Friends remember Lexington rocker who was ‘one of those charismatic, gentle souls’

Lexington musician Robby Cosenza, a drummer, guitarist and songwriter who performed with a litany of bands and worked on more than 100 albums, died Sunday after a two-year battle with cancer, said music producer Duane Lundy, his longtime friend and collaborator. Cosenza had recently celebrated his 50th birthday.

Over the years, Cosenza performed with a long list of acts, including Pontius CoPilot, The Apparitions, Vandaveer, These United States, The Scourge of the Sea, Horse Feathers, The Tarbox Ramblers, The Wags and Cosenza’s solo project, The Fanged Robot.

“He loomed super large in the Lexington music scene,” said Justin Craig, who performed with Cosenza in several of those groups. “He was just one of those electric people that just touched so many others. He spread a lot of love around.”

Craig said he and Cosenza toured extensively together.

“I met Robby when I was 21 and I think he was 31,” said Craig, who now lives and works in New York City. “I was just kind of blown away by him as a drummer and a musician and a songwriter, and I was like, ‘I’ll follow this guy anywhere.’ And I did, for the next 10 years.”

“Robby was the funniest person I’ve ever met,” Craig said. “Probably the realest, truest artist I’ve ever met.

“He always knew who he was. He had an artistic compass that was very clear, and he lived life to make art, and his art sort of defined him.”

Cosenza told Modern Drummer in 2016 that he had been playing drums since he was 8 years old.

“It began with private theory lessons, followed by jazz/concert/marching bands. I began touring professionally when I was eighteen,” he said. “Twenty-four years later, I’ve logged thousands of shows across this big, weird planet, half of them with These United States, Tarbox Ramblers, and Vandaveer. Recently, I had the honor of performing at Ringo Starr’s seventy-sixth birthday party at Capitol Records (I know, right?).”

A 2014 Herald-Leader article said Cosenza and his bandmates with Pontius CoPilot appeared to be on the verge of something big in 2001.

“The band had amassed critical attention, financial backers and a touring schedule that included a fateful performance in New York City — on Sept. 10, 2001,” the article stated.

That all came to an abrupt end on Sept. 11.

“Then everything went down. All our investors were a few blocks away from the (World) Trade Center and weren’t giving any money out to anybody, especially an independent band from Kentucky,” Cosenza said in 2014. “We had put everything we had in the world into that band. We all lost our places to live, our jobs and basically all our stuff.

“I moved to Louisville, to the Crestwood area, and just hunkered down. I co-ran a lawn and landscape company and didn’t play an instrument for two years. I mean, I didn’t touch anything. I quit playing drums. I quit everything.”

But that was far from the end of Cosenza’s musical career.

Lundy said he first met Cosenza in the early 2000s, when he was part of The Apparitions.

“He and I just sort of clicked and had similar tastes,” he said.

As Lundy’s production business grew, he contracted Cosenza for drum work and found him to be a helpful adviser, someone he could bounce ideas off of. Their friendship spanned two decades.

“Robby became the yin to my yang,” Lundy said. “He had great taste in music” and “firm roots in the indie rock world.”

“He was a massive Bob Dylan fan,” Lundy said. “He was very attuned to that thoughtful, smart, integral type music.”

They worked on more than 100 albums together, he said.

“I would put Robby at the center of the uptick of Kentucky music over the last 15 years,” Lundy said.

Composer Stephen Trask said he flew Cosenza across the country to record film scores for motion pictures, including “Little Fockers.”

Cosenza had “a talent that is very rare,” along with “this extraordinary heart,” he said.

Cosenza said in the Modern Drummer article that his time on the road had developed his “chops, nuance, stamina, and industry know-how,” and he said he liked to let the lyrics lead him.

“I might accentuate a dark line in the song by riding the floor tom, or a soft, pretty line, with a sizzle or whispery mallets,” Cosenza said. “I don’t have a stock fill or go to an ‘obvious’ place just because the track may be standard Americana or blues.

“I use the studio itself as an instrument. If that means brushes on an armchair is the primary drum track, then good!”

Cosenza wrote in March 2022 that he had been diagnosed with a rare form of cancer called leiomyosarcoma. He chronicled his fight on a CaringBridge.org webpage, often ending his journal entries with an apropos song lyric.

His close friends Otto and Christin Helmuth, fellow musicians with whom he lived during the last two years, said Cosenza continued to record new music during his illness.

“He was fully dedicated to playing music,” Christin Helmuth said. “He was a consummate perfectionist on the drums.”

Lundy said Cosenza was “one of those charismatic, gentle souls,” someone who “saw things in people that maybe (they) didn’t see in themselves.”

Indeed, Cosenza’s Facebook page was flooded with tributes from friends and acquaintances, people who admired his musical ability and those who remembered his fun, kind, encouraging spirit.

“Some people, myself included, strive to use our lives to make, or help make art. Robby WAS art - in creativity, in life, in ordering breakfast,” J. Tom Hnatow, his friend and former bandmate, wrote on Facebook. “He threw himself as deeply into preparing for a Fanged Robot show at a dive bar as he did playing in front of 10,000 people. He cared as much about a perfect overdub on a session as he did having just the right mug for a cup of coffee.

“A rock n’ roll drummer with a Twisted Sister tattoo who could blow your ears out with the sheer volume and intensity of his playing, who also was also listening to every word of a song, responding to it, and could play brushes on a snare drum in the most beautiful and musical way I’ve ever heard. He could put any vocalist at ease during a session, quote Bob Dylan lyrics at them, and make the most subtle (‘tender’ in his words) suggestions that always, always worked, all the while lamenting how no one wanted to ‘rock.’

“He made every single person and band he played with better. He could somehow sit in with the most ragtag group of misfits and somehow, suddenly, through sheer willpower and chutzpa, magic would happen, and music would happen.”

Born in New York, Cosenza moved to Lexington with his mother and sister in the mid-1980s. He was a graduate of Tates Creek High School.

A celebration of life is scheduled for Saturday at St. Peter Claver Catholic Church at 410 Jefferson St. Doors open at noon, with a service at 12:30 p.m. Afterward, friends plan to walk to one of his favorite places, The Green Lantern Bar on Third Street, said Christin Helmuth.