Meet Zach Spiegelman

Today, we’d like to introduce you to Zach Spiegelman. Zach was introduced to us by the brilliant and talented Phil Circle.

Zach, can you walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
For sure. I grew up in the suburbs 20 minutes East of Seattle. I spent all my time skateboarding and snowboarding and running around the woods with my friends and getting into mischief. That pretty much sums up my adolescence in a tiny nutshell. The thing about WA though… it rains. Like 7 months out of the year it was just pretty rainy so all that skating and activity would kind of come to a halt, and I think that is what led me to dive so deeply into music production and beat making. My parents would let me and all my friends chill at our place so we would just sit around on rainy days getting stoned making beats and rapping all the time. We were definitely those kids. The ones who would be kicking freestyles at every party, trying to live the rapper lifestyle when we were like 17. It all led me to be pretty obsessed with making music I think.

The obsession never faded and as I got better at producing music, I started getting into EDM/Dubstep and DJing all the college parties as I was entering my 20’s. It was a party lifestyle and it was fun.. not really conducive to making great music in the long run though, and I ended up stepping back from it for a couple years. When I inevitably came back to the art, I was a bit older and wiser. I took things a bit more seriously and picked up my guitar and started taking vocal lessons. I was trying to make something greater than “beats”. And that is what led me here to LA. Chasing the dream of making great music.

Please talk to us about your music.
I have been producing music on and off since I was 15 years old. I started making beats in Garageband, then Reason, then Ableton which is the DAW I use today. (DAW = digital audio workstation for all the non-music nerds). Everything I do has been influenced by blues and hip hop, starting with going to my Dad’s shows when I was a kid as well as bumping 50 cent and Eminem CD’s when I was in 4th grade. My folks even got me a little Yamaha DJX when I was around 10 years old, which is basically a looping machine for kids with a bunch of hip hop loops and drum breaks that were actually pretty dope. I jammed on that thing constantly. My pops also threw a guitar in my hand (strung upside-down Jimi Hendrix style because I am a lefty) when I was around 7. So Making beats and playing guitar has been a part of my life for a long time. I got really into making real beats and rapping in highschool, I was really inspired by Mac Miller and Drake, as well as legends like Mac Dre and Andre Nickatina. Now that I’m working guitar and melodic vocals into everything, I’ve been listening to guys like two feet and Hippie Sabotage. But I think you can definitely hear both the hip hop and blues side of things in everything I do. I now have 3 songs on Spotify and I am just aiming to release more singles for a minute, and have a couple in the works that I’m very excited about. So stay tuned!! Everything is produced and written by me, and right now it feels like each song I have released has built off of the last one in terms of style and is better than the last. My latest track, “WASTED”, is definitely my favorite I have done so far. Big subs, bluesy guitar licks, and somewhere in between rap vocals and what I have been told sounds like QuinnXCII. Recently I have just been marketing that on social media and trying to get to 10K plays by 2024. I’m halfway there. Go listen!! You can find me on every major streaming platforms under the name “Simplystics”. I am also on all social media platforms with the same name.

Phil Circle has been a great friend to us and I know you’ve got a great relationship as well. Maybe you can tell our audience a bit about Phil and your experience with them.
I originally found Phil when I was looking for a vocal coach, and I was stoked to find out that he could also help me out with guitar. I went in looking for basic coaching for vocal and guitar technique, but our lessons turned out to focus on a lot more than just that. Phil helps you learn to treat music as more than a hobby. We talk about the creative process, work through some day to day stuff that can mess with the creative flow, and kind of work together to get me into a place where I can see my next steps more clearly in both a creative and career sense. He is kind of like a therapist for your music career in that way.

Phil is also really knowledgeable on the music industry, and we have covered things from which PRO (Ascap/BMI) to choose, to the best way to distribute songs, to finding venues to play at. Anything related to music career is fair game and will probably be helped by a session with Phil.

Instagram: Instagram.com/simplystics

Twitter: twitter.com/simplystics

Facebook: facebook.com/simplystics

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCLzZI5slvwEx2-qdK4Nz6CA

Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/simplystics

Image Credits
Cassandra Bell @minimamacass