Paul Kuzbik

Higgs Bozon explores the unknown
Local trio gets experimental with newest project
21 July 2009
Shannon Myers
Arts Writer
It’s not often that you meet someone who is intelligent and motivated enough to go to med school. It’s even rarer to meet someone choosing music over medicine.
Such is the case with Paul Kuzbik, who recently joined forces with former Sturgis Trash members Chris Maczek and Everett Berg to form the sonic trio Higgs Bozon.
Kuzbik was about to call it quits on the music front after finding himself in a place where he was no longer happy with it.
“I needed to break the mold and woodshed, and I almost quit performing. But then all these other things happened;” he explained of his near abandonment of music, and the subsequent year off that he spent redefining his sound.

Kuzbik started volunteering at City Hospital, playing for patients in the downstairs lounge — a change of scenery that provided the opportunity for his music to make a difference in someone’s day. At the same time, he was working at Underdog Music where he met Paul Tobin.
The two Pauls played the Ness Creek Music Festival together and things continued to pick up as Kuzbik jammed with Maczek. No one clicked with the two quite like Berg did when he returned from Japan, and the trio was officially formed last November.
Growing up together, Maczek and Berg had formed an earlier band. As a result, their on-stage chemistry is undeniable as they feed off each other, creating limitless but well-structured pockets for Kuzbik to fill with cerebral cascades of electric wailing.
“Our sound is modern and electronic with a lot of effects and really progressive songs, but there’s an old school vibe as well,” described Kuzbik. “It’s not processed beats; it’s definitely three guys plugged in, playing loud together.”
“Our sound is modern and electronic with a lot of effects and really progressive songs, but there’s an old school vibe as well”
—Paul Kuzbik
The music bug began to grow anew in Kuzbik and he became involved with more musical outlets. He’s now in the Ne’er Do Wells* with locals Kamila Martel, Megan Lane, Teegan Jeffers, Eliza Doyle and Finn Day-Wiggins; a lounge and dub band with Day-Wiggins and the Gaff; and has found the inspiration to work on his solo stuff again.
“It’s exciting because I don’t really have an idea anymore of what I want my career to be. I just want to play stuff that interests me, and Higgs Bozon is a challenge for sure,” said Kuzbik. “It’s fun. I never know what’s going to happen and I’m always really sweaty when it’s done.”
The Higgs boson, literally, is a hypothesised particle that would explain the origin of mass in the universe if ever observed. So how, then, does this tie into the band? Are they evasive and mysterious, yet powerfully important?
“The correlation is more the unknown elements in our music and not having a preconceived idea of what’s going to happen,” Kuzbik explains. “I think it’s the part of our band that drives us the most and is what we most embrace.”
It’s a spontaneity that is expressed in the experimental feel of the music and leads to different experiences with each performance. Whatever direction the compass is pointed, the energy is full throttle and there’s no looking back.
Photo Shannon Myers
The Sheaf
Saskatoon, SK
- The Sheaf

Brendan Nogue
Tuesday July 24, 2007
History has shown many musicians find that as their career progresses the logical way to go is to split from the band and go solo.
For one band coming through the Bow Valley for three shows this week the exact opposite has been true.
The Paul Kuzbik Trio recently formed after Kuzbik had spent the last two and a half years working his way up as a solo artist. After finishing a tour of Chile and Argentina solo, and getting regular radio play for his song Brother from his album The Nature of Time, last year Kuzbik decided to join up with two other musicians.
“They’re both players that I’ve know and respected for a long time. We’ve all kind of talked about jamming and stuff before, now we’re moving more towards being a band, being the Paul Kuzbik Trio,” said Kuzbik.
Forming the trio along with Kuzbik on guitar and lead vocals is drummer Bryce Lemky and bassist Jody Geisbrecht.
The band has even changed Kuzbik’s style of music a little bit he says, which is a change he has welcomed. Kuzbik says he has maintained his light rock, roots, and blues style, similar to Jack Johnson or Ben Harper through the change.
The new members of the band have given his songs more of a rock style, which is more upbeat. This change has come from sitting down as a band and writing new songs as well as reworking some of his old solo material.
“It’s nice having people to write with. That’s one of my favourite parts about it.
We’ve kind of revamped a lot of my songs. I was kind of at a point in my song writing career where I needed to change the way I did things and these guys have totally been a breath of fresh air,” said Kuzbik.
The Saskatoon-based band is now looking to get a little exposure as a trio and this will begin with a short tour of Alberta and B.C., which starts at the Drake Pub in Canmore on Thursday. The band will then hit several spots in B.C. before returning to the Bow Valley for two shows at the Banff Rose and Crown on July 31 and Aug. 1.
The Banff and Canmore dates are some of the ones Kuzbik says he is most excited about, having visited the area before and met the type of people that may be at the show.
“I just really want to go out there. This is my first time getting my name out and hopefully get some exposure and it seems like my kind of people out there. I really love the outdoors and I spend lots of time camping and in the forest and at the lake so it seems like a scene out there,” said Kuzbik.

