Profile · Middleton, Wisconsin
Paul Kowert
Punch Brothers bassist; raised in Middleton (often called Madison native in press)
$1,200,000
Paul Kowert is the Punch Brothers bassist who grew up in Middleton even when the clips call him a Madison native. Born July 18, 1986, he started violin at three. At nine, to get into the school strings program, he switched to a bass that dwarfed him. A bluegrass band came through his high school; someone handed him a mandolin and a Nickel Creek record. Edgar Meyer albums filled in the rest. He studied at the Curtis Institute of Music, class of 2009, with Meyer as his teacher. While he was still a student, in 2008, Chris Thile called: Punch Brothers needed a bass. Thile later said that was when the band became a band. Kowert has been the group’s low end ever since, and he also plays in the chamber-bluegrass project Hawktail. Punch Brothers’ 2018 album All Ashore won the Grammy for Best Folk Album. He still tells interviewers that Madison is a great town to grow up in, and metro press often files him that way; the childhood itself was Middleton, the Dane County suburb next door. That suburb is the Wisconsin claim.