CHARADES
To me, Keith Zarriello (who plays around NYC under the name Charades) talks and lives like a modern day Holden Caulfield. Please forgive that overused reference--I myself have never used it to describe anyone so I feel I'm allowed to say it just this once. If Holden wrote songs, my guess is they would sound a lot like this. We asked Keith to tell us a little about himself before the interview: "…I can't stand to feel useless and idle and I think hard work is the key to life. I often want someone to hand me a shovel to dig a hole with, to drink a glass of wine at the end of a day after working in the sun, to play a song, sleep, and start the next day the same..." SM: Let me just start by saying I have a copy of your EP and all the songs off your website [listen for yourself at www.keithzarriello.com], and I'm really looking forward to telling your story to people. Your music reminds me of a lot of things, but it's clear that you're not imitating anybody, and that's the best quality of all. I read that you have major insomnia. Have you been sleeping well these days? KZ: No I've been sleeping miserably these days. I wake up at the same time each morning at like 6 or 7 anxious and nervous. I toss and turn and keep analyzing the same thoughts, going over things about a relationship I was in that is now seemingly over. The good news is I'm taking steps to get better, several doctors appointments (medical/psych) and a doing things like cleansing my body, changing my diet and exercise. And of course, the constant singing and doing music helps. It's more relaxing to be extremely busy with music than to not have a show scheduled or a practice. In one of your songs you say, "I close my eyes, I'm no longer in Brooklyn, we are sailing down the river Seine…" Listening to it makes me feel like I'm leaving my body, escaping the city's clutches (in my case, LA.) Where in NYC are you living right now? What's your life like and how does it get into your art? I live in Astoria, Queens. It's the best neighborhood in NYC. I love it, very small town feel and nice people. I'm right near Astoria park which is right on the water looking out at the Triboro Bridge and the Upper East Side. It's lovely. Unfortunately, I live with these two Turks, and one of them I don't get along with at all...oh, and her mother lives with us, they're always speaking Turkish, and the girl flips out on me if I touch her pots and pans, and she tells me I can't have guests even though she does all the time, and she says I have to take my shoes off even though her cat drags cat litter all over the floor and cat hair everywhere and the box is in the bathroom. Really, none of that petty stuff matters, it's just the hypocrisy and the feeling of yet again living somewhere where I am not wanted. It sucks. I move all over like every two months...I am never at peace where I live and it is what I long for more than anything ...a home, a family. Do you get out of the city often?
Not enough, and when I do it's just
back to Rockland where I grew up, to my grandmother's house, which is
totally weird because I had a horrible relationship with my father growing
up, and then--since my whole family moved away--I start hanging out
with his mother. I feel a strong connection to New York , I don't know what it is. I've lived here my whole life, between the city and Rockland. My parents are from this city. But sometimes it just gets to be too much--I'm really a nature person. I am much happier being near the ocean . Like once I camped out on a cliff at Big Sur, which I think was the most beautiful place I'd seen. I'm looking for some sort of a balance, but it's really hard to get all these things together. It all gets into my art, it's all the same thing. If I didn't have all these issues I'd probably not even be making art. I am basically just trying to get it all together and trying to remain hopeful and positive in the face of all of this mess. I'd say you do a good job of depicting the hope part coming through the mess--that's like something Elliott Smith once said , (I'm paraphrasing) "If the music doesn't take you to the dark places, it can't make you feel good later." Do you make a conscious effort to put the dark and the light into your songs?
Well, aside from being a musician, I'm something of a comedian. I've done stand up and movie roles and sketch comedy, I'm always putting something funny in a song but it's not conscious. Like sometimes people get mad at me because they think I'm not taking myself seriously or I'm sabotaging my music by doing some little cheap joke (what they consider cheap) or what have you, but really I'm just doing what comes natural to me. Funny/sad, that whole schtick. It's just natural. Yeah, your music definitely gives the feeling of conflict--like you're trying to keep the Devil away from your last spark of innocence or something. Do you write when you're feeling like this? Or do you later try and capture what you were feeling? Yeah, I just write a song when it comes , there is no method or anything. Yeah, usually when I'm upset or something. I never consciously sit down and try and write a song. You very active in NYC right now,
involved in a lot of things besides music--do you want to talk a little
about any of the projects you're working on outside of recording? The
process, the goal, anything you want to ramble about... I was dressed in black and white and the whole thing was narrated by these giant cue-cards that a Russian friend of mine was holding. Oh, and I had these ridiculous bushy black eyebrows and "soul patch" from one of those joke packs. And I basically just shaved my whole face including my eyebrows while my friend turned the cards, silently explaining what I was doing and why. Well, the glue was really strong on these eyebrows and I had no mirror, the idea was that I was sitting in front of a mirror, but the audience was the mirror. And since I couldn't see what I was doing I wound up cutting myself pretty badly, blood was everywhere, and classical music. Then I played the rest of the show covered in skin bleach and my own blood ,with my black and white guitar, with red strap, you see the whole black, white, red color scheme thing. The funny part is that there were about 4 or 5 people in the whole place and only 2 of them were even paying attention because they were my buddies. So it's usually like that. Empty seats and me doing this for god knows what reason. That sounds like something out of Mulholland Drive, empty theater and a crazy performance. It can't be easy to grab people's attention in a city where everybody's special. How do you feel about the NYC independent music scene? What's happening there that's worth mentioning? Who are your partners in the strange and unusual? I think it's mostly all bullshit. All the people I've met--and I've been down with every scene from the indie kids, to the hip hop kids, to the indie hiphop dj kids, to the anti-folks, to the posers, and every cheesy fuck in between-- it doesn't matter what scene it is...there will be a couple people from any given scene that are the real thing and just sort of out of place and don't fit in and just innocently happen to be trying to get gigs and play their music and they don't care where...but most of what goes on here, the "scenes" are disgusting and suck. I don't know, maybe "jazz" is still cool, what the fuck do I know? I like two or three people in NYC worth mentioning, my friends...this kid Octavio LaFuentes and this girl Joanna Erdos...look out for them. More info about Charades: www.keithzarriello.com
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