Neil Zaza's Blog

Headed home on the plane right now from Warsaw to Cleveland. I can’t believe how fast this whole tour has went. It really started out in the US with some regional dates culminating to the 212 Kent Stage show on April 15. From there I took off to Italy for a few days of rehearsal with Walter and Enrico and we were off and running. The Italy dates were amazing and I just wish we had stayed longer in that wonderful country…if not for just the food and coffee! It looks like I’ll be back in August and November so I’ll have to get my fill then as well.

From there we headed to Poland for our next leg of the tour. I’m telling you, the Polish fans are absolutely amazing. As with the Italian fans, there is a real passion and reverence about the music. Just in Poland they are crazier! My friend Michal put the whole tour together and he was the road manager throughout our stay. I’ve been to Poland before, but he really showed me such a beautiful side to the country that I had never known. I’m even a bigger fan of it now.

Every show was incredibly special and they were all different. From playing to an incredible sea of people in a couple of performances to some great small club dates, I really felt focused and sharp in what I was doing. So many times throughout my shows I really took a step back, so to speak, and realized that I am so fortunate to have followed my dream of playing guitar. There are so many haters in the world that tell you it “It can’t be done” or try and drag you down to their level. I’m glad I had an undying focus as to what I really wanted to do with my life and followed it.

Trust me when I say that I never took for granted the fan’s enthusiasm or their crazy, insane reaction when I started to play “I’m Alright.” I remember so clearly in Italy when the fans were singing the melody to “I’m Alright” to me when I stopped playing mid-song. Mind blowing! Or two fans that drove 14 hours from Denmark to see me play in Radzyn, Poland. To me, that’s some heavy stuff that I appreciate.

But most of all I’m just happy to be playing my guitar. It all really begins and ends with that, doesn’t it?

Chen Lei, Neil Zaza, Michael Angelo Batio

So after the Firehouse tour, I had a few days off at home and I was back at it again in Asia for the Guitar Stars tour.

This tour saw the pairing of Michael Angelo Batio and me touring throughout China, Thailand, and Taiwan. Actually, the tour had a few names. In China, it was called CG3 (a take on the G3 guitar tour we all know and love) and in Taiwan it was called Guitar Stars. By any name this tour was a smashing success.

I have known Michael now for a few years and every time that we have talked I thought he was a really cool dude. Truth be told, I have been a huge fan of his over the years starting with me trying to comprehend half the impossibly technical stuff he was doing on his first Star Licks instructional video back in the day.

Also, I’ve always talked with friends that I loved how MAB was very defined in his approach, image and style with the guitar. Think shred? You know that you are going to think MAB. While some artists dabble in various styles and directions, I’ve always appreciate the laser sharp focus and direction that Michael has had over the years. You just KNOW what you are going to get at one of his concerts/clinics or on his CDs.

I love how some artists really define a genre themselves and anything after them is somehow derivative of them and their efforts (think Van Halen and tapping or Yngwie and the whole Neo Classical movement). While I won’t debate the timeline of shred guitar in this blog, needless to say you wouldn’t have to look far to discover that most all roads of this style of playing leads to a handful of players and one man in particular: Michael.

So in all of this, I was really excited to hit the road with him and tour Asia. In each country we were to pick up the hotrod shredder to fill out the bottom of the bill.

The tour started in China for three dates (Daqing, Harpin, and Beijing). From the very first show the crowds were absolutely insane. People shouldn’t be getting this kind of reaction from playing instrumental guitar music. I’m serious!

The crazy crowd in Taipei

(On a side note, people always ask me why I don’t and why I haven’t toured the US in many years. While the fans in the US are great, it is a whole other kind of energy that prevails in most of these overseas concerts I do. Where I may get an enthusiastic response in the US, there is certainly a contingent of audience members that strike the stereotypical “folded arms/show me what you can do/I’m better than you/I’m unimpressed/you suck” stance. While this never, ever bothers me (in fact, it actually provokes me sometimes), I’ll take the Beatlemania, tune recognition, deep fan love and ultimate crowd surfing any day that Asia provides without fail. I’ll address more of this in a later post at some point, but at this time I am looking at doing some dates in the good ole US of A.)

