Coulon
Oct. 30, Sully's Pub, 2071 Park St., Hartford, (860) 231-8881, sullyspub.com

Coulon play melancholic music. But their story is romantic.

Rozz Nash and Neil Coulon (now the Nash-Coulons) never set out to play music together. Mutual friends set them up on a date when Nash's hard-rock band, Red Lotus, played a show in Coulon's then hometown, Boston. "Our friend thought we would be a good match," said Nash in a recent phone interview. "We started dating, and then three months later we were engaged and seven months later we were married. So it was quick!"

In those early months there was no sign that the two would get together musically as well. They really hadn't gotten to know each other as musicians at all. But Coulon had left Boston and his band, 27, behind for Nash's New York City.

"A friend was doing a show at the Blue Note," Nash said, "and she said 'I want you two to do a song.' And we said 'Well, we don't have any songs. We don't play together.' She was like 'I don't care, just make one.' So maybe a week after our wedding we were like 'Oh, shit, we have this thing at the Blue Note coming up, and we don't have anything.' And we just sat down and wrote something, and it kind of became our wedding song. It's called 'By My Side.' People came up to us after the show and wanted to know where they could hear us, and we're like 'No, we're not a band, we're just married.' But we started writing and it just flowed out. We got it started pretty quickly."

As it happened, Red Lotus was winding down, so Nash had the energy to invest in the new project. They recruited drummer Mark Manczuk, who conveniently was relocating from Connecticut to Brooklyn. And so a band was born.

This was two years ago. Since then Coulon have recorded their debut, Salon. They have an extensive tour in mind, with a twist. The Salon tour will be a literal salon tour in private homes across the nation. Nash said, "The idea is that we [make] music to be shared in the presence of people who are sharing company in someone's living room, and it's something very intimate. My feeling is, why not do it in a way that we're in the home of someone who knows us, and then invests the time to create a nice event and invite people? You invite people into your home, they're gonna come, and they're going to trust your taste. If they're saying I'm having a performance at my house, you'll think 'Well, my friend wouldn't put crap on.'"

Before the tour gets underway, the band will visit Hartford for a regular old bar gig one more time. Coulon have some Connecticut connections, in addition to their drummer. Nash has a long association with Hartford and Living Colour's Doug Wimbish, who has worked as a producer with Red Lotus, and included the band in his annual Wimbash concert parties at Sully's. Coulon made their Hartford debut there this summer.