Soft Cough’s Dan Pugh, Tom Kohn, Nick Koithan, & Ben Freiman

Words by Jim Testa

One of the charms about indie rock is that it can show up in the unlikeliest places. Like, say, Geneseo, New York, a small college town in the Finger Lakes region of the Empire State that nurtured Soft Cough. The group’s new album, Candied Squawk, came to my attention through its producer, Oliver Ignatius, an old friend who currently owns and runs Holy Fang, an animal sanctuary and recording studio in the Hudson Valley. One listen to Candied Squawk and I knew there was something special and so, meet Soft Cough.

Off Shelf: Please introduce the band, with names and instruments and anything else you want to include.

Ben Freiman: Soft Cough is Dan [Pugh, guitar], Tom [Kohn, bass], Nick [Koithan, guitar), and me [drums]. While our live setting is pretty standard, we all play multiple instruments, especially on our most recent album, and we all contribute vocals, because we think that’s cute and are not above a cheap gimmick!

Dan and Tom are both from the south shore of Nassau County on Long Island, I’m from the Lower Hudson Valley, and Nick is from a small town in Western New York not far from Niagara Falls and Buffalo. We all met while attending the State University of New York College at Geneseo and we formed Soft Cough in late 2013. The band started sort of by accident. Dan, Tom, and Nick all lived together and had wanted to start a band together. I hadn’t played drums before but was friends with Dan and familiar with some of his early songs, so was asked to join after he and Dan played an impromptu two-piece set at a drunken house show on the shores of Keuka Lake. 

As time went on, we played a steady stream of DIY house shows and a few on-campus gigs before eventually renting a larger eight-person house on the outskirts of town. This house, which we dubbed “Mute City”, became the epicenter of DIY music at Geneseo. We had dozens of house shows, some featuring acts like John Galm of bands Snowing and Bad Heaven, Full Body – now called Full Body 2, Del Paxton, Tosser, Sam Kogon, Pleistocene, Comfy, as well as slew of other New York State acts. Dan, Tom, and Nick all lived there, and that’s where we recorded the vast majority of tracks for the first Soft Cough LP. 

After college, we split up across the state. Nick lives in Buffalo, I live in the Hudson Valley, and Tom and Dan both live in Brooklyn. Despite this, we still have managed to stay somewhat active, including recording an EP called Crimson Guttation released in 2022 and playing occasional shows. We most recently released our second LP, Candied Squawk, in December 2025. 

Dan Pugh: Nick’s the heart, Tom’s the brain, Ben’s the bones, and I’m the skin. Fun fact, I almost quit music entirely after our first show – at Geneseo’s on-campus venue The Knight Spot, opening for the band Aminal – because I was so mortified and embarrassed about how badly I felt it went. The boys’ encouragement and support at that time formed an invincible trust that I’ll have for them always. If you ever have a show like that and seriously consider quitting music, make sure you don’t.

OS: Can you talk about how songwriting is split between the members and how each member sings their own compositions? Does it ever lead to conflicts over which songs are recorded or performed? Or have you found it to be something that works well for you?

BF: Soft Cough is incredibly egalitarian from a creative perspective, and I think that stems from the fact that we all loved songwriting well before forming the band. The band itself serves as a collaborative vessel for songs and song ideas, and we’ve operated that way since the beginning. I think we have enormous trust in each other’s musical tastes, musicianship, songwriting abilities, and creative choices. For Candied Squawk, it feels like we went into the process knowing that each of us would have a song or two. We often send demos to each other that range from a phone recording of a simple progression to a somewhat fleshed-out and arranged song. From there, we’ll write parts, harmonies, etc. and think about how the songs will work in a four-piece context. I can’t recall any conflicts that we’ve had regarding which songs we record or perform which speaks to our intentional collaboration.

Tom Kohn: The demos we share amongst each other are frankly, shoddy and incomplete. There’s something beautiful and intimate in the act of incubating each other’s tunes and adding to it; transforming it into a collective expression of our band’s character. This requires a tremendous amount of trust and a deep connection amongst the four of us. Songwriting is, in that sense, capturing why we love making music together.

DP: With “Mouthbreather” – which musically came from a live in-room collaboration – as an exception, all of our early songs were more or less written by their would-be vocalist before being brought to the band. At that time, we were mainly writing our own parts over someone else’s framework. As time went on, the whole process became more fluidly collaborative. On the“Crimson Guttation” EP we had our first Ben-sung song with “Tuxedo Park”. Tom invited me to share the vocal space on “Furreal?”. As the trust kept evolving it became less of a choice to collaborate and more an inevitability. Knowing Tom, Nick, and Ben as musicians so well started to inform my songwriting, and to this day still does even for songs that aren’t intended to wind up as Soft Cough material. On Candied Squawk, we have even more shared vocals, and I think what comes next will dig even deeper into that. Four-part harmonies incoming!

BF: Fun fact: “Tuxedo Park”, the song I sing on Crimson Guttation, existed as an instrumental for years until I decided to record vocals for it on a whim. It might be our only song where the lead vocalist didn’t primarily write the song itself.

