Over the past few months, junior Zach Gospe has made a name for himself in the local community as an up-and-coming singer and songwriter. After a year of experience performing at live venues and writing material, Zach is set to release his first full-length EP later this month.

For those of you that haven’t heard of Zach before, you can find a brief summary of his career up to this point here: https://www.lahstalon.org/features/junior-takes-on-challenge-of-songwriting/ In short, he’s a highly talented guitar player and vocalist that has taken on the challenge of songwriting with a fervor. Zach has performed at local venues like the Red Rock Cafe in Mt. View, and is gaining popular recognition among students for his newest original songs like “Miles from Midnight.” (which you can find here: http://www.youtube.com/user/Lostintheblur).

Zach was able to gain the attention of professional blues musician David Jacobs-Strain through the help of fellow junior Riley Soward, who is currently acting as Zach’s business manager. Riley has been interning with Jacobs-Strain in recent months, and after Riley showed him one of Zach’s latest compositions, Jacobs-Strain was immediately interested in helping Zach put out a high quality release.

“I showed [Jacob] one of Zach’s videos to see what he thought,” Riley said. “He really liked it and after hearing that Zach hadn’t recorded anything professionally, he said that he would love to meet up with Zach and help him record a few songs with his portable recording set–which was actually really high quality.”

The recording session resulted in four high quality tracks, tracks that will be released on Zach’s new EP.

“We met up last Thursday night at this little guest cabin David was staying at by Stanford, and Zach warmed up while David adjusted all of the mics and got everything set up,” Riley said.  “Then Zach played through some of his songs, and we got really good takes of four songs.  On one of the songs that turned out really well, David got out his guitar and added in some soloing, which was the coolest thing ever: seeing these two incredibly talented musicians playing together.”

Following the recording, Zach held a mini-concert for friends and Los Altos students this weekend on Saturday, May 30th. The concert took place in Riley’s back yard, and was another chance for Zach to perform in front of a crowd and promote his new EP.

Riley said that they are shooting to release the EP in mid-April.

The Talon will continue to post more about Zach’s performances as the release date approaches, so check in for more updates later in the month!