DESCRIPTION:
Paul Zollo is an award-winning author, as well as a singer-songwriter, recording artist and photographer.

He is the author of several books, including the best-selling Songwriters On Songwriting (Da Capo Press), which has been called “the songwriter’s bible.” In 2016, he came out with the long-awaited sequel, More Songwriters On Songwriting. His other books include Hollywood Remembered, Conversations with Tom Petty and The Schirmer Complete Rhyming Dictionary Schirmer).

Formerly the lead singer and songwriter for the band The Ghosters, as a solo artist he’s released two albums, Orange Avenue (which features a duet with the legendary Art Garfunkel on “Being In This World”) and Universal Cure.

He’s written songs with many great artists and songwriters, including the late Steve Allen, as well as Dan Bern, Darryl Purpose, Bob Malone and Neil Rosengarden. With Purpose, Zollo co-wrote all the songs on his most recent album, the critically-acclaimed Still The Birds.

Presently the Senior Editor of American Songwriter magazine and editor of Bluerailroad.com, he was formerly editor of SongTalk, and Managing Editor of Performing Songwriter. He’s contributed to countless magazines, including Variety, Billboard, Musician, Hollywood Reporter, Oxford American, Acoustic Guitar, Classic Rock, Sing Out!, Boulevard, Stiletto and others. He’s contributed writing for the program of the annual Grammys program, produced by the Record Academy, for 19 years.

Zollo is also a celebrated photographer, known for his portraits, and has had his work displayed at galleries in Los Angeles, Costa Mesa and New York City, including Cannibal Flower, the Infusion Gallery, Soho Dream, Nocturne, Valjenna, Memphis Café and Joe’s Diner. He has contributed frequent photo essays to Campus Circle magazine as well as portraits in American Songwriter, San Francisco Chronicle, Chicago Tribune, and People. His work has been used in many books, and on CDs.

He lives in Twin Peaks with his son and several felines.

When Darryl Purpose was 16 years old, his mother put a book called “Beat the Dealer” in his Christmas stocking. He interrupted a guitar major program, went to Las Vegas as a teenager, began a career as professional card player. He was soon known as the world’s fastest card counter. Banned from casinos on six continents, he still calls this the “only real job I’ve ever had.” Years later, he took time off to walk across the country for peace, and fell in with a ‘bad’ crowd – musicians & peaceniks – which culminated, improbably, in sharing the stage with the likes of Santana and Bonnie Raitt in the first stadium rock concert in the former Soviet Union.

In 1996, inspired by his work with a traveling band of musical activists and working his way out of a brush with the law (that’s another story), Darryl began to tour nationally as a solo singer-songwriter. Eight years, six CDs and a thousand-plus shows later, he was headlining venues like the Freight and Salvage, Club Passim, McCabe’s, The Bluebird Cafe, The Kennedy Center, and the Kerrville Folk Festival Main Stage.

A break and new projects

In 2005, he inexplicably set down his guitar, took a 7-year sabbatical in the Rocky Mountains. He set out to “get healthy in multiple ways”. During this time, he shepherded the release of “Singer-Songwriter Heaven: the songs of Kevin Faherty”. He co-captained the “Second Strings Project” delivering over twenty thousand sets of guitar strings to those who need them all around the world. He studied with Buddhist master Thich Nhat Hanh; and in 2009, was inducted into the Blackjack Hall of Fame. One of 17 members was Ed Thorp, the man who wrote that book that his mother put into his Christmas stocking at 16.

The music called him back in 2012 and saw Darryl record his first CD of original material in 10 years – “Next Time Around,” produced by Billy Crockett for the Blue Rock Artists label. With no formal radio promotion, the CD spent five weeks at #1 on the Roots Music Report folk chart for national radio airplay in 2013. His critically-acclaimed latest release – “Still The Birds” (co-written with Paul Zollo, also produced by Billy Crockett) twists and turns songs as unique and diverse as the stories from Darryl’s kaleidoscopic life. “Still the Birds” also rose to #1 on the Roots Music Report folk chart.

Darryl likes to say that luck is a residue of design — and he has been crafting his own luck for some time now. Live performance is a strength as he connects his audience to his songs with a storyteller’s heart.

Live at Lockett's is an intimate concert series filmed in Christopher Lockett's living room in Los Angeles. It features artists from LA's eclectic roots music and poetry scenes. The performers are grounded in a roots tradition, but are not bound by it.

One camera, one lens, no zooms, no cuts, not even a microphone in frame - just a lone shotgun mic mounted overhead in a c-stand. Nothing between the performer and the audience.