Zweng is an indie-rock singer-songwriter whose work channels raw emotion, vintage tone, and spiritual rebirth. Born in Sacramento and raised on a steady diet of MTV, Nirvana, and The Beatles, he honed his craft across multiple instruments before emerging in California’s psych-rock scene with the Coo Coo Birds. After years of creative highs and personal lows, Zweng’s latest release Toronto Tapes marks a turning point: a sober, soul-searching album recorded during a year of recovery in Toronto. Now based in London and studying at Abbey Road Institute, Zweng continues to craft deeply personal, genre-blending music rooted in honesty and healing.
- You’ve described Toronto Tapes as your “first step back toward an authentic life.” What moment sparked that turning point for you, and how did it shape the making of this album?
I wish I could say the “aha” moment came on some majestical peak on a Nepalese mountain, but in reality it came while sitting cuffed in the back of a police car in front of the Mountain View Police Department. That was the “moment of surrender” as we say in the recovery community. From that moment on I knew that there wasn’t really another option. For me it’s a life or death choice- authenticity vs inauthenticity. I’ve chosen life, which means I’ve chosen authenticity. For me, that means a life in music- come what may.
- There’s a lot of emotional depth in how you reinterpret classics—like Pet Sematary as a metaphor for relapse or Uptown Girl as a critique of curated culture. What drew you to these particular songs, and how did you go about reshaping them?
When you listen to these classics, you generally hear all that came with “big hits” from the 80’s- meaning lots of high-end production, and “bells and whistles” as it were. You don’t really get to the crux of a song until you sit down with an acoustic guitar and strum it out alone in your room. You always get a far more intimate interpretation that way. You also have a seemingly more meaningful moment with the original songwriter when you play a song acoustically. The lyrics really come out then; the deeper meanings in the words. Most of these songs came to me by way of an 80s music video channel that played out of the Samsung TV they had in my sober living house. Certain songs would catch my attention. When they would, I would sit down and learn them on acoustic, and when I really felt I could relate to the words, I went forward with recording my interpretation of the song. Again, in most of the cases of the artists I was covering, they had an A&R machine behind them; studio time was paid for, tours were booked. From the point of view where I was coming from, I had none of that. So my goal was to interpret these songs from the perspective of a person down on their luck, but still filled with hope, and not willing to give up. Which is essentially who I was when I made this record.
- Sobriety clearly plays a central role in the narrative of Toronto Tapes. How did the process of recovery influence your creative process—were there new rituals or ways of writing that emerged during that time?
The first thing you learn in recovery- and certainly the hardest theme to continue living- is the notion that you have to surrender to a Power greater than yourself. For some that means God, for me that means a myriad of Powers- sometimes it’s God, sometime’s it’s my ancestors, sometimes it’s other Rock Gods (as I call them) in the sky. The important part isn’t who you surrender to, but that you do indeed surrender. Once you do that, life takes on a more tranquil pace. You move slower. In the moments of quiet, you begin to listen more. Answers land seemingly out of nowhere. Everything begins to breath more- the music most of all. In the context of recording this album, I learned to “let go” as they say. Where in the past I would have argued over certain micro decisions, on this record I just really leaned into Will, the producer. He’s an amazing musician. I put my trust in him, realizing that if I truly wanted something that felt bigger than myself, then I would need to get myself out of the way when called upon to do so.
- One of the most powerful tracks on the album is Marianne, written from the imagined voice of the partner your mother never had. What was it like stepping into that persona, and what did you discover in the process?
You hurt a lot of people when you are a slave to addiction- most of all your family. That song was one I had started years ago, but forgot about. I had sent a batch of songs to my dear friend and former band mate Charles Gonzalez (Coo Coo Birds), and he singled out the original demo of this tune as something worth finishing properly. So after the whole saga that got me into recovery unfolded, I was left with a great amount of guilt over how I had treated my family. I finished the song in the backyard of a treatment facility in Toronto- cut off by phone from my family. Bad things happen to everyone. No one gets out of life unscathed. The important thing to realize is that everyone is doing the best they can from where they are at. The facts of my youth are essentially troubling; plenty of unideal circumstances transpired. Blaming people doesn’t get me anywhere though. So I set down to finish “Marianne” as a means of healing generational traumas in my own way. In many instances men hadn’t treated my mom with the respect she deserved- and now here I was continuing that cycle. Well, I had to put an end to that in my own interpersonal way. So the song takes the persona of a courter that I would have wanted my mom to have had. Surely men have acted poorly towards my mother, but I’m a man; so it’s on me to try and right the wrongs of the past by reimagining them from the perspective of someone with the same moral values my mom upholds.
- You recorded at Kensington Sound Studios in Toronto with Will Schollar producing. Can you talk about the dynamic between you two and how that space contributed to the raw, intimate tone of the record?
Selecting bandmates and producers is no slight task. If things go well- and honestly, even if they don’t- a partnership in music is tantamount to a marriage, and bears fruit. Each song is its own child. So the holy art of selecting musical partners is akin to selecting a husband or wife to propose marriage to. In the case of producers, the “first coffee date” doesn’t come down to the clothes they wear, or the cologne they have on; it comes down to the vintage outboard gear they have in their studio, and what records they listened to growing up. There has to be a connection on a deeper level. For me, I worship the music of Manchester- The Smiths, the brothers Gallagher, The Hollies, The Buzzcocks- so when I saw photos of vintage gear on Kensington Sound’s website, and heard Will’s classic Mancunian accent echoing through the studio, I knew we were onto something. As we set to work, his exceptional professionalism, background in music education, and Northern English work ethic continued to rise like cream in our dealings. He never judged me, or the circumstances that brought me to his doorstep. He just wanted to get to the heart of how we were interpreting each song. In the end, I think we came away with something worth listening to because he found joy in the work as much as I did. I think it creates a somber but shimmering glee in all of the recordings.
