us – and I've recently had the great fortune to join Heidi Spencer and the Rare Birds for their CD release shows, and hopefully some future plans.

For the last year or so I have been composing the music for the local television show "Wisconsin Foodie," which is currently airing in Milwaukee and around the state on the various PBS stations, and I'm currently in the process of composition/sound design for a short piece of theater by my friend Kelli Bland in Austin that will be premiering at an Australian festival in May as part of a live international collaboration.

That's all I can remember right now, and if I've left anyone out, I'm truly sorry – lotta loose ends to keep in the old duder's head.

OMC: What drives you and your passion for music?

AC: That's a question I can't really ask myself anymore. I have too much invested in this, and I'm afraid any real self-examination will destroy the entire house of cards. In all honesty and seriousness, I have just derived an incredible amount of comfort, joy, sorrow, pleasure and everything in between from music – and art – over the years, and I'd like to give some of that back.

The full explanation of my relationship with sound and music is too complex – and controversial and revealing and ultimately boring – to address in this context, but leaving college with a degree in my hands, and two or three already-failed careers behind me, I figured it was a now-or-never kinda thing; and as long as people seem to enjoy what I do, and I seem to enjoy what I do, I guess I'm gonna keep on doing it.

OMC: What is your songwriting process like?

AC: Hunter S. Thompson famously said, "I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence or insanity to anyone ... but they've always worked for me." I could never say that with the same level of honesty or conviction as Hunter, but it's as good a description as any of the holiest and most mysterious of processes. Plus, I don't really like giving away my secrets.

OMC: I have heard that you were considering leaving Milwaukee. How come? Where are you thinking of going if you do leave?

AC: I threaten that every winter. I was born and raised in Texas, and this climate simply does not sit well with me. When I first moved up here four years ago, I only intended to stay for a year or so while I planned my next move, but I lucked into some sweet gigs and a surprisingly appreciative community and then I made friends, met a beautiful woman, found a nice living space, got married, learned my way around the side streets, so now I feel sort of accepted and it's hard to imagine leaving. But I still f*cking hate the weather. So, ask me again next winter.

OMC: Who are people that you'd like to play with locally that you haven't had a chance to yet?

AC: Milwaukee's music community is full of surprises; every time I think I've played the ultimate show, or scoured the last stage, I always discover someone or something else that scrambles my brain. For the longest time I've been meaning to get down to The Estate for the Static Chicken. I have a great amount of respect for those players, and I'd love to play a show there in any capacity.

I teach guitar at Milwaukee Montessori School, and though I've worked there with both Julio Pabon and Oumar Sagna, I've never gotten the chance to jam with either, and Seth Warren-Crow is an enigmatic and electric drummer with nimble fingers on the tabla, so I guess all of my dream-listers are percussionists. What can I say – a good drummer is hard to find.

I've done a little live experimental work with Dave Olson of The Figureheads and Plight of a Parasite in the recent past, and I'd like to see that expand a bit more, and this gypsy jazz group that opened for Heidi Spencer at Linneman's would do great work with the "Foodie" tunes, plus, I could use some strings for the next solo album.

OMC: When you think about the Milwaukee music scene on the whole, what is your impression of it and its future?

AC: I feel strangely, for me, hopeful and optimistic about the future of the arts here in general – not through any fault of the state or local governments, or the unfortunately ill-informed voting majority – simply because, for better or worse, difficulty breeds expression, and necessity breeds creativity, and the culture and climate of our nation in general, and our state/region in particular, are incredible catalysts.

The sheer breadth and depth of the music scene here, relative to the size of the city, is testament to the potential of the region. All we need is the kinesis and a little unity among the particles. And as far as the future, people are predicting the end of the world somewhere between May 21 and December of next year, so who cares?

OMC: What are you working on right now?

AC: Right now I'm exploring a little left-of-center territory, composing a five-minute piece entirely of sculpted sound and biological rhythms for the aforementioned live theater, contributing some general chaos to Pezzettino's new large-format project and recording/improvising somewhat more soothing soundscapes for the fine folks at Milwaukee Community Acupuncture.

Hopefully much of this will be available in some shape or form soon. I also just turned in quite a bit of music for the new season of "Foodie," which should be premiering in a few months, and I'm in the very tentative beginning stages of trying to help a Haitian jazz trio record their first album. So, I've been staying busy.