Damian Coccio

Damian started playing in bands around age 14 and was initially taught by his father Ernie Coccio. He comes from a musical family and is primarily self-taught, but had personal lessons with some great musicians. He plays in a variety of genres, enjoys session work and playing in bands, and his deepest passion is improvising and writing music.

Damian is an endorsing artist for Fodera Guitars, has built some of his own basses and audio electronics for over 30 years, and holds patents in various fields including Co-Inventor of the BBQ Guru controllers (US7516692B2).

Over the past fifteen years he has focused entirely on solo bass, creating meditative, unhurried music that lives in the low frequencies. The music never comes from a conscious thought process. It comes through improvisation, discipline, and patience. Every so often something arrives whole.

He does not always know what the music means when he writes it. Sometimes it takes months or years to understand a piece. The understanding almost always comes after, rarely during. When inspiration happens, it feels less like creating and more like tuning a radio to the right frequency.

A few years ago, living near the ocean changed something. The rhythms became easier to notice: sunrise and sunset, tides, weather, birds, stillness, and movement. It became easier to live inside the cycles rather than constantly pushing against them. That awareness lives inside the music.

Damian enjoys writing music, fishing, hiking, literature, and meditation. He is convinced that social media is not good for us and has written extensively about the subject in his journal.

There is something in the low frequencies that the body understands before the mind does. In a world that fights for your attention, that is a relief.

The Website

A central theme is the fermata; the musical symbol that asks us to linger. Traditionally it marks a note or silence held beyond measured time, suspending performer and listener alike in a moment outside the ordinary flow. Across artistic, philosophical, and spiritual traditions, this gesture of pause has come to represent presence, contemplation, and a heightened awareness of now.