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Zander Schloss – well known to punk rock aficionados for his nearly four-decade tenure as the Circle Jerks’ bassist – opens a new chapter in his musical career with the release of his first solo recording, Song About Songs, from San Diego-based Blind Owl Records.  

Schloss has rolled up an impressive résumé that includes his featured acting performance alongside Harry Dean Stanton and Emilio Estevez in Alex Cox’s 1984 cult classic feature Repo Man; work on the soundtracks for Cox’s later films Sid & Nancy, Straight to Hell, Walker; and Highway Patrolman, as touring musical director and guitarist for Joe Strummer of the Clash and performances on Strummer’s first solo single Trash City and album Earthquake Weather; and appearances on record with Low & Sweet Orchestra, Magnificent Bastards, Thelonious Monster and in concert with the Weirdos. In 2021-22, he will be seen on stage during the Circle Jerks’ pandemic-delayed 40th anniversary tour.

But Song About Songs, which features the Los Angeles-based performer as singer, guitarist, and the writer of nine striking original compositions, displays a revelatory new aspect of his work.

Veteran Los Angeles music journalist and critic Chris Morris writes in the album’s liner notes, “Played tenderly, with a striking intimacy, the subtle and affecting material on Song About Songs may well come as a surprise to listeners who know Zander Schloss only from three decades of bash-it-out work with the Circle Jerks and other punk units….Here, we get a long overdue look at a hitherto unheard side of his musical personality. It bears the thrill of discovery.”

Song About Songs will surprise listeners accustomed to hearing Schloss in an aggressive hardcore format, but the St. Louis-born musician notes that his early musical inspirations came from a distinctly different realm.

“When I was 12 years old,” he says, “I made enough money as a janitor in a candy factory to buy my first guitar. I drew a picture of myself as Bob Dylan on the cover of Nashville Skyline. I bought the harmonica holder, the harmonica, my guitar, and Bob Dylan’s book Writings and Drawings, his first collection of lyrics, and I learned that album in its entirety, by ear. To me, those songs were tidy and they were concise. They were great examples of what a songwriter could do in two or three minutes.

“Everybody always used to make fun of me because I was a muso. I’d studied Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen and Neil Young and all of those guys back when I was a kid. Then I moved out to California and sunk my teeth into Jimi Hendrix and Jimmy Page and became a rocker. Then in my last year of high school I started listening to Charlie Parker and John Coltrane, moved in with my jazz teacher for a year and became a jazz guy.”

After his move to Los Angeles, his role in Repo Man led to his introduction to the Circle Jerks and his lengthy career in punk. But in recent years, a teaming with singer Sean Wheeler found him working in an acoustic-based, introspective, and increasingly personal musical matrix.

After that partnership split, Zander recalls, “I just blew up with all these ideas. I thought, now it’s time for me to jump off on my own. I’ve been scared to do this. I’m getting older. If I don’t do it now, I’ll never do it….I put everything into creating myself as a solo artist.” The nine songs on Song About Songs were culled from more than 50 compositions written in a burst of activity.

The album was recorded at Los Angeles’ Sargent Recorders, the Filipinotown studio owned by producer and fellow Missouri native Gus Seyffert, who also plays bass on the collection; Seyffert is a well-traveled sideman who has worked with Roger Waters, Norah Jones, Beck, and the Black Keys, among others. Jake Blanton, Seyffert’s best friend in Kansas City Mo, contributed keyboards; he has played behind Brandon Flowers of the Killers and Michelle Branch. Josh Adams, also from K C, is a highly skilled studio drummer who supported Schloss and Wheeler on their second album Other Desert Cities. The emerging singer-songwriter Bedouine guests as vocalist on the track “I Have Loved the Story of My Life.”

Schloss says a pre-recording decision by Seyffert allowed him to literally find his own voice for the record: “When I came in, Gus looked at the keys of all the songs and said, ‘No, man, I want to take everything down a minor third….I don’t want you to sing. I want you to just speak, at the volume of a whisper. I don’t want you to put on any vibrato. I don’t want you to put any emotion into it. I want you to sing in your speaking voice.’ Without singing with emotion or being dramatic about it, it opened out the whole thing, and the vocal was huge.”

As Schloss sees it, the title track of Song About Songs exemplifies the overall approach on his intensely moving solo bow: “I’ve asked myself many times, who are you, Zander, and what do you want to do? These songs were written for my own therapy. I hope that this music would help people transcend their own sadness through the power of music and into a healing place. I have a huge amount of reverence for music and its healing powers. I obviously have songs that have saved my life.

“This is my polar opposite version of punk rock. Punk rock is volume and anger and speed. I wanted to do space and vulnerability and excruciating, almost subconscious emotions, things that I feel so deeply that I would never say them out loud.”