ZAO Announces Lineup Changes, Plans To Cut Down On Touring

ZAO's official MySpace page has been updated with a brand new interview conducted by the group's manager and longtime friend Downey. It follows here in its entirety:

Q: What's going on with ZAO?

Scott Mellinger (guitar): ZAO has definitely made a lot of big changes. The most immediate thing to mention is that Russ Cogdell [guitar] is back in the band and will be involved with anything ZAO does in the future.

Q: Russ is back?! That's awesome! How did that come about?

Scott: Russ never actually really "left" — he had a bad knee injury and he wanted to focus on his new marriage. We were very public back then about the fact that there would always be a place for him in ZAO.

Russ: I didn't want to quit the band by any means. There just wasn't anyway that I could continue to go on tour after injuring my knee on Warped Tour. I wanted to take some time off also because it wasn't fair to my new wife at the time to be gone for an extended period of time. ZAO toured with IN FLAMES, TRIVIUM, and some other bands and they made a record in Chicago. I just basically took the time off. It wasn't like I "quit" it just wasn't right for me at the time to be out on the road on tour.

Daniel Weyandt (vocals): Russ and I have been close friends for many, many years. We joined ZAO together before "Blood & Fire". While I have been on every album since then, both Russ and I have been in and out of the band at various points and that has always had to do with touring and how hard it can be. I am very, very excited to have Russ back in the band. While I am very proud of "The Fear is What Keeps Us Here" for a number of reasons, it doesn't feel like ZAO to me completely unless it isRuss, Scott and myself.

Q: So how is your knee now, Russ?

Russ: [Sighs]. It's definitely doing better but it will never be 100% healed. If I went back on tour and did one more suicide knee jump, it would be right back to where it was on Warped Tour when I injured it. I get pains in it every so often. But I am able to walk around and live my life just fine.

Music has always been a part of my life. It never left. It's always here and always will be here. With the present state of ZAO and the plan for the band's future, not to mention the fact that I am no longer married, God arranged a perfect situation for my official reentrance into the band as a full-time member.

Q: ZAO's last tour was in the fall of 2006. Why have things been so quiet on the touring front?

Scott: Touring is a really, really hard thing for any band, no matter their size, and especially when you've been doing it in a van as long as we have. As all of us in the band are getting older, we have increasing responsibilities to loved ones and jobs at home, and the more we have looked at the big picture, the more we feel that touring is no longer the right thing for ZAO.

Russ: While ZAO remains and will always be important to all of us, Dan has his tattooing career which has been interrupted by ZAO's touring schedule numerous times and in numerous ways. Scott and Marty [Lunn, bass] are both working with some friends of ours in Greensburg and I have been putting my film school degree to work. I own a small production company and have been shooting and editing like crazy. As we speak, I just returned from a shoot in Philadelphia. We want to continue ZAO but also balance the rest of our lives.

Dan: It's definitely been hard to have a career as a tattoo artist while being a full-time musician. Our new approach to the band should make a lot of things in my life better.

Scott: The idea behind touring is this never-ending chase to get more and more people into your band and to increase your "fanbase" with SoundScan data and other music industry crap. We know who our real fans are, they are the ones who have supported us through all the drama over the years and are constantly and consistently interested in what ZAO has to offer artistically and what Dan has to say with his lyrics. These are the people we will continue to make records for in the future.

Russ: It's interesting to note that despite the fact that ZAO has had over 20 members since the band began in the early '90s, no one has EVER been kicked out of the band. Everyone who has ever left ZAO has quit fully of their own volition and I can honestly say that, as far as I know, almost all of them quit primarily because they were sick of touring or could not financially afford to stay on the road. Touring can really strain relationships in the band and back home and just in general presents a real hardship for most people. I should also say that ZAO has been a different experience insomuch as there have been two different types of people in the band: those of us who came from nothing and worked hard on the road to build up a name for the band versus people who, for better or worse, were able to join the band after it was established. I think Scott, Dan and myself appreciate the band a little more having gone through so much, than newer members whom even with the best of intentions could not have appreciated all of the work it really took.

