About

Greg Koons is an Americana songwriter from Camp Hill, Pennsylvania.

Raised by a truck driver and Vietnam combat veteran, Koons left high school and moved to Hollywood, California, where he worked as a housekeeper at the infamous Chateau Marmont, often writing songs on the lobby piano at night. During that time, he was a housekeeper most notably for Axl Rose and the late fashion photographer, Helmut Newton.

After stints in Nashville, Florida, and the Northeast, he returned to Pennsylvania and wrote much of his acclaimed album, Welcome to the Nowhere Motel in a U-Haul storage unit in Mechanicsburg. As Koons said in Lancaster Online, “People would start unloading their furniture. Sometimes the shed door would be all the way up, and they'd listen a little bit and say it sounds good.”

Recorded at Fireproof Studios in Los Angeles and released on Kealon Records/RED, Welcome to the Nowhere Motel was produced by Matt Keating with engineering by Adam Lasus. The album reached #24 on the EuroAmericana charts and was named one of the Top 10 Americana albums of 2009 by PopMatters and Magnet Magazine. The Philadelphia Inquirer described Koons as “an alt-country craftsman.”

Over the course of his career, Koons performed live throughout the United States and Canada and was selected as an official showcasing artist at South by Southwest (Austin, TX), the Americana Music Festival (Nashville, TN), and the 30-A Songwriters Festival (Santa Rosa Beach, FL). He also recorded with Grammy Award–winning producer John Keane, known for his work with R.E.M., Uncle Tupelo, and Widespread Panic.

Koons later attended the University of Pennsylvania, where he graduated with honors and worked at the Think Tanks and Civil Societies Program, editing two manuscripts later published by Palgrave: Think Tanks, Foreign Policy, and The Emerging Powers (2017) and Think Tanks and Emerging Power Policy Networks (2017).

He is currently finishing a book, recording new music, and serving on the District of Columbia’s Developmental Disabilities Fatality Review Committee, to which he was appointed by the Mayor’s Office.