I like to think I have a cool last name. All hope is lost though when Zweng pops up in my Facebook feed. Zweng, the moniker under which California native Ryan Zweng writes and performs music, has been around for awhile, although Ryan has never made a big effort to promote himself. More a nomad than a native, he has spent the past decade wandering from state to state, country to country. He wandered into me briefly in 2006 at NYU. More recently we wandered our way into an interview via email since he is currently in France writing something that others may one day call a novel. From what I’ve heard, everyone loves working with this guy, and as you will hear, Ryan hasn’t sacrificed his voice in order to be liked. He’s unique but dynamic enough to keep you listening. From lo-fi punk and gangsta bowlin’ rap to retro bayou rock on his latest project, Paracelsus Blues Conspiracy (http://www.reverbnation.com/paracelsusbluesconspiracy) , it’s ZWENG.

Many thanks to Ryan for providing free MP3 downloads which are sprinkled throughout the interview for your listening pleasure.

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Boredom – Zweng Boredom – Zweng (Free Download)

S: Hey Ryan, so I bumped into you at some shows around the village when you were heading up The Thinnies (I still get “Boredom” stuck in my head… when I’m super bored). So, seeing that I don’t really know you, I must ask, who the hell do you think you are?

Z: Ha, ya the East Village days were good times!  Living like kings in square-box rooms no bigger than bathtubs, powering electric subway sets with car batteries and inverters (no, I haven’t paid my noise violations yet), throwing naked raves in my bandmate’s (father’s) subterranean spa…ahhh.

But to answer your question; I remember writing a tune when I was still in high school about being “Just a boy from the valley, born and raised on Silicon”, which is to say, I suppose, that I’m from the Silicon Valley, or Bay Area of sorts.  Still, like most kids I think, I rather resented where I came from, and still do basically.

Hence, I have always felt a need to wander, or explore, or in some greater subconscious sense, find a Home.  Funny thing is, I get bored easily, so the feeling of searching has become far more soothing to me than settling down, and I think that gets reflected quite a bit in my music and art.

S: Follow up question: who the hell does your mom think you are?

Z: Right-oh, if you’d pose me Ma such a query she would most certainly inform you that the freak you are inquiring about in is in fact a “little angel”.  Really everyone on my mother’s side has a huge heart and eccentric tendencies, so they are all rather supportive of my often unconventional methods of living and making art- supposing the two are separate actions.

S: Over the years, photos have popped up in my Facebook feed of you ALL OVER THE F-ING PLACE! Can you give an itinerary of the cities/countries you’ve lived in or visited since you were born?

Z: Birth, that was a trip!  I kicked it all off in Sacramento–I know, be kind!–then headed to the suburbs of San Francico to “grow up”.  I left the States for the first time when I was twelve and visited Sweden and Denmark with a friend’s family- where I was naturally awakened by the blond models on the farm next to ours.  After that I picked up the pace and have since absorbed Ghana, Senegal, New Orleans, Egypt, China, Tibet, most of Western and Central Europe, Mexico and Canada, Black Rock City, and yes, yes, ye old Civitates Consociatae Americae (aka… Uh-meihr-kuh).

I think  the term “Lived in” can be used to described my attempts in all of the aforementioned destinations, though I have succeeded in my aims in some places more so than others.

S: Can you now give a more musical itinerary, and perhaps mention if certain projects corresponded with spaces/places. Maybe begin each response to a project with three words that you feel serve/served as a mantra for it.

Talking Words – Zweng Talking Words – Zweng (Free Download)

Z: Sure thing.

Le Sabado Tarde is a collection of songs written and recorded while I was in college.  The songs without drums were for the most part recorded in my apartment on E 7th Street, or in the study cubbies at the NYU library .  The songs with drums were done in my supersweetastic garage mojo pad where I was living as a junior-college student in the pirate-like collection of sea-side party houses and intellectual stimulation called Isla Vista.  It was all done on a Boss 8-Track recorder, I played everything, and recorded it all with a crappy Sure microphone that I often threw across the street during keg party concerts… I was listening to a lot of “Highway to Hell” then.

Mantras at the time(s) of recording:  “I want to feel like Mick Jagger now”, “Did Elliot Smith live here”, “Duh duh duh du duh duh, I feel free”.

Westside Pump Station (by Dirty Dave and the Deviants) was done after I graduated, and was floundering around as a gardener for rich ladies drinking tea at a famous flower house south of San Fran.  I had a huge white van that I could barely afford to drive, and would sleep in it after gigs or rehearsals in the city, then wake up at dawn and drive back to trim hedges.  I was miserable.  So what else you gonna do but make a CBGB’s style punk album?   We recorded it at the Pro Tools test studio in one weekend, and started playing all over the Bay Area.  I was taking month-long hiatuses to Los Angeles and New Orleans at the time though, and after some trouble with the law etc, we had to abandon the “punk” operation.

