Tracks Of My Years: Zrazy

Still Zrazy after all these years, and finally – finally! – getting around to playing sunny Greystones, we caught up with the critically-acclaimed duo to find out what tracks truly get their mojo rising.

Naturally, being a duo, we divided the usual 10 Tracks Of My Years between the two distinct halves of Zrazy.

None too surprisingly, there’s an overlap of musical taste, given that Maria Walsh and Carole Nelson have been sisters in arms for almost three decades now, but you still get those individual passions and inspirations burning through.

Maria…

Growing up on a farm in Tipperary my musical palate was limited to classical piano lessons and sounds of nature. To this day birdsong thrills me. The fare on the radio was pure torture.

Rory Gallagher, especially his Taste years, was a god-send and I probably discovered him through my older brother. What kept me going for 5 years in boarding school was singing my little heart out and playing the piano: Carole King’s Tapestry album, John Lennon’s Imagine, Carly Simon, Paul Simon
– all those great singer-songwriters.

When I moved to Dublin, I started hearing Ella Fitzgerald and realised this jazz stuff was divine. An early trio, Major to Minor, was formed, and we had a few great crazy years, including doing a lunatic original song cycle in RTE’s Where In The World quiz show. There are some priceless gems hidden in the archives… One of these days…

Zrazy got going from 1992 really, and we travelled half the world and had a ball everywhere. Played mostly the USA and Europe – never got down under or to the Orient – yet…

Our music is very eclectic and exhibits our broad taste – steeped in jazz, soul, latin, arty pop and grooves. We have to stimulate ourselves first and foremost, and great, if the audience likes it!

Carole King Tapestry
Her songwriting skills and her uniquely expressive voice…

Ella Fitzgerald
The sheer mellifluosness in her voice and her mighty scat skills.

Grace Jones Living My Life
The most rootsy, funky, earthy reggae/Afro carribean grooves on the planet! She’s a once-in-a-universe creation.

Miles Davis
Of course, Kind of Blue is superb, but I loved his funkiness, and the sense of space in his jazz-fusion era, like Tutu from ’86.

Celia Cruz
Just to hear this fabulous mature voice set against stunning Cuban salsa grooves you could die and go to heaven. Here she is, above, with Tito Puente.

Carole..

I remember deciding to make music my living at around age 22. I was living in London and had tried my hand at a couple of proper jobs, but my heart was in the songwriting, and the gigs I was doing with my first band, The Spoilsports. I made my peace with a probably low and precarious income, and went about learning my craft of songwriting, piano playing and later, saxophone.

I played with a number of bands on the London R’n’B scene. It was a great time to be a woman musician in London in the late ’70s – lots of women’s bands were forming, in everything from punk to jazz. We had it all to play for!

I moved to Dublin in 1986 and I really enjoyed the music scene I landed into. I played with Maria in the all-female trio Major to Minor, and with many other artists on the Dublin scene at the time. Major to Minor was great fun but always a covers band. Maria and I started Zrazy as a vehicle for all our original stuff. It has remained musically diverse and intensely creative over all these years.

We’ve recorded six albums and have had a blast. I’m currently hunkered down composing music for a new Carole Nelson Trio album.

The Kinks Sunny Afternoon
This was the first single I ever bought, age about 11. I loved the combination of wit, music hall style story-telling and Ray Davis’s strangely sexy lisp on the vocal. A big favourite for family car journey singathons.

Joni Mitchell Carey
Joni was, and still is, in the upper pantheon of musical heroes (heroines?) – every song on the Blue album is extraordinary and I knew the words to them all. She described a world of relationships, of self-awareness and complexity that I, at 15, was a million miles away from. And she played amazing chords on the piano!

John Coltrane A Love Supreme
In my mid-twenties, I took up the saxophone, which led inevitably to jazz. This album blew my mind, and still does. It’s a headphones-on total-immersion experience. I understood that music and being a musician was more than making a living, if you were lucky; it could become a meditation, a spiritual path.

Talking Heads Listening Wind
From Remain in Light, a brilliant album – so inventive, exploratory of world music; Brian Eno’s production, David Byrne’s stream of consciousness lyrics. Just lit all my creative fuses at the time.

Wayne Shorter Infant Eyes
This is a track to melt into. I love Wayne Shorter’s music through all his decades and all his creative adventures. From early Miles Davis, through Weather Report, and on to his current quartet, he keeps pushing his boundaries.

You can find out more about Zrazy on their website here, and check out their Friday, April 26th gig at The Whale right here.