5 Questions with Royce DeZorzi
Album title: Denver
What first got you into music?
I always wanted to play music, but I struggled with learning an instrument. My uncle spent a lot of time giving me saxophone lessons when I was seventeen, but something about the sax wasn't for me. In high school, my friends and I would listen to whatever we got our hands on, and in 2011 everyone was still torrenting music, so we would pass around a hard drive and share all of our music collections with each other.
Who inspired you to make music?
My brother. He was someone who radiated pure passion with everything he did, and when he started playing the guitar at nineteen, he picked it up quickly. Watching him play always blew my mind, and he would show me things on the guitar but something didn't click. It wasn't until after he passed that I picked up his guitar. I still didn't feel like I could play it, so I tried to sell it to a friend of ours who had played in a band with my brother. He showed me how to play the chords to songs like "Achey Breaky Heart" instead, and it just knocked me out. The guitar became this cosmic string box with a million possibilities and I dove right in. My brother's name was Alex, and our friend's name is Alex too. They jointly gave me the one-two punch I needed to get into it.
What is your creative process like?
I don't write anything, I just sit down and play. The closest thing to writing that I do is exploring environments. Whether that's hooking up a plant to a synthesizer, outlining rhythms to other players with what I'm playing, or setting up the instruments in a certain way, I like freedom. Sometimes I think of a piece of music as a kernel or seed that blossoms through being played.
Who would you most like to collaborate with?
Percussionists. Also film makers, clinicians and therapists. We're facing the dawn of a new era in healing and medicine, guided by the rhythms and vibratory structures of nature.
If you could go open a show for any artist who would it be?
Let's see, a lot of my favorite people are dead... Among the living, there's too many to name and they're all worth mentioning. I've always loved Taj Mahal, Keb Mo, Bela Fleck, and Victor Wooten.
What do you love about the genre of music that you create?
The space and peace that the music evokes. The freedom to groove in a space that is soothing and unobtrusive, but full of life
Youtube:
“Iron Shackle”
Comments