Dweezil Zappa
Dweezil Zappa Releases First Studio Album in 10 Years Features Dweezil’s Only Co-write with Frank Zappa
"Dweezil Zappa Talks About Returning With First New Studio Album in a Decade: Exclusive Premiere" - Billboard
For the past decade, Dweezil Zappa has stepped away from his own songwriting, focusing instead on introducing his father Frank Zappa's music to a new generation. Snagging a Grammy in 2008 for his meticulous instrumental efforts, he continued to uphold his father’s musical legacy by performing more than a thousand concerts with his ensemble Zappa Plays Zappa.
Via Zammata’ marks Dweezil’s return to his own original music. Produced, written and arranged by Dweezil, the album also features a few special collaborations that include a song with venerable actor John Malkovich (on the song “ Malkovich”) and the only co-write between Dweezil and Frank Zappa (on the song “Dragon Master”).
“This whole record is about finding my own voice in the world of music,” says Dweezil, whose father listed Dweezil’s religion on his birth certificate as “musician” and gave him a Fender Music Master at the age of 6. “I decided to collect songs I had written from the past that I felt had strong bones and build new arrangements around them. I also wanted to write new material that would reflect my current musical state of mind. I've learned so much in the past 10 years of playing my father’s music. I wanted to be able to express new compositional, arranging and playing skills with my own new musical vocabulary.”
Much of the album was recorded on analog tape, a move that allowed Dweezil to create the intimate and multifarious sonic character of Via Zammata’. As stylistically varied as the audio landscape is, the songwriting keeps pace, taking the listener through unexpected twists and turns just like the Sicilian street for which the album is named.
“Dragon Master” is the only co-write between Frank and Dweezil. Frank wrote the lyrics in 1986 and asked Dweezil to set it to music. “At that time, heavy metal was topping the charts and my dad was lampooning the genre with his lyrics. For this record, I decided to fully embrace the epic metal-osity of his lyrics and create a deadly serious face melting riff to back them up.” Via Zammata’ s second collaboration is with renowned actor John Malkovich, who reads Plato’s Allegory of the Cave over Dweezil’s original music.
Instrumentals on the album include “Truth,” with a string quartet recorded by legendary Beatles engineer Geoff Emerick, and “Funky 15,” a cinematic romp (in 15/8). Zappa describes “Billionaire’s Son” as “a weird little audio movie and probably the quirkiest song on the record,” and “Hummin’” as “sci-fi easy listening.” Old school riffs and analog sounds conspire together on “Nothing” (“I know all there is to know about nothing”) which was recorded with the Stratocaster Jimi Hendrix had given Frank. Dweezil names the solo as one of his favorite things that he’s ever recorded. “Feedback crept in, and I felt I was channeling it from another place, almost as if someone else took over the guitar.”
RIYL: Frank Zappa, Zappa Plays Zappa, Ween
TRY: #2, 3, 5, 6, 9
DIRTY: #4
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