Met one of my idols today!

S

solaris1982

New member
I don't know if this is the appropriate forum, but the guy's a guitar player, so I figured this one's as good as any!

Met Neil Zaza today. My wife (God bless her!) bought us tickets to his Christmas show in his hometown of Cleveland. I went to pick up the tickets from the studio he owns not 10 minutes from my house, and started chatting with the guy that gave the tickets to me. Turns out his name is Garrett, and he's the drummer for the show.

Neil's CD's are really hard to find in stores, because everyone would rather listen to crap like Nickelback and Jessica Simpson instead of someone with talent, so I asked if they had any on hand that I could buy while I was there. Bought a couple of CD's, and as I'm about to leave, Garrett says "He's on his way down right now. He'll be here in about ten minutes. You wanna hang around and meet him?" Needless to say, I was freakin' stoked!

So Neil ended up giving me a personal tour of his studio, chatted with me about gear and guitars and such for about a half hour. It was great getting to meet someone so talented, and not have him be a total douche. I love it when superstars are super people. The guy has about 50 irons in the fire with a huge, spectacular holiday show in a week, and didn't mind taking a half hour to sit and chat with a fan. Super nice guy, and one of the best guitarists I've ever had the pleasure of listening to.

Thanks for reading my drawn out story. Sorry again if it's in the wrong forum.
 
Man, I'm a huge Neil Zaza fan. He's stupidly talented ("Staring at the Sun" is one of my favorite instrumental albums), and everything I've heard about the guy is just that he's this incredibly nice, down to earth guy.

I'm not a huge fan of his christmas music, but the dude can play. :D
 
I figured you'd be replying to this since I've seen you talk about him in the "Most Underrated Guitarist" thread, and a few others.

I already have When Gravity Fails, and I've seen you talk about "Staring at the Sun" around the board here, so that's one of the CD's I bought that he signed for me. Really good stuff...you were right to rave about it.

And you've heard right, he's really down to earth.
 
solaris1982 said:
I don't know if this is the appropriate forum, but the guy's a guitar player, so I figured this one's as good as any!

Met Neil Zaza today. My wife (God bless her!) bought us tickets to his Christmas show in his hometown of Cleveland. I went to pick up the tickets from the studio he owns not 10 minutes from my house, and started chatting with the guy that gave the tickets to me. Turns out his name is Garrett, and he's the drummer for the show.

Neil's CD's are really hard to find in stores, because everyone would rather listen to crap like Nickelback and Jessica Simpson instead of someone with talent, so I asked if they had any on hand that I could buy while I was there. Bought a couple of CD's, and as I'm about to leave, Garrett says "He's on his way down right now. He'll be here in about ten minutes. You wanna hang around and meet him?" Needless to say, I was freakin' stoked!

So Neil ended up giving me a personal tour of his studio, chatted with me about gear and guitars and such for about a half hour. It was great getting to meet someone so talented, and not have him be a total douche. I love it when superstars are super people. The guy has about 50 irons in the fire with a huge, spectacular holiday show in a week, and didn't mind taking a half hour to sit and chat with a fan. Super nice guy, and one of the best guitarists I've ever had the pleasure of listening to.

Thanks for reading my drawn out story. Sorry again if it's in the wrong forum.
Click to expand...

I love that guy! (I mean as a player--I'm not tight with him like you are! :D) What a cool story.
 
solaris1982 said:
Super nice guy, and one of the best guitarists I've ever had the pleasure of listening to.

Thanks for reading my drawn out story. Sorry again if it's in the wrong forum.
Click to expand...

Of the about 250 celebs Ive met while working in local radio...the only real douchebag Ive ever had the displeasure of meeting was Sebastion Bach...even people with bad reps in the buisness like Kevin Dubrau from Quiet riot were much cooler than that jerk from Skid Row.

Its pretty cool knowing that they are people just like us.
 
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