Circle Jerks' Zander Schloss Shares 'Song About Songs'

Keavin Wiggins | 10-01-2021

Longtime Circle Jerks bassist Zander Schloss has released a music video for his new single "Song About Songs", which is the title track to his forthcoming debut solo album.

The new record will show fans a different side of Zander's musical personality as the title track proves. He says of the track, "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."

As for that transition in sound, Zander says, "When I was 12 years old, 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." Watch the video below: