Vive le Vaultmeister!

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Me and Sir Joseph, somewhere back in time

Folks, this may not come as a great shock to you, but I like to count His Vaultmeisterness, Sir Joseph William Travers, as one of my close friends. Now he is maybe not going to like this, particularly because he’s not always wanting to have the spotlight on him, but what the hell… It’s Joe’s birthday! So let’s celebrate the man who has given us so much incredible music over the years, and to whom I owe a whole lot!

It must have been me the contacted Joe first. It was after the publication of my first book, Hungry Freaks Daddy. If I remember correctly, I was trying to get information on something that I was writing about, and somehow or other managed to contact Joe (I don’t remember if his old email address – which no longer works, by the way – was listed on the official Zappa website. It probably was). In any event, he answered right away, and we got along very well, very quickly.

In a lot of ways, we basically have the same philosophy where it comes to creating projects. Like me, Joe is a purist. He likes large-scale projects, which is also the kind of thing I do (though obviously on a much smaller scale). Joe got the Vaultmeister gig 31 years ago. At the time, he was the drummer in the Dweezil and Ahmet Zappa band, Z. Like pretty much all of us in the fan community, Joe was an absolutely besotted fan with a great knowledge of Frank’s music and released work. Two years after Frank’s passing, it became clear that somebody was going to need to figure out what was what in the Zappa Vault. Joe was very obviously the right guy for the job.

So it was that Gail Zappa gave him the job and the title. As Joe was primarily a drummer, he had limited experience with the various technologies that Frank had used to record his music, and so he would be initially required to rely on the expertise of the remaining staff of Frank’s UMRK studio. 1996 saw the release of the first wave of posthumous Zappa archival projects; Läther, The Lost Episodes and Frank Zappa Plays The Music Of Frank Zappa - A Memorial Tribute were all released that year, and Joe had a hand in putting all of these releases together. These were significant releases, coming at a time when there was uncertainty in the fan community about how Frank’s legacy might be carried on through the release of new albums. It took a while for the releases to flow consistently, but Joe and Gail worked side-by-side to ensure that the most interesting material would be made available in the highest quality possible.

Releases trickled out in the next few years, important titles like Everything Is Healing Nicely and FZ:OZ. In 2004, everything changed with the release of Joe’s Corsage, a release compiled entirely by Joe of early mid 60s Mothers demos and live tracks. It is my belief that this release opened the door to the steady stream of releases that we have gotten ever since. The Joe’s series was an excellent idea - let the Vaultmeister be the Vaultmeister, and good things happen. Since then, Joe has gone from strength to strength, giving us one fabulous release after another. Honestly, folks, as Zappa fans, we have never had it so good in terms of releases. We have Joe to think for that.

Like a lot of us, Joe got into music from a very early age. If you’d like to hear about some of his early influences, check out this fun video, where Joe talks about the music that shaped his early life:

Pretty excellent taste, right? Joe and I have pretty much the same set of early influences, something that we shared with pretty much every person who grew up to be a teenager in America the 1970s and 1980s. Joe gravitated toward artists/bands with monster drummers, including of course Frank Zappa. He himself displayed a talent for drumming from an early age, a talent that would lead him to study at Berklee School of Music, which in turn led him to seek a career as a musician in the wilds of Los Angeles. Once there, he quickly found himself a gig playing behind Dweezil and Ahmet in Z. One of his early gigs with the band was at the Whisky on the Sunset Strip, the audience for which included none other than Frank Zappa, in what had to be one of Frank’s last public appearances, if not his last. A later version of the band featured Zappa veterans Mike Keneally and Scott Thunes, and when we talk about monster bands, these guys are at the forefront of the conversation. Check out this ridiculous medley of rock and pop classics they put together for a performance at the Dynamo Festival in 1995. Who the hell can memorize all of this? Only the most monstrous of monsters!

Joe has of course had a long and distinguished career as a drummer, playing with dozens of artists ranging from Joe Satriani to Duran Duran. If you ask my wife, some of Joe’s best work was with Duran Duran (she would say that though - she’s a hardcore Duran fan). Check out this video of Joe in action with Duran in 2000. Groove for days!

It was only natural that in 2006, Joe would be back on stage as the drummer for Zappa Plays Zappa. For us longtime fans, the opportunity to see that music played live by some of the musicians who originally played it and by younger musicians with excessive chops was the realization of a dream that we never thought could possibly come true. But here they were killing it. This classic clip features Joe’s drum solo from the Royal Albert Hall in London. Very tasteful, no?

(By the way, that link will take you to Joe’s YouTube page. Loads of amazing stuff there!)

The amount of work that Joe has put into Zappa releases, particularly in the last 10 years, is staggering beyond imagination. It takes a very special sensibility to put all that stuff together. Lots of people think they can do it, but nobody can do it like Joe. It’s been my honor and privilege to occasionally contribute to these projects, and I can tell you that the impetus for doing a good job comes from Joe, and this is absolutely true to Frank’s vision. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again – we’ve never had it so good!

These days, Joe is still at it, curating these amazing Zappa releases while playing shows with various artists.And of course he is still playing Zappa, this time in an aggregation known as One Shot Deal. The band has played a number of shows in the greater Los Angeles area, and it would certainly be wonderful to get them out and touring someday. In the meantime, you can enjoy a number of videos from these shows that have popped up on YouTube and on social media. Here we have a complete performance from 2024 at Campus JAX in Santa Monica. This mind-blowing aggregation of OSD is essentially a reunion of various members of the Zappa Plays Zappa bands, playing the music of Frank Zappa with the love and respect it deserves:

Me and Joe on the field where the 1969 Woodstock festival was held, 2022