Ricky
Z - The Long and Dusty Road
Ricky
Z - The Long and Dusty Road
He
was listening to Beck, Bogert & Appice
(Jeff Beck – The Yard Birds; Tim Bogert – Vanilla Fudge and Cactus; Carmine
Appice – Vanilla Fudge and Cactus) when he was in grade school and he performed
at the White House with Gloria Estefan as an adult.
Ricky Z born Ricky Zahariades, in Phoenix, Arizona, but a native of
California from the time he was three years old and his family moved to, in his
words “a small dusty town” called Fontana (San
Benardino County). He has also worked with artists such as, The Sweet (also
known simply as Sweet), Michael Buble, Lauryn Hill, Josh Groban and Jessica
Simpson. Ricky Z sat down with
Riveting Riffs Magazine to discuss his new album
The
Long And Dusty Road, which features
all original songs, his career and his musical journey.
Discussing his childhood in Fontana he says, “It was a
great place to grow up and there was all of this music around, so that was kind
of cool. I had older brothers and I started getting access to their great music
and I was soaking it up.”
Whenever his brothers would bring a new record home he
recalls, “I would just sit there. I loved Keith Emerson, Zeppelin, (Black)
Sabbath, Peter Frampton, the Stones and The Yard Birds. I was a music aficionado
by the sixth grade. It encompassed my whole world and I hadn’t even thought
about playing it. The summer before the eighth grade my brother’s best friend
brought over a guitar with a little Silvertone amp and he left it there all
summer. If I played it, nobody knew, so I just ran and in there and started
making noise. I played it whatever way it was tuned and only the three big
strings on the top. I played along with the records to find the ones that fit. I
bugged my mom, mom please can I get some lessons. She hooked me up with a local
teacher in town and I studied with him for the next couple of years.
My father left his
resonator acoustic guitar with strings that were about a mile high and as heavy
as telephone cables. That is what I used to play, because my brother’s friend
had come and taken his guitar back. I spent all my time getting all calloused up
and getting my hands beat up, but I loved it like crazy. I was bugging my mom to
get me a guitar. About mid-eighth grade she said I will get you a guitar once
those grades come up in math. I became very motivated in math and that got me my
first electric guitar.
Ricky Z formed a band with one of his brothers and a
friend while he was in junior high and they played their first gig for eighteen
dollars.
He starts to laugh, “I felt so bad for these kids. We
ended up playing at a church get- together dance. It was a teen dance. We had no
idea what we were supposed to do.
We get into this dance and it was so cute, the girls had written on all of the
tablecloths, we love Larry, Ron’s so cute, Ricky’s da da da. It was a total teen
dance and we got in there and we started playing UFO, Sabbath and Zeppelin
tunes. Just the look on their faces was, what is this (he
draws out the what for emphasis)? It seemed like it lasted a lifetime and
finally I looked over (at one of the other band members) and
I said do you know that song “Sweet Home Alabama,” and he said I think
so. I said I don’t care just play it. They got up and they danced to that. That
is what got me hooked. At that
point, I did not want to do anything else or to think of anything else (other
than music). That is all that I had my head wrapped around.
In high school I started
playing in a Country band, Big Mama Cole and the Midnight Runners. They were all
older guys and I was this sixteen year old kid. We were playing what they called
Country Rock back then, The Eagles, Ronstadt and Conway Twitty. I was playing
with them on the weekend. Since I was too young to be in the bars, I would have
to sit on the stage and during the break the guys in the band would bring me a
coke and they would say don’t move. You can’t leave that spot. I would just sit
there with my coke and I would wait for the guys to come back for the next set,
but it was so much fun.
I went to Chaffey College
in Alta Loma (Rancho Cucamonga,
California) and they had an excellent Jazz program. I played in the Jazz
band and ensembles and I learned as much as I possibly could. It was a lot of
fun and that is when I started getting invitations for session work.
The first session was with a girl named Kathy Weinrich.
She was going to join a ministry somewhere and she had to put together a demo,
so we recorded in a studio in San Diego. We had four tunes. I was just a kid, so
I had the worst gear. The best thing I had was a 1967 Gibson ES 175 D. My
teacher loaned me a Fender Princeton and his Echoplex. I took a couple of other
pedals along and I had just a great time. I still have the tape somewhere. That
was my first session and I think that I was about nineteen at the time,” he
says.
During the 1990s, Ricky Z demonstrated his ability once
again to adapt to various styles of music, as he started gigging with several
artists performing Latin music. 
I got more interested and I started picking up more
records. I got more and more into it (Latin music) and then I started listening
to other ethnic styles of music, such as Cuban songs, some of the Salsa things
and some folk music from South America. One of the things that really got me
going on that was a job I got through Enrique Martinez and a group of three guys
called Los Trio. They were three young kids from Columbia. They re-recorded the
catalogue from all of these romantic trios from old records from the forties. I
learned all the Spanish styles of the trio.
The Latin flavor continued when he was invited to
perform at the White House. The invitation came through his friend Oskar
Cartaya, who in turn was a friend of Sheila E.’s. She was putting together an
event for the White House to celebrate Latin music. They needed another
guitarist and before he knew it Ricky Z was on a plane to Washington to
rehearse. He was part of the band that backed up Gloria Estefan. Among the other
artists who performed that night were Los Lobos, Feliciano, Thalia and Marc
Anthony.