Scott: It is easy to get caught up in the game of always trying to be a bigger and bigger band. And we are over it. ZAO played more shows over the last three years than at any other point in the band's history. And we went out with all kinds of different bands — IN FLAMES, TRIVIUM, AS I LAY DYING, BLEEDING THROUGH, UNEARTH, SHADOWS FALL, THROWDOWN, THE DILLINGER ESCAPE PLAN, EVERY TIME I DIE — that's a really diverse list. You can't say that we didn't try to play the game. And yet, while "Funeral of God" and "The Fear..." sold faster than anything we had done before, it wasn't like this massive increase. We've learned that we can tour, or not tour, and the same people will be into our music either way. We almost did shows with HAWTHORNE HEIGHTS at one point for crying out loud [laughs]. Looking back, that's just a bit funny. We are more comfortable with the idea of ZAO being what WE want it to be, on our terms, than we are worried about the music biz pressure to constantly chase after these new and trendy kids who weren't here when we started and will be gone before we are done.

Q: Is this something everyone in the band agrees on?

Scott: This is the way that Dan, Russ, Marty and myself feel about the future of ZAO.

Jeff Gretz joined the band in a period where we felt there was a lot of work to do on the road. He started playing with us two weeks before a U.K. tour in fact. Everyone who has seen Jeff play knows that he is fast with his feet and fast with his hands and that same kind of momentum is propelling him to want to pursue life on the road full-time. Being in a full-time touring band was brand new to Jeff when he joined ZAO. We know what that hunger to get out there constantly feels like even if we no longer share it. The rest of us have been doing this for more than ten years. Because of this difference in attitude and goals, Jeff has decided to step down from ZAO and the parting is 100% amicable on both sides.

Q: What is the next step for you, Jeff?

Jeff: Obviously we reached an impasse on the next step for ZAO. Those guys want to take it easy for a while, or forever, from the road, but I want to keep playing. I recently relocated to New York City and I'm exploring several options. I have a few friends up here and within two days of moving here I had a list of people that wanted to work with me. And that's the idea, to keep things moving and to keep performing at all costs. I long ago had given up on having any kind of stable life. This is what I do. We'll be making a new CONELRAD album. And there is a group featuring a guitarist I can't name but he's the closest thing to a modern day guitar-god I think there is and I've also talked to Steve Moore from ZOMBI about doing something together. In less than two weeks I'll be playing in a cabaret performance with a singer named Marla Mindelle on Manhattan's West Side at the Triad Theatre. It's so far from what I've been doing in the metal context. It's a breath of fresh air. I get to play with brushes and take it easy. It's more like what I was doing before I joined ZAO in the first place, so I've come full circle. In the end, I'm proud of the work I did with ZAO and proud of the album we did ["The Fear is What Keeps Us Here"] but it's time to move on to other things. You have to remember, I was supposed to fill-in for a European tour and the Warped Tour. I just ended up hanging around and causing trouble for two years.

Q: So who will be playing drums in ZAO?

Scott: As everyone knows, for nearly a decade the core of the band has been Dan, Russ and myself. We're going to keep it that way. There will never, ever be any other "members" added to the band. Our friend Josh Walters from THE JULIANA THEORY will be taking over drum duties for shows and records.

Q: What does this mean for Marty Lunn's position in the band? He's still in, right?

Scott: Marty is one of our closest and oldest friends and he will be with ZAO until ZAO dies.

Q: You mentioned that you will continue to make records even though you will not tour.

Scott: Yes. ZAO is an interesting place right now where we feel totally free to do whatever we want. Ferret Music came onboard at a time when we were ready to make a real push for ZAO to be relevant to the newly emerging metal and hardcore scene that is thriving with so many magazines and TV shows supporting it. Things were never that way when we all started playing music. ZAO would play in VFW halls and sometimes Dan would sing through a bass amp in a basement. "Headbanger's Ball" was a forgotten and cancelled show from the '80s and early '90s that played hair metal and a little thrash. It was not something we ever dreamed would show a ZAO video or anything like it. We were interested in seeing what the new landscape had to offer. Ferret is one of the biggest and best labels in that world and they supported ZAO as much as possible. We very much appreciate what they have and continue to do for us. With that being said, having fulfilled a lengthy record deal with Solid State, we insisted on a shorter term with any new label and only signed with Ferret for two albums. We've delivered both of those albums and they have not offered to re-sign us. So who knows?