Mantras at the time were: “WWIPD (What Would Iggy Pop Do)?”, “How many windows can I afford to replace for this van?” “Louder?”.

Wrollintuduhbowlinallu – Zweng Wrollintuduhbowlinallu – Zweng (Free Download)

Silent Scream of Gulls, now that was a trip, literally man, many, many trips down Highway 5. Like  I said, I was taking extended trips to LA and New Orleans during this time, and both spots ended up bearing fruit.  In LA I was reconnecting with my longtime jam mate, and now uber-producer, Jonathan Hakakian.  Initially I just wanted help making “WrollinTuduhBowlinAlluh”, which is a krunk rap fantasy about being the illest bowler in the world.  I had also been recording songs for a solo album in my Mom’s salon attic, and was quick to get Jon’s input on them.  He dug both, and creating together felt fantastic.  So, what was supposed to be one song and one weekend turned into a year-long pursuit for a whole album’s worth of material.

Mantras: “Hey hun…”, “Is it really healthy to wake up at 2pm and go to bed at 5 am every day?”, “Dude, just work it out”.

Victoria Avec Zweng was a departure, both literally and stylistically. For the most part, the album was conceived, written and recorded at Goth Mountian Studios, a secret garden hide away nestled into a rain forest in the Santa Cruz Mountians.  W J McKay- the album’s executive producer- put us up there, and helped nurture a terrific environment to create in.  I think that’s why the music has such a kind of soothing, “lets drink martini’s and feel like Dean Martin in Paris” vibe.  I feel its rather cohesive in that sense.

Mantras: “I think Serge Gainsborg would dig this”, “More Ukelele?”, “Just one more take…”.

Love’s Not a Home – Zweng Love’s Not a Home – Zweng (Free Download)

Paracelsus Blues Conspiracy took two years to get done.  I recorded the tunes during three rather sporadic stints in New Orleans, and left town without having really finished the EP to my liking.  After a while I just got sick of waiting to “perfect” the tunes, and decided to release what I had.  It’s raw, but maybe a more truthful feeling was captured because of that.  Whatever the case, the songs I chose to recorded are close to my heart.

Mantras: “Tune down half a step”, “Alright baby, you take yo’ time wi’dat wun now baby”, “buh buh bap bah dah dah duh duh duh” (that’s the sound of a brass band rocking everywhere I went in NOLA).

S: What precipitated Paracelsus Blues Conspiracy? Certain musicians? A backlog of songwriting? A concept?

Z: The overall shock that hit me when I realized what a glorious place New Orleans is, that’s was precipitated it.  Music seeps and rises out of every crevice and crack of that beautiful town, so it’s hard not to be inspired, or more realistically, challenged by it. Everyone rips down there.  I saw janitors do things on a piano at 4am that I would have to pay $50 to catch in SF. So that means you best be, or be getting good if you wanna swing with these cats. I put out a Craigslist ad and caught the attention of Travis Stewart, the album’s producer.  He has amazing equipment.  Vintage stuff. Gear that would make Pink Floyd salivate.  So I just got my freak on in his live room, basking in 1960s distortion and reverb, and finding very real inspiration in the slow, haunting atmosphere of the South.  The other big gift NOLA gave me was a comprehension of horns.  They are so powerful, so vital! …and so often missing from the average indie rock ensemble these days.  I was really trying to forge a synthesis between Nola style horn music and the guitar-based rock’n’roll that I grew up with. I’m not sure if I succeeded, but it was sure beneficial to try.

Also, Goo Goo Dolls or Matchbox Twenty? You MUST choose one. (You can return the favor with such a question for me if you’re an eye-for-an-eye kinda guy.)

Z: Brutal.  Well, I’m sure The Matchbox 20 is super loaded by now, but the first You Tube video of the Goo Goo Dolls has them playing “Slide” on icebergs.  That rules. I want to play (uhh, maybe not “Slide”) on an iceberg!  Goo Goo Dolls take it.

Your turn.  Would you rather eat only McDonalds three times a day for 15 years or fight an elderly female cheetah with only your bear hands and a 62 Gibson Les Paul (which is a rather heavy guitar I might add)?