OS: The songs are next to impossible to classify as anything other than a nebulous term like “indie rock.” So let me ask you a really hard question: How do you describe what you sound like to people who haven’t heard you?

BF: Remedial math rock! [laughs] Just kidding, this is an issue that we ourselves struggle with. I think the underlying thread that ties all our music together is “pop sensibility.” The four of us have very diverse tastes in music, but we all like making catchy songs. For that reason, we’ve frequently used the term “garage pop” or “janky pop.” If we had to sum it up, we’d say that Soft Cough is a rock band that flirts with styles like power pop, post-punk, 90’s alternative rock, and perhaps a very small smidge of second-wave emo… although we’ll still deny it when asked.

Nick Koithan: I always struggle to describe our music to people, especially to people who aren’t necessarily into music. The four of us definitely have overlapping music taste, but we each bring something unique and distinct to the sound. It’s been formative to share and bond over our favorite albums over the years.

DP: Mixing everything together genre wise could end up creating a sort of undefined end product. Like blending too many paints and just ending up with a dull muddy nothing. I don’t worry about it too much with us though. At the end of the day no matter who’s singing or what kind of Soft Cough song you’re listening to, it always sounds “like us” to me.

BF: To Dan’s point, we are very concerned with making sure that each song sounds like a Soft Cough song despite the different vocalists, songwriters, etc. There were times during recording Candied Squawk, for example, where I’d say something along the lines of “this needs a bit more of Dan’s guitar” to make it sound more Soft Cough-y.

OS: How much of Soft Cough at this point is about a group of friends hanging out and being creative together as opposed to a band trying to make some kind of imprint in the music industry?

BF: Great question! I think the tension between creative fun and “industry” aspirations is present in many band dynamics. That being said, we never put much pressure on ourselves to “make it,” if you will. We take our craft seriously, but at the end of the day we do this because it’s extremely rewarding to make music with friends. We occasionally discuss what it would be like to focus more on marketing our music, getting signed, etc., but the process seems pretty arduous, especially in today’s social media landscape. Still, I’d personally love to tour in the next year or two.

DP: I spent some years playing bass in more of a “working” band, Petite League. We had the chance to play all over the east coast, tour down to SXSW twice, play some bigger shows, radio spots, things like that. I loved my time playing with them and still see all those guys all the time as friends, but that experience showed me how much work you really need to do and how dedicated you have to be in order to “make it” in the industry. I have a ton of respect for the work they do, and we come from similarly DIY college rock backgrounds, so it’s sick to see how much they’ve gotten done over the past ten years. That being said, I’ve never been as organized or focused on that aspect of being in a band. It’s also a bit hard to make that space to “hang out” with everything else we all have going on in our lives. It becomes all the more important for Soft Cough to be something that inspires and refreshes us, instead of something that frustrates or drains. We wouldn’t still be doing this and planning to keep doing it for the rest of our lives, if we didn’t all just love spending time together and building something new with our friends.

NK: I think not focusing on the monetary aspect of the band takes a lot of pressure off and lets us focus on writing the kinds of songs we’d want to hear and focusing on making music for the love of the game. 

BF: Fun fact for the New Jerseyans at home: Adam Greenberg – the lead guitarist of Petite League – and I were in a NJ-based surf pop group called Plouse.

OS: You started the band in a small upstate New York town. Since it’s tough for indie bands to make ends meet, do you think your location makes it easier than being in Brooklyn or Boston?

BF: Our “home base” is pretty confusing. [laughs] Dan and Tom both live in Brooklyn, so we sometimes say that we’re based there. Ben lives in the lower Hudson Valley around an hour from NYC by train or car, and Nick lives in Buffalo. 

BF: I honestly think it would be much more difficult to work as a band if Dan and Tom didn’t live in NYC. Our practice space is in Brooklyn, our last show was in Ridgewood, and a lot of our music friends live in the outer boroughs. As a non-NYC resident, I am very grateful for our connections to NYC.

NK: Unfortunately, with me living in Buffalo while the guys live downstate, getting to play music with the guys in person doesn’t happen super frequently. I do cherish the times we get together to play. Sharing music with each other virtually isn’t quite the same, but I do think it can lead to having different musical ideas than if we were always playing in the same room.

TK: We have been unsuccessfully lobbying Nick to move down to NYC. While I’m confident we will prevail, Dan, Ben, and I have agreed to move to Buffalo if the Bills win a super bowl in the next coupla years.

BF: Recording was especially fun and rewarding largely because we were able to spend five days hanging out and making music with Nick in the flesh.

OS: What was it like working at Holy Fang? It’s a little different than piling into some studio for a few hours at a time for sessions, no?

BF: I first heard of Holy Fang in 2021 because Noods, a band we’re friendly with, was playing a fest there. I was astounded at the property: a house full of recording equipment? Tons of cool animals running around? A thriving and creative scene? I was very impressed. We started seriously discussing where / when to record the second LP in late 2023 and Holy Fang seemed like a great choice. I reached out to Nick Siep and Trish Dieudonne from Noods and they spoke very highly of Oliver and Holy Fang, so I gave them a call! 