Q: What kind of albums do you think ZAO will make?

Scott: I can't even really answer that because every ZAO record is always different.

Russ: It's hard to say. We're influenced by so many different things from different periods of time. As always we don't want to follow any kind of formula when it comes to writing our next record. "The Funeral of God" is probably the longest we spent writing a record but we still don't feel like we've ever really taken enough time to accumulate songs and to write a good, solid record. I would say the next album could sound like LED ZEPPELIN if that's what we wanted it to sound like.

Scott: I can say that it won't sound like anything else we've done but it will sound like ZAO!

Russ: ZAO's musical style has never changed with the trends and you can be sure that it never will.

Q: What are your favorite ZAO albums and why?

Russ: Honestly my favorite album is "Parade of Chaos". Even though I wasn't on the record, I loved it because it just sounded like a complete rock record but with Dan's awesome vocals on the top of it. I'm not necessarily always into just metal riffs and double bass. I think "Parade of Chaos" is full of just awesome, catchy music and vocals. That's why it's great.

Dan: "The Fear..." is definitely one of my favorites because I finally was able to record my vocals the way I wanted to with Steve Albini. It was much closer to what we sound like live.

Scott: Number one I'll say "Self-Titled". Even though I have publicly bashed the drum sound, those songs are my favorite that I've ever been a part of and "Five Year Winter" continues to be our biggest song live after all these years. After that I would say "Liberate" and then "Blood & Fire".

Q: Jeff Gretz was public about not being a Christian. And while ZAO has defied many of the conventions of what the term "Christian music" may or may not mean, the last two years were the first time that anyone in the band openly proclaimed not to be a believer. Where does ZAO stand now on this commonly asked question: Are you a Christian band?

Scott: We have always avoided the tag "Christian band" with ZAO because, as Jeremy Enigk recently pointed out, when you call yourself a Christian band it's like you're selling Christ. That's what people expect from you and why they buy your records. We're not selling Christ. We're just following Him!

You are correct when you point out that without Jeff in the band, everyone in ZAO is a Christian. As people we all have our own questions and our own ideas. ZAO is definitely a band that strays from the legalistic, fundamentalist side of Christianity and we will always be. Songs like "Lies of Serpents..." have addressed this from the beginning of the band's present incarnation. It's always funny to me when the more fundamentalist type kids will cite "Blood & Fire" or "Liberate" as touchstone albums and yet act surprised that we do not endorse the more extremist elements of the church. We never have and we never will!

ZAO's main mission statement is that, as Christians, you will find problems with people and not everybody is right. All we want to show is that no matter what, everyone is loved. That should be all that matters. That is the truest and biggest message of Christ: love.

Q: What does all of this for JADE MERIDIAN?

Scott: It's a fun side thing for me. I never wanted it to be a main focus. There will never be touring with JADE MERIDIAN. It's just another outlet to get some cool songs into people's hands and express myself.

Q: That's awesome to hear that there will be new ZAO albums. Will we ever see ZAO live again?

Scott: Yes! You will definitely see ZAO live. The coolest thing that I think we can do now is to play locally around our area. And for everyone else, we'd like to play Cornerstone or a comparable festival each year. We'd like to make Cornerstone an event for us again. That's what we loved about it years ago.

Q: What else can we expect from ZAO?

Scott: We know who our real fans are, they are the ones who have supported us through all the drama over the years and are constantly and consistently interested in what ZAO has to offer artistically and what Dan has to say with his lyrics. These are the people we will continue to make records for in the future. And we'll be very involved with the MySpace page now. Before Jeff was running it by himself. But I'll be running it now that we're home all the time and I'll make sure that Russ and Dan are involved as well.