S: Okay, I’ve had to eat McDonalds once a week at one point in my life and it was really awful. I never want to go back. Plus, I had an insane dog, and she resembled a lion/cheetah in her coloring and temperament, and she and I would often wrestle. She would start to think I was a dog and that it was okay to nip me, and then I would have to scold her. Basically, I think the cheetah thing would be a piece of cake. I like to wrastle with beasts (you hear that dudes???). Ok, my gruff homo moment is over. More questions…

So you’re in France now? Where, exactly? And you mentioned you’re writing a novel? Explain!

Z: Word. I’m in France at the moment.  I would like to tell you where exactly, but as that is both a fluctuating answer, and fodder for assassination of some sorts, I better decline to say.  After the winter I plan on heading to Italy.  My good friends and collaborators are living and creating in an Art Monastery there.  ArtMonastery.org has more about this awesomeness. I just can’t pass up the opportunity to do whatever it is we may do there.

Till Italy, I am working on a story.  I’m trying not to call it a “novel” yet; that word still intimidates me.  So for now its just a story of sorts, but one which I have had developing in me for some time now, and been dying to get out.  In the end, yes I think it will be referred to as a novel, but I’m also doing supplementary drawings, and writing a soundtrack for everything going on in it.  I’m kind of just trying to enter into a different realm for a while, really absorb myself in the process of heavy imagining.  I’m calling it “The Geohumanist”.  We could get into what “geohumanism” is, but that’s kind of why I’m writing the book, so…

S: One thing I appreciate about your path so far is that you’ve never seemed hell bent on promotion. Not a lot of gimmicks from you on my Facebook feed or anything. It’s just like, “Bam, another album is done. Okay, I’m going on safari. Listen to it. Peace!” Do you ever entertain the idea in your mind of becoming somewhat famous? Or are you perfectly happy living life just as you are living it now?

Z: Ya, for a guy in shoes like mine, it always seems to come down to that time of day when you’re either going to get behind your computer and sit on myspace for six hours, or go press record and get that bit of music that just entered your head out of it and into the real world.  I usually don’t beat myself up for choosing the latter.  I don’t think most people who get famous do either.  I always figure that at the end of the day, if I record, though it may not be an immediate reaction, what I feel connected to now will connect to other people at some point. The creating is what turns me on, not the promotion. So sure, I have tried–and probably, by virtue of your question– failed at promoting myself.  I have tried to get imaginative with it, but still, in the end it becomes me talking about me, and that just makes me (for the third time) feel like a total egocentric ass.  It’s a weird thing, art or whatever, in that sense.  One has to constantly try to develop their own personal, inner genius, while trying not to be (or seem) too self-involved or obsessed with themselves.  Maybe I’m too reserved.  Maybe if I just became the freakish things I’m constantly imagining in my heart, I would turn into a super star overnight.  Hell, I won’t lie, I am trying to become the dreamy things I think of; they are just really big and epic things.  It takes a while to build them!

Anyways, I’m after more than just getting some notoriety.  Really, I aim to become a Mythological Creature (cite: “Lionicide”, off “Westside Pump Station” for the story on that one). I can’t worry about the (cue David Bowie!) “Faaaame”.  I can only worry about what’s inside of me, trying to get that out now, before my turn is up. And it comes out fast, and often, and with a lot at a time, so it can be hard to slow down, focus on all the millions of little perfect bits and pieces it takes to push one dude out of the realms of his obscurity into the hearts–or lets face it, iPods and TV’s–of millions of people for a considerably long time.

That, and I don’t have a PR machine behind me yet.

S: Lastly, what should I have asked you that I didn’t?

Z: Whats else is on Tap?   Before I landed in France to work on “The Geohumanist”, I stopped off in LA.  LA J (that’s what I call Jonathan Hakakian) and I put down 4 new tracks with the help of Steve Riley. It gave us all a chance to express some of the lessons I think we learned on our previous projects, plus we threw a totally epic animal party (to celebrate Jon’s recent Grammy Nomination), and that kept us inspired for the week leading up to the party and the week after it.

Now, like I said, I think we are learning, so in an attempt to evolve with my nomadic nature, these songs will only represent the first part of a four-part album.  I think it will be called Heartbreak and Redemption in F# Minor. I think we really touched something special with these recordings.

Also, on the more electronic tip: check out some of the tracks I did with BREN down in LA.  “Wrong Chick” etc, on his latest mix tape at www.BrenMusic.com.  Oh, and for fans of Frisky Disc Co (which is the electro-funk escapade I contribute to in SF; staring Lysol from Dirty Dave and the Deviants, and a slew of other talented freaks) the music video we shot for “Ladies Room” will be releasing super soon.  Keep posted at reverbnation.com/friskydiscco and check out the one we shot for “AfroCentric” while you’re there.

That’s it from me.

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