Scott Zosel is releasing his new album Saturday’s Child May 27 at the After Cafe. He is a prolific artist with a tremendous work ethic and great sound. It was fun to get to know him a little better…
First off, appreciate all the good work from MostlyMN, love your posts featuring and supporting a wide range of local artists! These people work hard, put a lot of passion into their work, sometimes with very little to show for it. Good to know someone is watching.
These questions were fun! Thanks for the opportunity to get acquainted.
Saturday’s Child is your fourth LP since 2019. How do you produce so much good music so quickly? Does it just come pouring out or are you goal driven?
Great question, so glad someone asked!
It is a little of both actually. It is an equation borne of intention buoyed by inspiration; my daily grind, the mother of invention. Inspiration doesn’t just happen, it must be nurtured and fed. I awaken each day, and write poetry for a least an hour just to keep my juices flowing, to keep pumping out tasty narratives for potential songs. Eventually, some songs just bubble to the top. Others need more help. My routine simply feeds the machine, so to speak. I also walk for 30-45 minutes each day, listening to new artists, daydreaming at warp speed, and envisioning, continuing to feed inspiration.
Obviously, I am goal driven. I’ve been an advertising creative for decades, so deadlines are part of my DNA. If I want to play on bigger stages, I need to publish at least every 12-18 months. People need to see the evidence of a creative heart beating. And this is my ongoing challenge. Once the new record is released this week, I’ll be starting fresh, writing new songs for a new project, TBD. There are already several knocking at my door as we speak.
We go from the “glory halleluiah” of Brewster’s Red Hotel to the “tiny room that outgrew the love” in House of Cards to Rock in a Place on the album. I wondered if there was a progressive story happening or a series of moments?
To be honest, a progressive storyline was my aspiration, but these narratives didn’t really stack up perfectly that way. In general, most songs we hear are devotional ‘love’ songs or songs about ‘love.’ ‘Brewsters’ is about a love affair with a tiny town in southern MN, personified by two characters in love I think. ‘House of Cards’ is another poetic ‘love’ tribute while ‘Rock’ is more of a confessional, and a promise to do better. ‘Brighter Sun’ is also a ‘love’ tribute, a story of lifelong devotion bleeding into eternity. Overall, I’d have to say this record is more of a series of moments, tied together by ‘love?’
I remember Saturday’s child, from the nursery rhyme, works hard for a living. This may harken back to the first question – but how does Saturday’s Child connect with the album? Who or what is Saturday’s child?
Working hard for a living, that’s me alright! And ‘Saturday’s Child’ is about the day I do the real hard work of songwriting. Since I work full-time, I reserve Saturdays for fully fleshing out songs….writing down the chords, arrangements, and all the nitty-gritty details so I can actually play them live or record them. It’s super fun to have ideas, hooks…etc., but at some point, they need to be finalized, they need to ‘ship’ as Seth Godin says. But mainly, I reserve my Saturdays to just be a child, to daydream and play; the freedom to just be. ‘Saturday’s Child’ is dedicated to the ‘child’ in all of us.
How was the experience of recording live, in a studio. It feels like the best and worst of both worlds – spontaneity of live and magic of post production – with such an amazing team.
Recording live with Greg, Dan and Nick was awesome. I had always dreamed of doing a record in the ‘live recording’ style of the 70s-80s; working songs out with musicians in the moment to achieve that loose, spontaneous feeling. It worked better than I expected. I came to the studio with a handful of song ideas, some more polished than others. But everything came together pretty easily. Before we would record each song, we’d sit together, I’d play the rough tune, everyone would have their input on tempo, arrangement, etc. With all musicians separated just enough (too complicated to explain how), we’d simply flip on the recorder and just let it run until we had played through the song for about a half hour, when we were satisfied we’d gotten a good version.
In post, we then cleaned up some small guitar parts and added all vocal harmonies, and then envisioned which songs might need keyboards. The post-production was a bit more extensive than I thought it might be, but we never lost that live feel. And I’m really happy with the final product, considering that I came in with some material that was pretty raw. I have a lot of trust in Greg, Dan and Nick so it worked out nice.
Tell us about your upcoming album release.
We’ll celebrate with a show at the Aster Cafe this Saturday from 9pm-11pm with the full band, the same crew from the recording – Nick Salisbury on Bass, Producer Greg Schutte on Drums, Guitarist Dan Schwartz and of course, Kelly Jordahl adding vocal harmonies. We actually printed CDs, and will hand them out for free for the price of admission. Very excited about this show.
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