Zappa Plays Zappa celebrates the 40th anniversary of ‘One Size Fits All’ at The State Theatre

Zappa Plays Zappa, the band featuring Frank Zappa’s son Dweezil on lead guitar, will descend on The State Theatre Sept. 16.

“We are celebrating the 40th anniversary of the ‘One Size Fits All’ record,” Dweezil Zappa said. “We play it top to bottom live onstage. And, then we have a selection of a lot of other music that we play that represents every era of Frank’s career. There’s little bits of things we move in and out from night to night. The core of the show is the record.”

Zappa’s affinity for music is nearly as old as he is, and he began playing the guitar before he was in high school.

“I seriously started playing when I was 12,” Zappa said. “I kind of started messing around making noise with it before then, but I got serious about it at 12.”

With staggeringly vast musical tastes, Zappa brings a unique perspective to his music, as well as his late father’s.

“I have pretty varied influences,” he said. “Guitar wise, I grew up in an era that was all about sort of rock/metal guitar, so my earliest influences were Randy Rhoads and Eddie Van Halen. Those were my biggest influences. And, of course, I liked all the other big guys like Jimi Hendrix, Jimmy Page, Angus Young ... All the standard stuff in that guitar range,” Zappa said.

Though the band will celebrate the 40th anniversary of ‘One Size Fits All,’ Zappa says he can’t pick a favorite among his father’s iconic catalog.

“It’s tough to choose,” Zappa said. “I grew up listening to what he was making in the middle ’70s, so that’s the period I love the most. And that’s all the records like ‘Apostrophe,’ ‘Overnight Sensation,’ ‘One Size Fits All’ — I love all that stuff. One of my favorite records just for composition is ‘The Yellow Shark,’ which has all of his classic stuff on it. It’s tough because there’s so much great stuff. He made over 85 albums in his lifetime, so that’s just an incredible feat. Sometimes, (he made) five albums a year. It’s incredible when you think about it. This is not just like simple three chord music; this is intense, crazy, challenging and very meticulously recorded stuff.”

According to Zappa, passion and finding your own voice are the keys for making good music. He believes that musicians should spend lots of tie honing and perfecting their craft.

“I think it really depends on what area of advice they need,” he said. “As far as, like, becoming a good musician, I think you should expose yourself to every style of music and learn how to do a bit of everything, but learn it in an authentic way. It’s important to be well-rounded. In the process, it’s also really important to find your own voice in what you’re doing. That’s also something that really takes time, but you’ve really got to stick with it.”

Zappa warns musicians that the music industry is filled with heartache.

“I would dissuade people from entering it. If you’re going to do it because you love music and that’s what you’re here to do, just be ready for disappointment on many levels; nothing is really based on your level of talent or skill,” he said. “That being said, there are some tools for people that have no connection to the industry that they can make their own record and get it in the stores like everyone else has. You can be on iTunes and all that stuff. There’s a company called DistroKid. If you make a record, and you want to put it out on everything, you can just upload it through DistroKid and you’ll automatically get it in all the places. It’s one of the best ways to get it out there, and the cheapest, and you get an account where you get money right away. You don’t have to have a terrible record deal where they get all the money, you just get it yourself.”

In addition to playing out his father’s music live, Zappa is also busy releasing his new solo record.

“The best way to describe it is a parallel to chasing my family history,” he said. “We got to take part in this documentary that traced our family roots to Sicily and this place called Partinico. It’s a small mountain village. We got to see the house that my great-grandfather emigrated from that was on this little street called ‘Via Zamatta.’ And, that street later got renamed ‘Via Frank Zappa,’ so my record that I’m putting out is ‘Via Zamatta.’ It’s kind of like a parallel journey. I went back to my roots of everything that got me interested in guitar and music and music production. I tried to incorporate all those kind of elements into his one record. It’s pretty diverse in the music that’s on it and the sounds. That was the goal: Since I hadn’t made a record in ten years, I wanted to go backward and forward at the same time. I wanted to retrace my steps back but also have a few steps into the future.”

When the band takes the stage at The State Theatre, Zappa said the audience should expect to find something a little different — people playing music together that has improvisational elements.

“For example, the songs that we play will never sound exactly the same because there’s so much improvisation in them. That’s by design within the music,” Zappa said. “Essentially, the audience that comes to the show will see a version of the songs that only that audience will ever see. That’s pretty cool, especially because nowadays most shows are designed to be on a grid. Lighting cues, background vocals coming in off the computer ... It’s all set up to be mechanized, not humanized. There’s a human element that is universal in this that people can enjoy, even if they don’t know the music. If you’re hearing a lot of new stuff, you can appreciate the musicianship required to play it.”

This story was originally published September 10, 2015 at 12:56 PM with the headline "Zappa Plays Zappa celebrates the 40th anniversary of ‘One Size Fits All’ at The State Theatre."