It’s definitely worth your time to check Alex Amen out and watch the EP documentary above. You can thank me later.
Today, Los Angeles songwriter Alex Amen has released his debut EP, The Zorthian Tapes. The singer has been on a meteoric rise since quietly releasing his first single last year, appearing at Willie Nelson’s Ranch this past March at the behest of Lucinda Williams and Waxahatchee, and landing slots at every major festival in the genre, including Newport Folk, Evanston Folk, Americanafest, The Valley Music Festival, Outside Lands, Austin City Limits, Pitchfork London, and more, not to mention getting scouted by Rick Rubin’s publishing company.
Growing up in Texas, Amen moved to California to study filmmaking but dropped out after one semester and moved onto the “Dittman Family Commune”, a historic commune with ties to the anti-war, civil rights, and psychedelic countercultural movements of the mid-60’s. Here he formed his first short-lived band, and Amen decamped to an island in the Puget Sound of Washington State. He spent the next three years in relative isolation, taking up various interests in organic mushroom farming, mountaineering, poetry, and wooden boat building. As years passed, Amen felt the increasing need to return to California to pursue music. In January of 2023 he began to outline the sketches of an EP in a self-built studio at the historic Zorthian Ranch in Altadena, California. Zorthian’s fertile community of outsider artists proved the perfect environment to nurture his immense talent, and today’s Zorthian Tapes serves as an ode to the mythical place that was tragically lost in the Eaton Fire earlier this year.
Listen to singles “California Blues,” & “Got to Go,” which appear on the EP, and catch the songwriter at Union Pool in New York on July 27th as part of their Summer Thunder programming. Tickets HERE.
“The experience was deeply life-defining, and the energy of Zorthian — its people, its history, its magic — flowed through the entire experience and came through what was captured there,” he shares. “It was so impactful that some of us actually ended up moving to Altadena afterward, where we lived together as a band for the next two years. We moved out of Altadena just one week before the Eaton Canyon Fire that destroyed most of the neighborhood last fall — including Zorthian. It’s still hard to process that. Altadena, to me, was the most grounded, beautiful corner of Los Angeles — a place that caught me during a big transition in life and gave me the space to land and grow. Those recordings are a time capsule — not just of the songs, but of the feeling of that time, in that town, and within us as a band. It’s a moment I feel lucky to have experienced, that now lives forever in the music.”
Tour Dates:
July 25th – Newport, RI @ Newport Folk Festival
Aug 10th – San Francisco, CA @ Outside Lands
Sept 4th – Sun Valley, ID @ The Valley Music Festival
Sept 6 – Evanston, IL @ Evanston Folk Festival
Sept 9th- 13th – Nashville, TN @ Americanafest
Sept 27 – Santa Barbara, CA @ Rescue Rhythms at Farmer & The Flea
Oct 12th – Austin, TX @ Austin City Limits Festival
Nov 8th – London, UK @ Pitchfork London
