Waz

Sometimes I get a little bothered by the total isolation that life in Utah can bring. The music scene is pretty dull in the town I live in, campus life revolves more around Sunday mornings than Saturday nights and the complete and utter domination of conservative values is a little too much to handle at times.

It's times like these that I'm quite happy that I can at least drive down to Salt Lake every once and again and see a kick ass show and forget about Simpleton, USA for a few hours. While I know that Salt Lake may not be the "real world", it's at least a step up for me.

Back to the point at hand - Stu and I were able to see the Hotel Cafe Tour in Salt Lake a few weeks ago and ever since then I've been a bit depressed about the music scene in my neck 'o the woods. There's not a whole lot of talent to be had here, despite being in a "college town" and most people here seem more interested in knocking everyone else around rather than just playing good music. It's a pity, really - and one that exposed itself in my mind while watching the artists on the Hotel Cafe Tour. All of the artists that played were immensely talented and could have drawn a crowd on their own, but they chose to tour together instead. Ticket prices could have been higher but they seemed to be more concerned about helping each other out and bringing everyone's name to the masses, rather then just their own.

After the show I spent some time looking into other artists who've found a starting point at the Hotel Cafe. Waz is one of the singer-songwriters that I've found myself listening to most as a result of this little search.

Waz original hit the spotlight quite a while ago as the original guitarist for Pete Yorn's band back in the early 2000's. After a few days of listening to Waz's music I can certainly feel Pete's influence on him. The songwriting is great, though I can't say that the vocal presence is on Pete's level. It's a bit more poppy than most of the songs Pete puts out, and there's more keys (which I dig) but it has the same kind of feel. Waz can write a hell of a bridge too, the two songs at the end of the post both take dramatic (and well done) turns at the end of the song. Bottom line - if you like Pete Yorn, you'll probably like Waz.

It seems that after Waz has started seeing some success of his own. His full length solo album was released in January, he's had a song featured on "The Hills" and he was able to meet up and associate with the Hotel Cafe Tour gang. Not bad for the new kid, all out on his own now.

[mp3] Mine To Remember
[mp3] She's Gone

Buys some WAZ: Amazon | iTunes
Visit WAZ online: Official | Myspace