Project / Object Continues The Frank Zappa Legacy (Interview with Andre Cholomondeley)

Without a doubt, today’s most original tribute band performing live has got to be Project/Object. From what started as an annual birthday celebration for Frank Zappa, has matured into the most popular Zappa tribute act in the world. Founder, Andre Cholomondeley, has spearheaded his zealous interest and enthusiasm for his favorite musician into a well-oiled music machine, assembling parts consisting of original members from prior Zappa recordings and tours. Although, the last Zappa tour was in 1988, Project/Object has carried the live torch for those of us who were too young or naïve at the time to dampen their ears with the man’s extensive musical repertoire. However, Project/Object has been able to recapture old fans alike, by performing with various respected original Zappa band members.

Recently, the band has completed a tour that involved three original Zappa alumni: Ike Willis, Napoleon Murphy Brock and Don Preston. Willis (1978-88) toured the world six times with Zappa and was perhaps one his most identifiable and soulful vocalists, while being best remembered as the voice of Joe on Joe’s Garage, he’s also developed into quite a talented guitar player. Napoleon (1974-84) was the front man vocalist and saxophonist during the 70’s and possessed a Sammie Davis Jr. aura of showmanship that helped redefine Zappa’s live shows as part theater/part rock concert. Don Preston, meanwhile was a member of the Mothers of Invention, who continues to push the boundaries of electronic music at age seventy. Having played with Zappa during his early recording periods, Preston recalls what he gained from personally knowing Frank. “One of the main things that I have learned is that there is not one way of composing music, utilize every way possible and that’s what he did and that’s what he showed me to do. And I do, I use every possible way of composing.”

With the 10th anniversary of Zappa’s death arriving at year’s end and a new 76 minute CD of improvised music called The Dream of the Dog just released, this past P/O tour has helped recreate the many musical highpoints of an illustrious musical history. We spoke with guitarist and founder of Project/Object Andre Cholmondeley about his real-deal tribute band and various Zappa philosophies and delicacies.

So when did you first start listening to Frank Zappa?

I got into Zappa in ’81 as a Freshman in college and I heard a couple of the goofy songs on the radio before that. Then in ’81 someone played me Zoot Allures and that was it. Within a month, I had about fifty albums.

So you had all fifty or so of them, just like that?

That was most of them at that point, but that’s how fast it happened. I mean just overnight I had to hear them all…bought them, borrowed them, recorded them, you name it. I still have a lot of old cassettes from running around college campuses. You know anyone who had Zappa, I’d say, “what else do you have?”…and I’d come over with some blanks and record them.

How else did you get hooked? Zappa obviously had limited commercial success at this time.

Well, Dr. Demento, remember him? Dr. Demento would play comedy versions and one of the things he would play is the funnier Frank songs. So, that’s around the first time I heard him, and I was like, ‘this guy’s funny.’ You know, “Don’t Eat The Yellow Snow.” And just found it under Spike Jones and Weird Al. Then just someone played me Zoot Allures literally, we were hanging out and it was so over the top, so weird. It had everything, I was into guitar, so it had a lot of guitar. I had a sense of humor so it had a lot of funny stuff, there’s a lot of electronics, it was all there. At about that time I had heard things like “Dancing Fool” and “Panty Rap” on the radio and stuff. It all started to add up and I said ‘this guy has a lot more to offer, than just goofy lyrics.’ So, then you have seven or eight years of listening to Zappa extensively. In that interim I saw him in ’84 several times and got to meet him. That’s when I met Ike [Willis]. We were just talking about it that we are going to know each other for twenty years next year. I met Ike in August or July of ’84. I saw Frank a number of times, saw him again in ’88 and Ike and I stayed in touch throughout that time. So, in ’89 I started having a party in my basement where we would just get together, get a dozen people, get all the Zappa albums and just listen for twenty-four hours on his birthday. Nothing but Zappa for twenty-four hours. That was the gimmick of it, we actually make it twenty-four hours. We would start at ten in the morning or something on his birthday and go until ten in the morning the next morning. We would watch videos, we would get every interview or article we had, lay it out. It would be just like this [points out the inside of the green room] guys hanging out, drinking beers.

