We were lucky to catch up with Dweezil Zappa recently and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Dweezil thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Can you talk to us about a project that’s meant a lot to you?

I’ve done a lot of meaningful projects in my life. I tend to follow my interests and learn new skills as often as I can. That can vary from exploring guitar techniques, to cooking, to golf, to music production and audio engineering. I like to do deep dives into things that inspire me. One project that best represents that philosophy was originally called Zappa Plays Zappa but later changed simply, to Dweezil Zappa. It was a musical tour whose name described the action taking place, me as Dweezil Zappa, performed the music of my father Frank, Zappa, live on stage. I performed over 1500 concerts around the world from 2006 to 2020.

Essentially it started off as an experiment, a way to present my father’s music to a new audience after his untimely passing. I felt my father’s music was vastly undiscovered and mostly misunderstood because the music that made it to the radio was not representative of the entirety of his musical output. He was a very skilled composer and guitarist but most people weren’t aware of that because his humorous songs were the ones that got airplay, not his serious music. My tour was designed to focus attention on the music I felt people should be aware of. I curated the music on the tour in ways that let his compositions speak for themselves and in doing so it showcased the skill-set of my band and me as a band leader.

Throughout the years of touring I learned so much about music, my father’s and my own. My ability to improvise as a guitarist expanded beyond anything I had ever imagined as did my understanding of theory, harmony and arranging. So much so that I was able to write several compositions for a 100 piece orchestra that were performed live on stage in Holland a few years back.

All of it was meaningful to me because I had always wanted to learn to play my father’s most difficult compositions. As a kid I saw them as impossible because I didn’t have the technical skill or fundamental knowledge of how my dad created their complex structures. When I launched the tour I had already spent 3 years studying his music before I even put the band together. I completely changed my technical approach to playing guitar and I practiced over 8 hours a day on average. I was able to play all of the most difficult songs I had wanted to learn as a kid and my efforts were ultimately recognized by standing ovations from the audiences, plus I won a Grammy for best instrumental performance.

I’m happy that I was able to play his music commensurate with the way he performed it himself. When the opportunity arises to perform again, I will have to raise the bar even higher.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I never have had the assumption that people will know who I am or know much about me. My first and last name is unusual so that becomes a quick topic of discussion. Having a famous father was never a negative issue for me. Some people with famous parents talk about living in the shadow or their fear of not measuring up somehow. I never worried about that because I had the mindset that whatever I chose to do would be done to the best of my abilities and that’s all that mattered . People’s opinion of me is beyond my control so it doesn’t enter into my mind when it comes to decisions about what I should do or how I should do something. The execution of it has to be the best I can make it because that is the only thing I can control. Beyond that it’s out of my hands.

Even though my father was well known as a musician by his fans, they were from an older generation. Younger generations know very little about my dad, his music or his prescient views about politics and society at large. Because of that, I will always have to let my own work speak for itself through my actions and creativity. I don’t worry about being compared to my dad because his musical skills and performance standards are widely recognized as being are the highest in the field of music. I strive to reach the same standards with everything that I do. So if people make any comparison it will be apples to apples. I see that as a positive thing.

Have you ever had to pivot?

I had to pivot in 2020 because of the Covid pandemic. I was on tour when everything in the world changed. I haven’t played a show since 2020 and I’ve barely played guitar. Inflation and many other industry changes have made it too financially burdensome and risky for me to continue touring as I was back in 2020. Because of that, the pivot I made was focusing my attention on building a recording studio that specializes in immersive audio formats like ATMOS. I’ve moved into more of a music production and content creator phase of my career. I have a lot of things I’m working on for my own website and I firmly believe that all artists and content creators should focus on building their own permission based audience that connects directly with them through their own website. If the internet was created today it would be clear to everyone that they all need their own singular location for people to engage with them directly for everything from music, clothing merchandise, video content etc. Think of it this way, if you walked into a bank to set up an account they would not tell you to walk out the door and go 7 other places to set up an account but that’s exactly what artists and content creators do with their social media and websites. They tell you to leave their site an to follow them on all of their different social media, none of which affords them the opportunity to build an email list and reach their fans/customers directly. The bank would sit you down and make sure they followed through on making you their customer and that’s artists need to now. They need to acquire emails and make sure their fans become happy direct customers.

How did you build your audience on social media?

It’s all related to what I was just talking about. I think the future of artist monetization is a direct to consumer approach. It really is the only sustainable way for artist to scale their own business. I say that because sales are far better than likes. Likes aren’t real for the most part. It’s all a numbers game and most of the numbers are inflated to show false success and engagement. With the advent of AI it’s even more important for artists to be able to communicate directly with their real fans.

So much stuff can be faked these days when it comes to social media and music streaming numbers. The giant numbers of followers some popular artists have could easily be the result of using robot farms and AI as opposed to authentic engagement. If you’re actually running a business it would make more sense to have direct contact with your customers who also happen to be real people.

Look at Apple or Amazon, they don’t use social media to contact you, they use your email to contact you because they made you go to a single website to purchase their goods and they never want you to click on a link to leave their website. Artists also need to think more about the different routes to a financial goal. As an example, if an artist wanted to make a million dollars they could try to get 1 million random people to spend a dollar on something promoted in a ubiquitous manner or they could build a smaller but more real base of 10,000 customers who might like to spend $100 dollars on the artist’s best and most exclusive work. That same 10,000 customers is more likely to remain engaged over time especially if their is a reciprocal relationship that is built that also features rewards for continued support.

That is an important tool for building a symbiotic relationship between artists and their fans. I actually partnered with a few people and built a website hosting platform that really helps artists do all of the things I’m talking about. It’s called rewardmusic.com.

It’s a fully functional business tool that provides every service any artist would need, all in one location – the artist’s own website! It’s your forward facing music and video store, streaming channel, podcast network, live stream hub, hub for all subscription based content, merchandise store, email service, concert event calendar, ticket service, remote check in service at venues and reward system for customers, rewardmusic does it all in one place. An artist would simply use their own website with their own domain name and it would be powered by rewardmusic.

Contact Info:

• Website: dweezilzappa.com
• Other: rewardmusic.com

Image Credits
Mathew Tucciarone Timothy Kuratek