But I digress…

The thing Michael and I realized very quickly is that this was a fantastic bill to be touring. The reason being is that we really approach two totally different sides of guitar playing. Obviously, MAB is the shred with some melody included and I cover the melodic aspect with some chops thrown in. While that is a vast oversimplification of our two styles, needless to say, both of our groups of fans loved it. My fans would come out to the show and love what MAB was doing and then his fans got a dose of what I am all about. It was a “marriage”, so to speak, made in guitar heaven.

After China we hit Bangkok, Thailand and finally Taipei, Taiwan. Each as crazy (or more) than the last.

All the gigs were sold out and the energy level and enthusiasm were off the hook. It was insane how hot the venues were that we played. Walking on stage was always like walking into the mouth of an oven…and humid to boot. I wondered why at the beginning, but then it became clear that with no official fire marshall around as we have here in the US, these places were overpacked to unsafe levels over capacity. I thought on a few occasions that if a fire would happen to break out, we’re all dead as there were people hanging from the rafters in some of these places. Luckily, all ended great.

We’ve talked about taking this thing on the road again and, in fact, we are looking at that at this moment whether it be Asia, Europe or the US. Wherever it is I know that Michael and I will do this again.

As situations would have it, my good friend Bill Leverty is unable to do this particular tour with his band Firehouse. I have always been a fan of the great songs, harmonies, big hooks and great guitar riffs of this seminal hard rock band. So when asked if I could fill in for this short time, I jumped on it. It will be a blast playing their hits as I attempt to fill Bill’s huge guitar shoes. I look forward to seeing all of my fans at these shows along with their continued love and support. Thanks! Neil

I’m sitting on a plane right now as we get closer and closer to arriving. I’m impatient. Restless. Unfocused.

I flip through my iPod for something to take my mind off this interminable damn flight. I try one selection after another quickly flipping from tune to tune as we would with a channel changer when there’s nothing on TV. Now I’m just pissed.

Then I click that magic wheel on the iPod and my musical roulette game has finally delivered. Bingo!

And then it really hits me: I’m not looking for music, per se. I’m looking for a connection. A direct injection into my system that somehow symbiotically resonates with me not merely on a musical level, but something that takes me somewhere. Makes me think. Makes me invincible. Forces me to deal with things in the back of my mind. To dream. To spiritually empower me to believe anything is possible. A connection!

And when that fleeting moment hits there is nothing like it in the whole world. Somehow everything is put right and I’m centered. I’m calmed and soothed. I’m alright.

And it is that exact specialness that I think is missing in this late day of age. Music has become nothing more than the equivalent of musical wallpaper.  It the ubiquitous entity that permeates every waking moment of our day…whether we want it or not. Whether we choose to listen to it or not. Turn on TV. It’s there. Go shopping. It’s there. Gym? It’s there and I can’t even change the channel. Sometimes its like acid to my ears.

Think about it. At what point in your day isn’t music playing in some form? The problem is that most of the music, by design, is engineered not for a listening experience, but rather to be some sort of filler or background groove or companion to some other task. There’s always a goal to it.

As crazy as this sounds, I don’t want to listen to music all the time. The reason why is that I want my listening experience to be special. I want fresh ears that eagerly absorb what I choose to listen to…not what some ad executive thinks will attract my attention in a commercial or on radio.

Think of how special it must have been back in say, Mozart’s time. Music didn’t permeate all over every waking moment. When you went to a concert there must have been a specialness that we couldn’t even begin to comprehend today.  How fresh and inspiring the notes must have been pouring out of those instruments. I guess we’ll never know…

Writing in Trasacco, IT

You know when there is something truly good happening you can feel it? Well, I’m feeling it right now…

It’s really hard to explain, but for me, when it is time to do a new CD I can feel it. There is no explaining or rationalizing the process. I either have “it” (whatever that elusive magical spark might be) or I don’t. There is music inside that needs to get out or there isn’t. It’s not complex and it’s not on a clock or calendar. As the expression goes: No wine before it’s time, the same goes here. When it’s time, it’s time…and it’s time.

As anyone that has followed any of my tweets or posts on my Facebook (/neilzazamusic), over the past few months I have started the process of writing and recording. Things have been going great and the songs have been pouring out.

