Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Zachary Weiss. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Zachary, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Do you wish you had started sooner?

I’ve been interested in the arts as long as I can remember, making films on home video with friends growing up, drawing and writing, but music has always held so much magic for me. I got my first guitar when I was 11 or 12 and as soon as I could play a chord without the strings buzzing (much) i began writing songs. I remember playing my first song for my parents and feeling so proud of creating something out of nothing.
I continued writing music all throughout high school and college but didn’t really start pursuing my art in earnest until after I graduated from college and moved back to my hometown of Pittsburgh. I let fear and insecurity in my abilities keep me from wanting to showcase my art in public, instead just making things in the comfort of my own bedroom. I’m so proud of that early work, it’s heady and intimate and very very personal but my art changed drastically when I started integrating a sense of community and considering the audience in what I do.
On my last week of college I attended and performed in a cabaret hosted by some friends and this really fueled my desire to bring my art to some kind of public forum. When I moved back to Pittsburgh I very slowly started seeking open mics to attend and quickly found a place I still call home to this day in an open mic called Acousticafe (then operating out of a bar called Club Cafe, now at the Mr. Smalls Funhouse. If you are ever in Pittsburgh on a Monday night, do yourself a favor and check it out). The community there taught me the true meaning of the word, I made lifelong friends, found myself many times over, and felt challenged and supported in equal measure. It was through stepping out of that comfort zone that that I have found the strength to keep going and keep seeking those same type of connections to this very day.
I’ve been in Chicago for a little over ten years now and the courage it took to step onto that first stage is something I still have to tap into every now and then. When I’m performing a new challenging song, organizing bigger shows, or when I had my first studio sessions recently (for my new album out this summer) I feel very much the same I did back at 21 and think “if they could do it, so can I.” I wish I could have overcome that fear sooner for the sake of the lost time and lost connections that I could have had as a teenager, but I know that I got there eventually. Some of the best experiences of my life have been the direct result of “doing it scared” so that would be the one piece of advice I would send to my younger self.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I write, record, produce, and perform music under the stage name Apres Pompeii. The music that I make varies in genre release-to-release but the calling cards of an Apres Pompeii album include poetic lyrics, dramatic and dynamic arrangements, and emotive vocal performances. Many songs go as low as a whisper and as loud and cathartic as a “barbaric yawp” (as Walt Whitman once coined). Each of my albums are tied together by themes and moods, I really pride myself on creating a cohesive universe in which the listener can live for 45 minutes or so. My last album, Clay, was an exploration of the conflict between the external and internal self set against a mostly indie-folk backdrop. A lot of my music explores themes of identity, sexuality, relationships, and lots of nature imagery.
I am currently gearing up to release a new record this summer that sonically is a pretty big departure from my previous albums, taking a lot of cues from 80s New Wave and synth pop, but my voice is still ever present and the conceptual DNA is still there beneath the more outwardly pop-sounding hooks. The new album is due out in August.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

The most vital thing that I’ve had to unlearn is the nature of competition and comparison. It is so easy to look at your peers in this industry and feel like you should have more followers, bigger shows, more music, etc. Everyone is on their own path and it helps nobody to have a scarcity mindset. Even competing with yourself is a fools errand. I’m extremely hard on myself and have immense expectations for my abilities but at a certain point you have to set those things aside and simply BE with the things that you’ve made. I have played sold out shows and shows attended by five people. If 100 people like your song that’s a miracle of connection. If 10 people like your song, that could fill most people’s living rooms. If you like your song, you’ve already won. Be satisfied with the work itself and the rest will follow if it’s meant to. I create because I have to, I have these things that I have to make just bubbling under the surface of me that need to come out. It does me no good adding pressure and expectation onto something that is simply in my nature. I don’t succeed at this all the time but I try to remind myself of it daily.

In your view, what can society to do to best support artists, creatives and a thriving creative ecosystem?

I think if you are a fan of a type of art, if you like cinema or literature or music, you should be challenging yourself to engage with something made by one of your neighbors in that field at least 10% of the time. If you go to 10 concerts a year, make one of them be a local musician’s. If you like going to the movies, find a local film festival and attend it. With social media it is very easy to always be seeking connection on such a massive scale that I think we can tend to forget that amazing things are being made all around us all the time. Your next favorite song might have been written by your next door neighbor and you’d never know it. Seeking that connection to the people physically closest to us brings us all closer together.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://aprespompeii.net
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/aprespompeii/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ApresPompeii/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@zacktaylorweiss?app=desktop
• Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/aprespompeii

Image Credits

Taylor Carson
Brandon Weiss
Zachary Weiss