The recording process for the first LP was fun but entirely DIY. It was also the first full-length album I had ever mixed, so there was both pressures to make it sound serviceable as well as a bit of amateurish leeway to keep it rough and lo-fi. Recording “Crimson Guttation,” our first EP, was a bit less personal and less fun. Nick recorded all of his parts in Western NY with our friend Dan Lynch as engineer, so we never saw him IRL throughout the entire process. The second LP had to be different. I knew for a fact that I wanted all four of us together under one roof. The idea of holing up together for a few days in a scenic studio – like so many famous bands have done in the past – was extremely appealing to me, and I’m so grateful that Oliver has curated a space where such a thing is both possible and accessible to us.

Oliver did a brilliant job of letting us iterate and be creative while also nudging us to try new things or go in different directions. The environment was relaxed, collaborative, and artistically stimulating. It was also so great being able to write and record with Nick who traveled over five hours from Buffalo to record.

Another fun tidbit: Hurricane Debby caused a massive blackout in the Hudson Valley during our second day of recording. We spent that day playing games, writing parts acoustically, and goofing around with Oliver and the animals. The power came back on around 10 pm at which point we immediately recorded the album version of “Destiny Bully!” Also it turned out that Nick had COVID during the entire recording process. No one else got sick, miraculously.

DP: If you record at Holy Fang, I recommend giving Oliver latitude and trust because he will give as much as you let him, and he’s got so much experience and passion! Also, practice more than you think you need to ahead of time, it’s no fun flubbing your parts on the clock. Especially when there’s so much opportunity to keep getting inspired and adding more layers of instrumentation. If I had nailed all my parts on first go, you better bet there’d be even more organ and bongos and whatever else we were able to sneak onto the record.

NK: It was one of the best times of my life. It was luxurious to fully immerse myself in music for days on end. Oliver is a mad scientist, with taste and gear to boot. He was welcoming and nurturing of silly ideas. At one point while recording the outro portion of Destiny Bully, Oliver offered to run an extra microphone and spin it overhead as an improvised Leslie Speaker to double with the “dry” signal from my amp.

TK: And that’s on the Doppler effect, baybee! [laughs]

OS: Who are some of your heroes / inspirations / favorites, and can you turn us on to any other bands from your neck of the woods we should be listening to?

DP: Inspirations – BOAT, Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin, Pinback, The Magnetic Fields. Recommendations – Kira Metcalf, Comfy, Marblemouth, Petite League, Heretic & The Weasel, CRAB, birdfeeders

NK: John Frusciante meant a lot to me growing up as a guitarist. For a long time, a lot of my guitar sensibility was based on learning by watching videos of him playing. These days, I think Tom Verlaine’s guitar playing is the most noticeable influence on my playing. Pavement and David Bowie are really important to me from a songwriting perspective. A band I recently started listening to that I was really blown away by is Water From Your Eyes.

BF: Dan introduced me to Pinback our freshman year of college – before we really knew each other – and their combination of snappy, hip-hop influenced drumming and moody / melodic / maj7-chord instrumentation really struck a chord with me. Jeremiah Green’s drumming on the first few Modest Mouse records was also hugely impactful on me, and I’d say he’s my biggest influence from a drumming perspective. Robert Smith of the Cure is probably my biggest “guitar hero”. The four of us are also big hip-hop fans, and I definitely find inspiration there. Some of my more recent songwriting/musical influences come from music I listened to as a kid, like melodic new wave – The Cure, Squeeze, New Order, and then Neil Young, Carole King, as well as 90s post-hardcore stuff like Drive Like Jehu, Lync, and At the Drive-In. I would be remiss to not mention the influence that 90s / early-2000s pop punk and emo had on me. Shoutout the legendary NJ band Lifetime! Their album Jersey’s Best Dancers was huge for me as a teenager. Overall, the four of us have really, really wide and diverse tastes in music that extend far beyond anything considered “rock”. 

TK: I’ll just add Björk, They Might Be Giants, and P-Funk.

OS: Feel free to add anything I didn’t ask about or that you want to share and please plug any upcoming shows, merch, or events!

BF: We want to thank you, Jim, for highlighting our music and asking us to do this interview. You’re a NJ legend, and we’re flattered to talk to you! Also, we’re so grateful for everyone who has listened to our music over the years. It’s incredible that so many people from around the world listen to us despite long periods of inactivity and a minimal online presence. We don’t have any upcoming shows set in stone, but we hope to play a bit more this year. Also stay tuned for merch!

DP: Check out the band I currently play bass in Guys Eyes and keep an ear out for some new music from Soft Cough side project, Money Knife. 

NK: I love Soft Cough and I’m honored to be a part of it. These guys are my musical soulmates and it’s a miracle that our paths crossed in Geneseo. Thanks for the interview, thanks to anyone reading this, and thanks for listening to our songs!

BF: I love Soft Cough, too. [laughs] 

TK: Thanks!

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