The Zack Walther Band is an Americana roots rock power trio from New Braunfels, Texas. As versatile as the Texas landscape, the Zack Walther Band can rock the house with high energy, or slow it down with story songs from their life experiences. Zack Walther on lead guitar, vocals and harmonica combined with Matthew Briggs on drums, glockenspiel, tambourine and vocals; and Shawn Hart on bass and vocals -- they make more music than many five-piece bands. They’ve recorded several studio and live records over the years, their music is currently being used on two cable television outdoor shows, and they tour around Texas where their fans never seem to get enough. We saw you guys at the Pelican Lounge in Corpus Christi and I know you'll be back on March 23rd. Yeah when we come do Corpus Christi we are a power trio consisting of me, Matt Briggs, and Shawn Hart. Matt and I have been doing this for a long time; we started this when we were 18 or 19 years old and when we were in college. Playing music became our job and our business. Shawn's been with us for about 3 years minus 6months for another project. Are you always a trio? No, depending on the gig we might bring in a keyboard player and maybe even a horn player. It's always nice to do bigger venues and shows when you can. And how long have you and Matt been playing music together? Well, Matt and I have been working together for about 17 years and we both do this for a living. We've been able to make a pretty good living at what we do and for the most part we've stayed within three or four hours of New Braunfels; not to say we haven’t been in other bands and done other projects. We grew up together, learned how play music together, and learned how to work a band as a business together, because that was the smartest business plan and that's really how we look at being a band; we are a business. Honestly, the quicker you learn that rule, the better off you'll be. There are a lot of guys that aren't great musicians but they have a good business sense and they are doing really well. On the other hand there are a lot of great musicians that have no business sense and they aren't doing very well. That's really good advice. So, how many albums have you put out? I think we put out about seven albums.
By Tamma Hicks, STEAM Magazine
Three studio albums, three live albums, and most recently an EP, “Get Out Of Your Head”. We're currently working in the studio now with plans to release a full album before the end of spring. That's great and are you recording at Matt’s studio? Yeah, Matt bought a house and turned it into a recording studio and a teaching studio because he teaches music lessons to all ages. Actually it's kind of funny because Matt went to school to be a teacher and I went to school for Sound Engineering at Texas Southern University. We've both been very productive Studio musicians. Our first attempt recording was with “Shake Off The Fuzz”. We did that entirely on an Inbox, which is a record that has only two tracks, so kind of going back to old school recording. Matt and I are producing much better quality records than we ever did while we were paying other people, but the business of recording has changed. It's more accessible to Musicians than it was when you had to have an engineer and you had to have a record label behind you. So, we’ve really got the luxury of being able to record a highquality record for an in-expensive amount. Who wrote the songs for the upcoming album? Really there are only about three writers on the album. I have written a couple of them. Matt and I co-wrote a few. We have a new keyboard player, Mike Atkins, and he and I have been doing some co-writing too. We're going to incorporate some of the songs off of the EP into the new album as well. So, the album should be completed in the next month or so then really pushed out and promoted to the radio stations. I have to ask… How do you like having a suitcase in the band?
Well, really part of that came out of our business plan, where we work smarter not harder and we streamline everything. When you're young and you see all the big bands that tour around with massive equipment you think that's what you need but we've come to the decision that we could just streamline everything. I myself play with a small Fender amp. And Matt had a drum set for a while, but then we saw a guy from North Carolina and he had a Samsonite suitcase as his kick drum. So, Matt went out, bought a $2 suitcase at a thrift store, drilled a hole on one side, and started using that. Then I found him a wooden suitcase which, come to find out, has a much better sound. It's a novelty thing really and if you can have a novelty item in your act that people will remember it's a plus. If your novelty also sounds really good, it's a really big plus. The EP was just released in January. Can you tell us a little about the title track? Yeah, you're talking about “Get Out Of Your Head”. That's the song that I wrote after my wife and I lost our third daughter. She was diagnosed at 6 weeks old with leukemia and so we spent the rest of her life, which was a little over a month, in The Children's Hospital of San Antonio. That song is just basically about dealing with the pain of that. I had written a verse and the chorus and thought it was a good start so I asked a friend to take a crack at it for another verse. You know if somebody's never been through that sort of tragedy it's very hard to put yourself there. His name is Matt Hood and he did just a great job. At that point in my opinion it was done, finished. My wife and I will occasionally go up to Nashville to work with Rodney Crowell , where we’ll just write and work on songs and that was one we worked on, so it definitely has the fingerprint of all three on it. It's one of my finer moments for sure!
Well, it’s very touching; hits you in the heart and I'm really sorry for your loss. I can't imagine going through that personally. You know it's one of those things that you never think it's going to happen to you. From that tragedy, my wife and I have started a foundation called Lennon-Aid. What we do and our mission statement is that we raise money through benefits and donations throughout the year to help families who are going through the same or similar situations that we had gone through. You know when you have a really sick kid in the hospital you really have no choice to go back to work until they get out and it's very hard to. So, our goal is to help them out with the day-to-day things like paying their mortgage or rent or bills that they need to pay. We try to help out as many families as we can. And if there are families out there that are in this situation or people that know of families in this situation, please have them apply online to see if we can help them. Although most of the money is raised in Texas it is not exclusive to Texas; we have followers all over the country and the world. We're doing this in her name and in her honor and it's a very beautiful thing.
See The Zack Walther Band 3/23 @ Pelican Lounge in Corpus Christi Every Wednesday @ Freiheit Country Store in New Braunfels ZackWaltherBand.com Lennon-Aid.org
STEAMMAGAZINE.NET
M
MAR 2018