I’ve been very selective this time (as I guess I always am) regarding the quality of the actual songs themselves. When I state it is about the song, I mean it is about the song, dammit! A ton of attention has been paid to making sure that there is something musical in the compositions and not just a backdrop to show some guitar licks. But then, if you’re reading this you probably already know that about me.

So the strangest thing happened… I went to Italy to do some touring, hang with my friends, eat pasta all day long, drink Italian coffee (notice the italics), and track some bass and drums for some songs I had written. What I wasn’t expecting was to experience one of the greatest compositional periods in my career. It seems that as soon as I landed and had the first hit of Italian espresso (again, the italics, please) these tunes started pouring out of my Telecaster that really embodied all that I had envisioned for the new project. And they wouldn’t stop coming…

The process was always the same. I would pluck around on my black Tele and the idea would appear. I’d flesh out the arrangement and lay a very quick/scratch version down to a click track on my laptop. From there I would bring it to the band (Fabio Colella and Walter Cerasani) at Fabio’s studio. They would listen to it a time or two, learn it within a few minutes, we would start playing it and BAM! A new tune was born.

What was great was that the turn around time from when the idea was born to the time that we solidified it and were prepared to record was within one day (or hours in some cases). I think that expediency really helped to keep the idea fresh and focused.

I had the great opportunity to go into a fabulous studio called Audacia. It is a studio that is part of Audacia Records run by Aldo and Giuseppe Stornelli. This place was great! We tracked most of the tunes leaving just one more song to record sometime this week. Thanks guys!

Call it the air, the architecture, the comradarie of a great band of friends or whatever, but the result are tunes that really have a new sound to them. And they came to life in the most effortless way possible.  I didn’t even write them…I intercepted them from some invisible muse it seems.

Throughout my time in Italy the guys kept saying that it is a new sound.  Being that I stayed in Trasacco (Fabio’s hometown) they have been calling it the “Trasacco Sound.” I don’t know about all of that, but I do know that my sister (who I even doubt knows I play guitar or at least has never really acknowledged it to any degree) actually said (unprovoked, I might add) that what she heard emanating from my studio room upstairs at the family house was great. “It sounds really different and modern. I really like it!” Well…if that doesn’t say I’m onto something good I don’t know what will. 🙂

So in any case, I’m back home now and racing to keep the momentum and urgency that started in Italy. I think the key on this one is about capturing things fast and not over-thinking any aspect of the production. This one needs to get delivered fresh.

I’ll keep you updated…

Neil

The past few weeks have been really crazy (in a good way). Things are really picking up steam and I am really making progress with the new material.

For a while, things were really moving slowly and it seemed like I would never get momentum. I had a bunch of ideas and rough “sketches” laying around in various states of non completion. Solid ideas, but they just needed some live playing on them to make them come alive.

I have been fortunate that I have learned over the years that no matter what, I always try and finish the tune when I am writing it, even in rough form with just a guitar and a click track. This way, I can add production and come back to it with a fresh perspective and not worry about writing or recapturing the elusive muse.

In any case, that is what I did on a few of these tunes and then they went into hibernation for a while. Until a few weeks ago…

I was in Las Vegas working with Todd Rogers on some of the OSN production material and we were getting such great results that I thought, “What the hell. Let’s see what Todd can do on some of these ideas on my laptop.” Well what he did is ignite me back into a raging inferno in regard to finishing these tunes. He laid some amazing work down and I went home feeling the urgency to get on with all things new.

After coming home, I had the good fortune to cut some tracks at The Audio Kitchen for an amazing upcoming band called Aevory Nash (their new CD is going to be smokin’, by the way). Garrett Janos is the drummer and I was blown away with his sense of time, musicality and overall cool vibe.

What started out as cutting one quirky cover tune for me has turned into an everyday drum session the past week or so. We’ve been down there knocking a tune out in about two hours and then comping together the best of the best stuff for the final take. It has been a blast and it has really helped working with some fresh, enthusiastic talent like Todd and Garrett. I think when you hear the result you will notice the difference.

I still have to edit through all the great key stuff that we recorded in Las Vegas, but I think it is going to be a labor of love.

The only downside to all this right now is that I need to be working on OSN material and getting the show ready. I keep putting it off and I realize that I am literally about 3 months away from the show! I need to put a moratorium on the new material after this week and get cracking on all that is Christmas.

More later…