Brett Kohler didn’t plan on being a musician. The Detours weren’t supposed to exist. That’s exactly what makes them worth paying attention to.
A decade into life in Los Angeles, Brett Kohler — frontman and songwriter for The Detours — will tell you the whole thing started on a couch. A medical situation that forced a stillness he wasn’t used to, and somewhere in that stillness, he picked up a guitar. Taught himself to play. Taught himself to sing. Started writing.
“I never thought when I first started noodling around that it would lead to where it is now,” he told us. “It’s been quite the journey.”
That journey eventually led him to an open mic, where he met guitarist Misha Molove. One introduction led to another — bassist Ryan Clure, drummer John Keyes — and what started as four guys figuring it out became The Detours. The name, it turns out, had been sitting in Brett’s head since middle school, written down long before he ever played a note. He always said if he ever had a band, that would be it.
The first real test came when Brett got offered a solo slot at the Viper Room. He didn’t want to do it alone. He called the guys, they showed up, and somewhere in the middle of that first set — watching people move in the crowd — it happened.
“That was probably the moment,” he said. “I’m like, maybe we’re on to something here.”
Since then, The Detours have built steadily on the LA circuit — the Whisky A Go Go, Molly Malone’s, Madame Siam — with a sound that draws from the Tom Petty lineage without being in debt to it. There’s emotional directness in the writing, analog warmth in the performances, and a live energy anchored by “No Particular Reason,” their current crowd-mover. Brett wrote it with one intention: give people permission to let go.
“You’re out at a live show, you’re having fun,” he said. “That’s the energy the song tries to bring.”
Songwriting, for Brett, doesn’t follow a formula. A melody hit him at the top of Runyon Canyon mid-run — he scrambled back down the hill to catch it before it disappeared.
“Recklessly Confused” came together in a two-hour window at home, built around a phrase he liked. The ones that stick, he says, are the ones that arrive fast and don’t ask permission.
He also knows when to step back. When a song is ready enough to bring to the band — not finished, but confident — that’s when it becomes something else.
“When it’s finished is probably when it’s 60 or 70% done,” he said. “Let them add their own flavor. It doesn’t have to be all me.”
The Detours are currently heading to Lake Tahoe for a run of shows, with a new single dropping this month and an 11-track debut album in the works — aiming for the end of summer. The road is expanding too. California and Arizona so far, but the Midwest and the South are on the horizon.
The detour, it turns out, was always the point.
Direct to You.