So, at this time did you imagine yourself having a Zappa tribute band?

It didn’t even cross my mind.

You prefer tribute rather than cover though, don’t you?

Yeah, tribute, or reenactment is what some people say. But tribute is fine, cause we’re a paying tribute.

But at this point now, with three original members of previous Zappa bands, it’s really more than a tribute?

Well that’s the other thing, we’re so different than your typical tribute band. So, what happened is the party got bigger, bigger, bigger, bigger. My band at that time, which featured the original drummer, Mumbo, we said hey lets learn six songs. That’s all we ever thought we’d ever know or ever do. So we learned the six easiest Zappa songs and did them at the party.

Most of the music is pretty complicated. How was your leaning curve…tough or easy after having been such a big fan?

It’s probably half and half. Most of it is actually straight-ahead chord changes and blues stuff. The hard stuff is very hard. Always started out on like “Wonderful Wino” and the record of “My Heart To You,” which is really a Little Richard song or something like that, which is really straight forward. And it was such a hit, and the next year we learned another six songs, and we got a keyboard player, and this was only at my house. And then we decided this is so popular, lets just move it to a club next year and by now my house is getting two crowded. So, we started playing at a club once a year and this is about 1990/91, the buzz is starting to grow. People from New York are calling us — ‘hey who books the band.’

And Frank was still alive at this time and performing?

Yeah, he’s still alive. We actually tried to get in touch with him a couple times, but by now he was sick and he probably wasn’t doing any correspondence like that. So we started getting calls from New York and we played at a place called The Lions Den. That’s where things really blew up. The guy who books The Lions Den, is now our manager and our agent. So he saw potential in the band. The next thing we know we toured the entire United States virtually and we’ve been to Canada, we’ve been to Germany.

It’s interesting to think if Zappa was around today, if he’d be playing three nights at Madison Square Garden or at the Shoreline Amphitheater, with the burst of more fans of radio-unfriendly music, and jambands in particular.

Yeah, like all the shows that Phil & Friends do, all the places, yeah he’d be right there.

I really wonder what that would be like today.

Man, it would be over the top. He’d be right in that generation.

And you’re making his music available in a live setting to new generations.

I’d liken it in my mind to an orchestra or a Mingus big band, where all they are doing is keeping the notes in the air. We want to keep the notes floating around in the air and that’s what music is about.

Have you ever felt Frank’s presence on stage?

Yeah, a couple times. I’m not the most metaphysical person in some ways. I mean, in some ways I am. There’s been some key times. One time we were doing Joe’s Garage the whole thing and we were doing “Watermelon in Easter Hay” and it just got damn…. it just happened you know. And somebody said the other night, ” man, Frank is in the room.”

How’s this tour been with the three alumni playing with you. This is the first time that you’ve had that many Zappa collaborators with you on tour.

Well the three alumni have been great. It’s extra great having the combination of having Don [Preston] singing with Napoleon, and having Napoleon and Ike doing backup vocals and having Don sing on stuff from 1978- 1982. That’s like hyper Zappa, beyond what he even did and using some of his people.

So, when you’re up on stage, I bet there’s still the fan in you, who can’t believe that you got these guys to play in your band?

Every night I look over there and say, ‘wait a minute man, this is surreal.’

You’ve played some entire albums, like Sheik Yerbouti , Zoot Allures and One Size Fits Allwith Project/Object, how ambitious is that?

And Apostrophe, yeah we’ve done those complete records.

So, that’s something that was never done originally by Frank or was it?

No, he’s never done a complete album. Not that I know of, I mean he certainly featured a record and that was most of what you heard in concert, but cover to cover, no. And I have a lot of bootlegs.

Do you have any other music that you involve yourself in besides Zappa related stuff?

Yeah, with this band maybe not, because there is so much Zappa music and so much Mother stuff, we’re not even getting to all of it anyway. So, anything else would just start to dilute the whole thing and also confuse people when we reenact and then we’d have to advertise as this is Zappa music, plus a few Miles Davis tunes and that would start to detract from the mission. But the comprise is we have a new album, that’s all original. So every night we improvise and do twenty or thirty minutes of weird free from stuff as Zappa did on every tour and we have that as our new album. So in that way we have a balance, we can present music we’ve created and never played before in the context of this band.