Ricky Z played with Nicholas Lachey who had been a
member of 98 Degrees and that begat working with Josh Groban, which was followed
by his performing with Jessica Simpson.
He tells a funny story about touring with The British Glam Rock band The Sweet.
“The first date I did with The Sweet was in
Ricky Z will be returning
to the studio this year to record some songs with Steve Priest of The Sweet and
the two of them will also do some collaborative songwriting.
As for The Long
And Dusty Road, his album not Ricky Z’s musical journey,
“Yes this is my first solo
album. The (record) first started coming together a few years back. I had been
working on productions with an engineer named Kenji Nakai. The last five or six
records that I did with other people, Kenji mixed them and he had always been
after me to do a record. He said you have to do a record. Finally, he looked at
me and he said, dude time is passing and you have to do a record, go and do it!
He told me he would co-produce it with me. That was probably in 2009. In 2010 I
started getting busy on the ideas for the tunes, in 2011 we started recording
and we were done in 2012.
There were two
collaborations with a lady by the name of Rosie Casey, an excellent lyricist and
she is the sweetest person this side of the North Pole. I had been working with
her on some of her projects and I asked if she would come in and write with me
on two tunes, “Something To See,” and “Long Time Coming.” She did a great job
and she just nailed it. She has great lyrics, great feeling and the process is
so much fun with her too. The music was pretty much together already. I sang a
rough mix of the tunes for her and some of the things that I sang she grabbed
onto and she said that is what the song should be about.
The musical influences and
cultural flavors found on the album The
Long And Dusty Road are numerous, and some of those surface with the song
“No More.”
“There
is so much mixed up in that song, there is some BB King in there, there is a lot
of Billy Gibbons in that song. I love ZZ Top all of the old stuff, the
Tres Hombres record,
Rio Grande Mud and
Fandango! I loved the simple things
that he would do, like “Blue Jean Blues, “(from Fandango! –1975) and it just
slayed me. When it came time to do the song “No More,” that empty, honest,
brooding air was in my head. I wanted to make it as cool and as close to that as
I could, so that it had that same feeling.
Bill Champlain plays piano
on “No More,” and trades verses with Ricky Z.
“I met Bill a year before when I was playing a date with Danny
Seraphine (drummer). Do you remember him from Chicago (the band)? We had a
concert to do at the Canyon Club and Bill came in to sing. We did some of his
songs, as well as some of the Chicago tunes from the eighties that he penned. We
then became buddies and when it came time to do the record, I (wanted) Bill to
sing on it. I gave him a ring and he came right over. He is such a sweetheart. I
said would you like to sing a little bit on this tune, it will be fun and I
swear you will be in and out, after thirty minutes later you will be on your
way. He stayed for three hours. He said I know I am not supposed to play on this
tune, but would you mind if I lay one down. Yeah please. Then there was this
other tune and I asked could you play some honky-tonk piano. He said no problem,
let’s go. We hung out all afternoon. It was fun,” says Ricky Z.
The song “Back Where We
Belong,” is a tribute to the people of New Orleans and the music is a
combination of Second Line and Texas Shuffle.
“My wife and I went to New
Orleans with a good friend of mine and he had a place right on the Mississippi
in Jackson Square. We totally fell in love with the city and the more that I
delved into it the more I realized these people went through such grief with
Katrina and post Katrina problems. It was so bad that after people left, they
couldn’t go back home, because it was a total mess, so people started spreading
out all around the country. People moved to Utah, a lot of people moved to
California, some people to Arizona and other people to the east. They were all
displaced. A lot of folks were abandoned and forgotten in a way. Imagine not
being able to go back to where you had your roots. Then along came BP (the
oil spill in the Gulf) and they got hit again. The last verse has to do with
never knowing what is coming under that rising tide. It could be petroleum. It
could be oil washing up on the shores. It can also be the political climate with
them being forgotten. I remember
Tab Benoit mentioning that every hour they lose one hundred yards
of wetlands per hour since Katrina. Once it is gone, it’s gone. There are so
many migratory birds that are there and the indigenous animals that have been
there for eons are now losing their habitat. That affects everything and it also
affects the climate. These folks are fighting to save whatever they can there.
The people of New Orleans are so sweet and we totally fell in love with them,”
he says.
The New Orleans flavor
continues with the tune “Who Dat!” the third song on the album. Saying that he
fell in love with the music of New Orleans he imitates the rhythm.
The finger picking guitar
ragtime, “1 O’ Clock Dance,” is a nod to one of Ricky Z’s favorite artists, Rory
Gallagher.
“When
I was a kid, about thirteen, my older brother brought home Rory Gallagher’s
Calling Card record (1976) and I was
absolutely floored. Nothing else existed (me) for a couple of months. I became
fixated, everything was Rory Gallagher all of the time. He used to play ragtime
guitar and I have always loved that. Whenever I do anything that way or I start
thinking that way, I remember Rory Gallagher. It makes me a kid again,” he says
chuckling.
Ricky Z is already writing
songs for a new album and there is the possibility of a European tour.
This interview is protected by copyright © and may not be reproduced in print or on the internet or through any other means without the written permission of Riveting Riffs Magazine, All Rights Reserved