- Your originals—Jeanette, Marianne—have this deep sense of emotional lineage and spirituality. How important is ancestry, memory, or family history in your songwriting?
The mission I find myself on comes down to one word: transmutation. All great art- and certainly all great music- achieves the goal of transmuting emotions like pain, loss, and longing into something beautiful. I consider myself lucky, in that I’m a musician. There can be no more direct way to transmute negativity than with a Fender Stratocaster in your hand, and an oversized kick drum at your feet. It’s harder for non-artists to transmute the pain of their lives, but that doesn’t mean that they can get away with not doing it. We all have to take the raw material of negative experiences, and refine them into a meaningful power. That is the only way we can heal. In my past, all I knew how to do was run away from the bad feelings. That strategy just led me into the back of a police car. When you stop running, the emotions are all still there waiting for you. So that’s what I’m in the process of doing now; throwing bad experiences into a musical emotional processor one song at a time. I come from a long line of apricot farmers though, so it’s in my blood. People on the outside will ask me “you making music, man?” My answer is, “na, I’m making emotional marmalade brother.”
- This album mixes indie, pop, and rock—but it also feels timeless in its storytelling. Who are some of your biggest influences when it comes to crafting emotionally honest music?
Generally speaking my musical heroes all had to fight some mitigating circumstances in their youth, and made it over to the other side. I don’t think you can crossover by being fake. You have to display the ugliness in some form. Sure, you alchemise the pain as best you can, but at the end of the day the diamond was still once a piece of coal. Whether it’s Robert Smith, the Gallaghers, Tammy Wynette, Elliot Smith, or John Lennon; I gravitate towards artists who started out with the cards stacked against them. There is music you hear with your ears, and there is music your soul connects to. I’ve never listened to music with my ears. My soul does the listening. And like a dog to a whistle, your soul only picks up on frequencies that are coming from a place of truth and honesty. You can hear it in the inflections in the artist’s voice, or a particularly cutting chord change. People think John Lennon and Tom Petty played Rickenbackers. I see it differently. I see them as having played “honesty” with Rickenbackers in their hands.
- You’ve lived through several musical incarnations—from Coo Coo Birds in the psych-rock scene to composing for television. How do you feel your past lives as a musician informed the person we hear on Toronto Tapes?
As a musician, my “A/B” moment came in the streets of Accra, Ghana. I studied there for a semester while at NYU. I don’t think it’s possible for a musician to go to West Africa and not come back having been influenced for the better. The Ashanti imbue their drums with life. Rhythm is a language, a form of speech. If you sit with amponsah musicians they will teach you rhythmic patterns for expressing
a myriad of concepts and outcomes. The Portuguese couldn’t understand how the Ashanti warriors were ready for them whenever they landed at a new port along the Gold Coast. The tribal drummers just sent the signal down the land, “invaders, inbound!” The critical lesson you learn from West African musicians is the concept of music being a dialog. Just like a conversation in modern speech, we let the other person speak before we talk. So too with music from a West African perspective. Every note, every beat has its place. When done correctly, it creates a tapestry of rhythm where a lush sound is created through each instrument hitting its note in its proper place, then standing down for the next instrument to speak. All of my musical experiences point to an aspect of deep humanism. Whether it was the familial feelings that came with being embedded in the SF Psych scene while in Coo Coo Birds, or the instantaneous bond that comes from learning amponsah rhythm from a griot in a Ghanaian jungle; you learn what music offers you a pass into every culture through its universal relatability.
- You’re now studying music production at Abbey Road Institute and have more albums on the horizon. How has that experience redefined how you think about sound and structure?
Abbey Road has taken the study of sound and recording to a new level for me. As artists, it’s easy to get caught up in your head, where you are asking yourself “am I crazy? All my other friends are working sales jobs in tech companies, and I’m over here recording a fifth vocal harmony on this BV.” Inevitably the answer you get back is, “yeah, you are crazy! But so what? Check this place out. Everyone who’s come through here was crazy too, and look at how many lives this place has helped impact for the better!” So in the end, instead of running away from the feeling of being labeled crazy for your pursuits -artistic or otherwise- you double down on them. You learn the stories of people like Robert Moog, and Edouard-Leon Scott de Martinville, and you say to yourself, “hey, they were probably called ‘crazy’ in their day as well.” You just decided that if you are going to do something at a high level, then you are going to need to lump yourself into your own unique group of people who came before you, and were probably misunderstood by the world at some point too. You just need to find your own “tribe of crazy” and fly your collective flag with pride.
- If someone hears Toronto Tapes for the first time while going through their own turning point—what do you hope they take away from it?
That they are not alone. That it’s safe to surrender, to give up. That it’s safe to lay their lives – all its faults, all its ambitions and desires- at the foot of something greater than their ego. Once they do that, they will pick up the pieces that truly matter and move forward in a more meaningful direction. When you surrender in this way you come face to face with the aspects of your soul that you really are willing to fight for. You will hit a moment where you realize that you’ve been fighting for all these things that don’t really matter to you and it’s made you exhausted. When you give all that crap up, you take a nap, and you awake with the spirit of a warrior; ready to fight for what really matters to you.
