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Geza Keller

RIYL

Greg Douglass, Elvin Bishop, Darius Degher, Robin Henkel, Jeffrey Joe Morin

Influences

Steely Dan, Jackson Browne, The Kinks, Grateful Dead, Miles Davis

Discography

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Born in Budapest, Hungary, in 1954, Geza Keller was three years old when he and his Canadian-born Hungarian mother fled the Russian Communist regime as political refugees and returned to Canada. Geza Sr. was a self-taught musician, while little Geza was inspired to become a singer at age eight, after seeing the Disney movie Almost Angels, about the Vienna Boys Choir. He took early guitar lessons from Danny Schmidt, the father of the Eagles’ bass player and singer Timothy B. Schmidt, and later learned to play the drums and tenor sax.

Keller went on to play with bands such as the Jazz Sparks until moving to San Diego in 1988. A physicist by day, he worked at two optics companies before starting his own ventures such as QSP Optical Technology Inc., where he served as vice president, and purchasing Santa Ana firm Infinite Optics 2003. The company develops and manufactures thin film coatings for telescope parts, medical instruments, and defense systems. At the same locale, he founded Cibola Glass, a boutique glass tile company that uses similar technologies to create artistic home furnishings. He also ran Optics Masters, a sister company in Poway.

His band breakingthecode landed a label deal with Angelic Records, but that company only re-released an album of a live performance at the Belly Up (which Keller reportedly paid the soundman to record). He began recording his first solo album of originals during the 2020-2021 pandemic shutdown.

As of 2021, Keller was living in Oceanside where most of his days began at four or five in the morning, as he sipped his coffee, watched the news, played the guitar, and designed formulas for his company's thin-metal coatings. His Infinite Optics company earned $3 million in annual sales.

His first single "Let Me In" was released in summer 2021, with his Got Nothing to Lose album dropping that September. He started work on the single back in 1985. "The song was inspired by the struggle that many young people experience, trying to find their own identities, their purposes in life, their search for love and their attempts to overcome their limitations amid the general chaos of life. People seek love and yet are troubled by love. It’s both the answer and the problem."

(Photo: Caitlin Rother)

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