Artist Profile: Zack Keim
Zack Keim, the touring indie-folk artist from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, has been active in the national music scene since he was a teenager, but his newest project, Battery Lane, represents a full revival, and a rebirth, of the artist’s visionary creative drive.
As a child, Keim’s father brought him in tow to the full bevy of events available in the Pittsburgh music scene. An avid concert-goer and supporter of local bands, Keim’s father injected a love of music into his son’s life through the pure strength of his own passion.
Keim attended his first concert, an Allman Brothers performance, at the age of two, and eventually began writing songs and playing guitar in middle school.
By the age of 16, Keim had joined a band, called the NOX BOYS, who were receiving regional buzz, eventually recording an album with Jim Diamond: the renowned producer who worked on The White Stripes’ first two studio albums.
It was this experience, touring regionally and seeing people react and respond to the music he had helped create, that truly ignited his passion.
“I think it got a little bit more [serious] once I started playing out of town and started seeing people sort of react to my music…When people react to your music or art, it's inspiring, and I feel like those moments when you inspire other people, or they listen to your music, and they react to it, that definitely kind of reinforces the idea of taking it seriously.”
When he graduated high school, he began working for Get Hip Records, a label and distributor based in Pittsburgh. On a whim, he submitted a Garageband demo that had been sitting in his archive for years to the label, and they immediately loved it. Thus, his first project, First Step, was born.
A folk-rooted, Dylan-esque project, First Step indeed represents Keim’s first, tentative steps into solo work. Keim eventually moved to Washington D.C., continuing playing solo and with NOX BOYS continuing his immersion into the East Coast music scene.
When a European tour he had planned with the NOX BOYS was cancelled as a result of COVID, Keim was left delivering UberEats orders in order to make ends meet. At that time, he had just returned from a West Coast tour, and, while delivering an order, an idea for a song popped into his mind.
The song became the infectious and hallowed “Canyon”, which is the first song on Battery Lane: a project that he named after his street of residence in the D.C area.
In approaching a new solo project, Keim enlisted a plethora of collaborators, seeking to expand the instrumentation of his sound.
“On my first record, it's very bare bones, acoustic stuff... but, with the newer stuff, there’s more instrumentation. I think I went into the studio, and I was like, ‘F*ck it. There's no limits’. I wanted to get everyone involved that has inspired me to be a musician.”
This collaboration, and expansion of his sound, are exceedingly evident across Battery Lane’s 37-minute run-time. At times pop-inspired, at others wailing and profound, Battery Lane is an intense step forward for Keim, whose musical talent is uniquely embedded in the final product.
Now, Keim followed the album with a US and European tour, with performances scattered across Spain. As he continues to work, he hopes to have another solo record out within the next couple of years: a project that will certainly be another notch in his already intriguing discography.