How about your setlists, you obviously have a wealth of material to choose from, how do you decide what to play?

It’s impossible every night to do every song we want to do.

How many songs does the band know?

Well with this lineup it’s around 100. Maybe 80 to 100. With Jordan [Shapiro],Seahag [Robbie Mangano] and our other bass player we’ve built it up to over 120. We’re still…it’s still getting up there. I mean we could play two, three hour sets and we’ve done it. And when we play Chicago, we play two nights and two different sets each night.

Any personal favorite songs to play right now or do you feel obligated to mix it up by eras?

Yeah, we got to mix it up. You got to balance several things. You got to balance representing the three different guys. You can’t do all Ike tunes, can’t do all Mother tunes and you can’t do all mid 70’s tunes, so you have to balance it and not have one person sing eight songs in a row and blow their voice out. And then you are balancing instrumentals, you can’t do seven instrumentals in a row.

So, not too get all political, I wonder what Zappa would have to say about today’s scenario with the U.S. being involved in a war.

I think it’s very clear what he would say. He’d criticize the hell out of it. He made no bones about it.

I’ve read he knew more about what was going on then the leaders themselves.

up, he made no bones about it. Again, we can’t speak for him, but we can just look at some lyrics from his view. He clearly thought we should have a Constitutional Democracy and we don’t have that right now.

I’ll read you a quote here. [Picks up his copy of a Zappa fanzine called Society Pages] December 1990, Frank speaking — “So, if Hussein is taken out of the picture, you’re still left with Hafez Assad, (President of Syria at the time) and the next Iatolla. Take your pick, one way or another, there’s gonna be one Islamic strong man, whose gonna rise up. If you look at the statistics, the U.S. population is 250 million, there are over a billion muslims.”

This is 1990 and he’s telling us it’s a mistake, trying to take Saddam out, it’s only going to cause more trouble. Smart guy or genius guy, which one? So, we were going into Kuwait 13 years ago, and he saw right through it and he said, ‘wait a minute, we’re going in there for the oil.’

Here’s another great one, this should be on a T-shirt. [Reads from Society Pages] “I think we have a real failure in foreign policy in this country, it’s so short sided and infested with a cultural arrogance against Arabs, Blacks and anybody else. I mean there’s total cultural arrogance.”

Is that March 2003, or what?

Did you ever have any conversations with Frank at that level?

No, when I saw him it was just like, ‘Hi, hello, how are you?’ But I’ve had conversations with Ike who was a Political Science major. When you listen to the tapes and the history of it, he had a huge part to do with a lot of the issues. I mean, he would run into the hotel room with a newspaper and say to Frank- ‘look at this you’re not gonna believe this shit. Look at this on page 68, US Government decides to blankety blankety blank.’ And there would be a song about that the next day. So, Ike keeps that alive. So, yeah, we’re all political junkies, there’s not a day that goes by that we’re not discussing some backroom bullshit.

So, the band is growing, slowly, but you’re playing bigger and bigger venues, and gaining a more solid following. It’s been slow in some respects, but it’s better than not growing at all?

Yup, I’m comfortable with it. All I need is to not have a day job. (laughs)

Where do you see Project Object going in terms of collaborating with other Zappa alumni?

Absolutely, we’re in touch with another half dozen, or ten different alumni and many of them had said, ‘I’d love to play with you guys.’ Adrian Belew, Steve Vai, Warren Cucurullo. All these guys, they said, ‘great, I’ll do it, one day. My schedule is nutty right now, but I’d like to do it.’ Belew came real close.

Why should somebody come see Project/Object if they have no idea what you do.

Because “you can’t do that on stage anymore.” I think that album title said it all. I mean, I think we make too much of that, like some people pretend that no one is playing live. There’s lots of bands that play live, lots of bands that improvise. But, it’s still something that most people don’t realize, that music can be a big deal and very eclectic and very alive and diverse. And I think the diversity, there is no other composer really that I can think of that is doing something where you can hear this many forms of music under one tent.

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