Today we’d like to introduce you to Alex Wirth.
Hi Alex, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
Thank you for asking, I’d love to share! Music is my medicine!
I never thought that I’d be preparing to play for thousands of people in the first year with my new band, Zenari, at one of the biggest celebrations of love in the world at Denver Pride, closing Saturday night! I feel like it goes to show, just follow your heart.
My story starts with Liberace. I would hear stories of my grandmother and her sister touring around the Midwest as a piano duo opening for Liberace in all of his fabulousness. My grandfather, a high school band director, brought his students to perform around the world including London, Moscow, and the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade in New York.
My dad, a child cello prodigy himself, would roll up to my elementary school blasting Metallica and Alice in Chains when picking me up, so a deep, enthusiastic love for music is in my DNA.
When I found the guitar, I felt that creative energy start to course through my veins, and in high school I started writing songs. I’d skip lunch at school just to practice guitar, I wouldn’t sleep because I was inspired to write a song. My whole adult life I’ve just done whatever I thought would support my ability to write and play my songs.
After high school I road-tripped from my hometown in Milwaukee to San Diego (where Jason Mraz got his start!) to pursue music, which was exciting and I’m still proud for having the resolve to make it work out there. But somewhere between working several jobs, living in cramped spaces, playing in bands, and getting dumped, I felt like I was in need of guidance and deeper meaning in my life. I realized that I had a healing journey to undergo and prioritize before moving forward with anything else.
After talking about it to several trusted friends, I saved up the money to fly to Peru to seek guidance in shamanic ayahuasca ceremonies and chat with Pacha Mama (Mother Nature). She told me that the world, and me along with it, is spiritually sick but that I’m good person, that music is a part of my gift to the world, and that I can be a part of the medicine that life on our planet needs. After months of reflection while living in a Peruvian chocolate shop, I felt I had the grounding that I needed to get back to the States and get back to music; now with a sense of wanting to continue my healing journey, and if I could, help others also heal from their demons.
I moved to Colorado with an intention to build community and to grow my music career, and since 2016, have been doing just that. I have completed several healing arts modality trainings including Medical Qigong, Massage Therapy, and Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy, all the while writing songs through the filter of self-empowerment and connecting to the wholeness of life.
With my songwriting compulsion honed, I was ready to bring my songs to life with a band. In 2022 I met Hoyt Benson, a young virtuoso of many instruments at the local Woodsongs guitar shop in Boulder and with his bass playing he started bringing the songs to a new level of beauty and refinement that felt beyond what I thought was possible. About six months later we met Jeff Munn, an industry veteran who has played with, managed, and produced many bands both on and off major labels, and with his drumming, the songs have now evolved with a kind of power that brings your heart and body to life. We named our band Zenari, after my newborn nephew, and we’ve been taking off ever since!
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
We all have had plenty of challenges, even just in the short time we’ve been a band.
Just before I started the band, my dad passed away, succumbing to his alcohol addiction, which runs in the family. That was a huge blow, even though I had cut off communication from him for several years. I’m the oldest of four boys and the youngest at the time was 11 years old, so the impact on my younger brothers has also been painful to witness.
In addition to being an adult child of an alcoholic (which comes with its own dynamics), my sexual identity exploration has been a long process too. It can be challenging on its own, even with most of my family being supportive and understanding. But I also had close family members who just couldn’t seem to accept that part of me, and there were periods where I didn’t really feel safe around them. Things are better now, but unfortunately this kind of disconnect in families is still too common. I hope when people listen our music, they feel a sense that they are perfect just the way they are!
My band mates have also had to face very difficult trials just in the last year, so it’s been a lifesaver having music and our loved ones close in our lives as we continue to build our reputation as a band. Fortunately, when you have support and solid people in your life, every challenge can be the birth of another song that hopefully can make someone else’s challenges a little less heavy.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
We have the best job on the planet, which is making music!
Our sound is a groovy Indie Rock with lyrical themes of empowerment, growth, connection, boundaries, family, relationships, and ecological and social justice. We bring a fun and powerful energy to our live performances, as well as holding a safe and unapologetically loving space for our listeners.
I think we are all very proud of the kind of vibe we curate in the synergy between us in the band, and the feedback from the audience has always been how good, validated and affirmed they feel after our shows. We hold a balance between soaring joy, tenderness, and fierce holding of account to those who have fallen out of integrity, even if those people are our loved ones. I think that sense of connection to love and truth is something that we as a band are particularly strong in.
Things have really been taking off for us! We only just started, and we already have a residency at BOCO Cider in North Boulder, we traveled to Texas to record at the #1 studio in Austin, Ice Cream Factory Studio, with Emmy Award winning producer Matt Parmenter, have performed live multiple times on the radio at KGNU, and now we’ve been asked to close out Saturday night at Denver Pride on June 22nd! It’s crazy! These opportunities are not usually granted to a band in its first year, so we’re not questioning it, just thanking our lucky stars that we get the chance to connect with so many people and share our sweet, musical love!
I want to thank the people that have been supporting us since the beginning! Encouragement, feedback, and patronage from our local following is invaluable, and our friends, neighbors, coworkers, family, and loved ones are what have made our musical pursuit possible. We can’t thank them enough!
We are living in some weird and, in some places, very dark times. Climate catastrophe, wars, hatred, and full scale thievery of the most wealthy and powerful among us are all forms of violence against the majority of us and life on our planet.
We’re all big peace lovers in Zenari, so we try to make mention of important things going on in the world at our shows and try to give voice to the voiceless and oppressed. We recently held a fundraiser at one of our shows for the World Central Kitchen, and people responded with hundreds of dollars in donations! It sometimes feels like there is nothing we can do in the face of darkness but staying connected to each other and calling out injustice is a start. My hope is that our music can help people know that they are not alone.
If we knew you growing up, how would we have described you?
I had a fun childhood! Tight family, always playing and hanging out with my cousins, and my grandparents would watch over us often. I was voted “Biggest Daydreamer” in high school, which was well earned! I was very social and always hanging out with friends: biking around, exploring the woods, playing video games. My brother and I had a band with our friends where we played covers of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Muse, Nirvana, etc. My parents had my two youngest brothers much later, so I had great time as a teenager playing with my baby siblings.
My dad also got my brothers and I into playing with fireworks, so we would occasionally pass the time blowing things up with loud firecrackers. I had a tendency to always want everyone around me to be happy and not hurt anyone’s feelings. My last name, Wirth, is German and I think in part means “host” or “innkeeper,” which probably has something to do with it.
The first concert I went to with my friends was Streetlight Manifesto at Turner Hall in Milwaukee. It was amazing for me to see a band so tight, so energetic, and totally adored by the crowd and to be thrown around in the mosh pit. It really made the music feel alive, inside and out of my body. One year, I got a job working at the Summerfest music festival at the big amphitheater as an usher and got to see Eric Clapton, Kiss, Rush, ZZ Top and more, which was really cool.
My grandparents brought me to see the symphony and musical theater shows locally in Milwaukee and all the way on Broadway in New York. We saw symphony shows dedicated to the Gershwin Brothers, Songs from Loony Tunes, and Broadway hits like RENT and Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang. I’m so glad my family had the sense to immerse me in quality music experiences!
Contact Info:
- Website: https://zenarimusic.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/zenarimusic/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/zenarimusic/
- Youtube: https://youtube.com/@Zenarimusic
- Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@zenarimusic
Image Credits
David Harwi Otto Bebber (@303_otto)