Banff Crag & Canyon


- Crag & Canyon

by Caitlin Ward
Saskatoon-based singer/songwriter Paul Kuzbik has accomplished a feat many young musicians can only dream of: he's given up his day job. And in Kuzbik's eyes, that means he's essentially given up work for good.

"Music is never going to be a job," he says. "I love it. I'm going to do it forever."

Kuzbik's bold declaration is one that's already stood a significant test of time, despite his relative youth. Only 22, the Prince Albert native has played guitar for ten years, performing publicly for four of those and he's already set to begin working on his second full-length album. Unlike many musicians, however, Kuzbik didn't start out at open mic nights in his hometown. Though the live scene in P.A. has grown exponentially since Kuzbik first began to perform, he found himself at a loss for places to play as a young musician.

"It was always my dream to play for people," he says. "But when I started there weren't a lot of opportunities in P.A. I spent a lot of time wood-shedding in my bedroom."

Instead of nervously climbing onto a local stage to perform live for the first time, the opportunity was presented to Kuzbik, amazingly, on the other side of the world. Just after high school, Kuzbik traveled through South America, guitar on his back, and found his first real audience. Jamming with local musicians in Central and South America, he found the courage to perform and though Kuzbik doesn't necessarily count Tropicalia or Latin beats among his musical influences (his sound being more a mixture of John Mayer and early Eric Clapton), the experience had a profound effect on him.

"I realized, I can go anywhere in the world with a guitar," he says. "That's really empowering."

Kuzbik moved to Saskatoon upon his return to Canada, integrating quickly into the city's live scene. Saskatoon-based band Sturgis Trash gave him his first bona fide gig, handing him an opening spot for one of their shows.

Over the past few years he has honed his skill both as a solo artist and, more recently, with a band, composed of Jordan Trask (drums), Ryan Marshall (bass), and Finn Day-Wiggins (keyboards). Though Kuzbik is the songwriter and frontman for the group, he has a profound respect for the contributions his fellow band members make.

"They taught me to care about the things I don't do in the band, like the relationship between the bass and drums now I'm really conscious of the groove of the song," Kuzbik says. "Playing with these guys has given me new ears to listen with. They're some of the best musicians I know."

During shows at Lydia's Pub on December 8 and 9, Kuzbik will start recording his second album, which will be predominantly a live CD, with the aid of his band and producer Darcy Beck who also recorded his first album, The Nature of Time. It might seem odd that Kuzbik would begin recording again so hard on the heels of his first release, but for him, it seems completely natural.

"I started recording the first album in August of 2005," he says. "I had my ten songs, the ones I knew I wanted to record. Since then, I've written a lot, but I've got more to learn before I go back into the studio. I love the live sound of the new songs though, and I really want to get that down."

Following the live recording, Kuzbik will embark on his first tour. Fittingly, given his worldly beginnings as a performer, Kuzbik will spend three months touring Chile and Argentina solo, before returning to Canada to do a western tour in the spring with the rest of his band. He'll also be recording some of his live performances while in the southern hemisphere.

"There's something I love about that side of the world," Kuzbik says of South America, almost wistfully.

Generally, when one asks young musicians about their ambitions, the answer is that they want to be able to make a living through their art. Kuzbik, however, has already achieved that goal. He's gearing up to perform internationally, and his first CD is available both at outlets across Saskatoon and internationally via CD Baby, an independent, online CD distribution store based in Portland, Oregon. With such a solid footing in the music scene at a grassroots level, I ask him what his dreams have now become.

Ducking shyly, he says, "When I was a kid, before I knew that I wanted to make music or knew how to play the guitar, I used to listen to music with my eyes closed, picture myself playing in front of thousands of people." Kuzbik smiles softly. "I want to take it there."

Planet S Mag
Saskatoon, SK

- Planet S Magazine