We were lucky to catch up with Zach & Maggie recently and have shared our conversation below.
Alright, Zach & Maggie thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. We’d love to hear about a project that you’ve worked on that’s meant a lot to you.
At the beginning of 2023 we finally released our first album of all original material entitled “The Elephant in the Room”, but we quickly found one major problem ahead of us. The economics of a fledgling music group has long relied on selling physical CDs to supplement smaller venue ticket numbers to sustain the early years of growth. We constantly heard fans looking over our merchandise table, “I love the music, but I don’t even have a CD player anymore”. We needed a new type of physical product that our audiences wanted.
To promote the album on social media we had the idea to turn our love of cooking into a promotional angle and decided to develop recipes and subsequent videos to pair with each track on the album. One minute’s worth of us speedily cooking through a delicious recipe of pun-based pairings like a Mushroom Risotto for this title track “Elephant in the ‘Shroom” or a garlic rich, and hearty chicken Caesar Salad for the aptly named Graceland style song “Caesar Said to Brutus” while the corresponding track would play over top.
After receiving highly positive feedback on this combination of our music and our love of food, we discovered we might have a solution to our CD problem. Thus began the work to create an in-depth album book where each chapter not only gives readers back stories behind each of the songs as well as written-out lyrics but details of each recipe paired with it. We had created an album cookbook entitled “How to Cook the Elephant in the Room”. Not only was this a solution to our merch table woes, but it was a truly representative blending of our two creative loves.
Zach & Maggie, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
Music has been our passion since we were both young children, Independtly we gravitated towards highly skilled folk genres like Bluegrass and Irish music despite residing in different states around the country. This passion combined with our foundational years of studious lessons in classical music led us both to study our instruments at the same University. We met in the Belmont Bluegrass Ensemble, quickly fell in love, and found ourselves often booked on the same shows as we worked well as a duo both musically and personally. We like to say it was a match made in Nashville.
Our focus on a highly technical approach to our instruments led us to sustainable careers as touring bandmates for various artists of note out of the Nashville music scene. Our combined specialty of weaving folk techniques into modern shows we found our performing in some notable places like Carnegie Hall, Syndey Opera House, Palace of Westminster, or even the Vice President’s residence. All the while alongside equally notable people. Though we loved this work as musical technicians, we felt that we still had something more original to say with our music. Thus we began to develop our own show as songwriters and band leaders between the gigs and travel.
Taking a similar approach to weaving musical ideas together we began to weave songwriter styles next. Our songs have been regularly noted as having a quirky, and intelligent sense of humor, yet still find moments of touching poignancy, and technical showmanship. Approachable and easy to listen to, but just below the surface a richer depth awaits if you give it your full attention. As the show took shape we found we were aiming to develop an artist’s persona that feels as rich and complex as a personal friend, not just a monochromatic playlist-hunter in your pocket-jukebox.
The one area where we were still trying to connect with fans this year was at our merch table. After some months of development, writing, and filming our cooking series our album cookbook was born. This book offered a fun twist for the merchandise table that felt authentic to the playful, but skillful approach we take to our music and allowed concertgoers to feel like they finally had something at the end of a night to take a piece home and better know the friend we’ve tried to create in the Zach & Maggie show.
What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?
People turn to art as a way to answer un-askable questions. The way art is able to communicate through emotion is so vital to our experience as humans it has truly tangible and pragmatic value in our society. All that said any job has its practical realities that can hold both blessings and pains. One of the most rewarding aspects of a musician’s life is when we’re at work everyone in attendance is at their happiest or at least hoping to be. They are using our work to relax, feel good, settle their heart, or just smile for a moment! The world I get to live in is truly a wonderful place if I orient my mind to look for it. The grind of travel, communication of subjective ideas, uncertainty of career future in gig work, and risks of starting our own show can absolutely be slight bumps on the road but ensure I keep the focus of work on helping the audience feel something special in the music and not to service my own ego, the greater the satisfaction of a good days work done.
Do you think there is something that non-creatives might struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can shed some light?
It’s virtually impossible to have %100 confidence in any creative idea. There are so many potential shifts from idea to completion sometimes it feels like you see a flag on a hill a mile away and decide to walk towards it, but as soon as you start walking you have a blindfold on. At some point, you have to stop which lets you take the blindfold off and see where you ended up. Sometimes you’re fortunate and you end up next to a completely different flag than the one you were aiming for, but more often than not, you’re just someone completely wrong. Over the years you get a little better at understanding how to feel your way through and walk a little bit straighter than the last time, but it’s never concrete. This is why so many musicians of great success can suddenly fall into obscurity because over a lifetime you release since culture changes, the flag is moving as well.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://zachandmaggie.com
- Instagram: @zachandmaggiemusic
- Facebook: https://facebook.com/zachandmaggie
- Youtube: https://youtube.com/c/zachandmaggie
