Frankly, It's Dweezil

Aug 1, 2006 12:00 PM, By Mr. Bonzai

           
 

Zappa the younger on engineering his new CD, revamping his dad's studio,
and the "Tour de Frank."

The year 2006 has shaped up to be a big one for Dweezil Zappa. He's releasing his first solo album since 2000's Automatic (Favored Nations), he completely remodeled the control room of the renowned Zappa studio — the Utility Muffin Research Kitchen — and he launched a full-scale tour of entirely Frank Zappa compositions, called “Zappa Plays Zappa” (aka the “Tour de Frank”). Joining the touring band are Frank Zappa alumni Steve Vai, Terry Bozzio, and Napoleon Murphy Brock (see Fig. 1).

Dweezil and I met in the studio as he was finishing two months of rehearsals and putting the final touches on the album, Go with What You Know (Zappa Records, 2006; see Fig. 2), which comprises Dweezil's compositions as well as Frank Zappa's “Peaches en Regalia,” a tune originally recorded in 1969 and altered in 2006 with the Dweezil touch. The album will be released during the final leg of the tour, which stretches throughout Europe and America.

I was listening to you playing a part that Frank wrote. Is that in preparation for your tour?

FIG. 1: On this summer’s Zappa Plays Zappa tour, Dweezil’s band includes Frank Zappa alumni such as Steve Vai (right), and Napoleon Murphy Brock (left).

Yes, we are preparing for the “Zappa Plays Zappa” tour. It's the first official event that we've been able to put together where we're actually going to go out and play Frank's music. We'll have other elements as well. The 25-minute opening of the concert will include excerpts from a documentary film about Frank's work as a composer as well as some rare FZ concert footage.

The goal is to have a new audience enjoy Frank's music but hear it from an unfiltered perspective. When you see the movie and hear him talk about the music and hear other people talk about his serious music, the classical music — some of which was played by the rock bands through the years — I think it does so much more than we could ever say. We are very excited about presenting the music to younger generations.

Will you be entirely faithful to the original compositions?

FIG. 2: Dweezil’s new CD, Go With What You Know, is comprised mainly of original material, but does include a revamped version of Frank Zappa’s “Peaches En Regalia.”

Frank wrote all of his music. It sounds the way it does because that was his intent. He had the ability to hear music in his head and write it down on paper, then teach it to other musicians. The sound is not the result of the players; it's the result of the composer. He certainly had exceptional musicians articulating his music, but that's merely execution. He hired people who were at the top of their skill level and trained them to do extraordinary things under his baton.

He would always allow them to have some space in the show to present what he called “body commercials.” That was his terminology for solos. If someone was capable of something unique, he would always find a way to expose and exploit it. He wrote a lot of incredible compositions that are extremely challenging but with beautiful melodies and really interesting rhythms.

When you referred to what I was just playing, I was learning a part from “Inca Roads” that was a keyboard line and was also doubled on marimba. It was never intended to be played on guitar, because the interval stretches are not set up for guitar. But it's great to learn stuff like that because it makes you a better player, and it gives you an entirely different look at the instrument. It's been a great challenge for me to learn hard interludes of songs like that.

You mentioned that when you asked Frank back in 1985 if he had ever witnessed a miracle, he replied that one time one of his bands played several bars correctly from his composition “The Black Page.” That is a song that we're going to learn as well, and it is definitely not easy on guitar. Steve Vai did a great job with that when he was in Frank's band, but it's very hard to articulate Frank's complex rhythms and the melodies that go with them.

Let's talk about your new album, Go with What You Know. Did you do all the engineering?

Yes, I did, except for “Peaches en Regalia,” which was a unique situation. I went to the master tapes from Frank's Hot Rats album [Rykodisc, 1969]. We were getting ready to do a project with that album and listened to the master tapes for the first time. They've been sitting in boxes for a long time — the last time Frank used them was for some remixing on CD in the mid-'80s.

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