Dweezil Zappa will perform Tuesday, Jan. 14, at the Charline McCombs Empire Theatre. Credit: Courtesy Photo / Dweezil Zappa
When your first name is “Dweezil,” you probably don’t need a last name.

But if you have a last name, it may as well be Zappa, making you the heir to one of the deepest and most unconventional catalogs in American music: that of the late and legendary Frank Zappa.

Dweezil Zappa — that very heir — will play San Antonio’s Empire Theatre on Tuesday, Jan. 14, interpreting his father’s music for a modern audience with his own band of virtuoso musical compatriots.

Some might wonder why guitarist-vocalist Dweezil Zappa isn’t running from the dreaded “nepo baby” tag. The answer speaks to the nature of his father’s musical legacy. Running the gamut from rock to fusion to classical to prog to stranger points beyond, the elder Zappa is more properly approached as a composer rather than a conventional rock songwriter.

And anyone that knows orchestral music knows that the compositions often stick around past the composer’s lifetime.

We talked to the younger Zappa on the phone from his home in Los Angeles about the challenges of putting together an evening of his father’s music, noted for its challenging and technical nature along with its sheer weirdness. And, of course, we found out a little more about that name of his.

The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.

There’s a story that the nurse at the hospital refused to put Dweezil on your birth certificate and you had to have your name changed when you were around 12. True?

The story is that the people at the hospital didn’t like the name Dweezil, so they weren’t going to let my dad in to see me unless there was some other name that they felt was, like, a Christian name or something. My dad put a bunch of names as my middle name just to appease these people. It was Dweezil Ian Donald Calvin Euclid Zappa. When I learned that I had these middle names, I didn’t like any of them, so they were removed.

How closely do you aim to reproduce your dad’s music?

My goal from the beginning was always to have an apples-to-apples comparison. I like seeing my dad’s music being performed in the same way an orchestra would be performing Beethoven or Bach. A lot of people, when they cover musical artists’ material, they think, “Oh, I’m supposed to change it and do my own thing with it.” For the most part, I don’t want to hear that. I’d like to hear them play it the way it was. That being said, there are some slight variations that will take place in some of the versions that I do, but they’re based on taking multiple versions of my dad’s music and creating hybrid arrangements, so that you hear some of his different ideas of the way the music could be played in one performance. If I can create something that is based on something my dad already did and repurpose it in a new arrangement, that’s preferable to me.

How do you and the band learn the pieces?

There’s a lot of music that is written, and we will refer to it when we have access to the actual transcripts — the things that my dad wrote in his own handwriting. But when that might not be available, which is frequent, we will have to listen to multiple different versions. We’ll do transcriptions. We will note-check them, rhythm-check them and we will use a fine-tooth comb to really do the due diligence on the parts.

Once all of that is done and the parts are arranged, what kind of rehearsal goes on? Your dad was legendary for rehearsing bands hard.

For sure. He used to rehearse a band for three months, even if the tour was going to be three weeks. The reason was that he wanted to be able to record every single show, and at that time you could make records, and have records sell, and you could make money off of publishing. That was the real business model that he operated from. If the band’s not rehearsed well, you’re going to have lots of mistakes, and then it’s harder to use any of the things. So, it becomes a question of why bother spending the money? Now you can set up a laptop and do a lot of stuff that you would have had to have rented a complete recording truck to do.

How do you go about choosing the set list? Do you balance songs that the fans are going to expect to hear versus things that you really enjoy from the catalog or things that you’ve discovered that are underrepresented on the archival concert recordings?

It’s pretty much as you described. We do try to assimilate what the fans have as maybe some expectations of the popular material, and then we also try to present things that they might not have heard that are rare versions. On the [2024 dates of the] Rox(Postroph)y tour, we were playing a lot of stuff from Apostrophe (‘) and from Roxy & Elsewhere because [last year] was the 50th anniversary. [As we go into 2025 dates], we’re continuing with the same theme, ultimately choosing songs from both of those records. We’re playing lesser-known versions where he might have completely rearranged a song like “Yellow Snow” or completely rearranged “Don’t You Ever Wash That Thing?” For example, with “Don’t You Ever Wash That Thing?” — which came from the Roxy album — that was originally a different composition that had different rhythms and some other harmonies and things. So, we found the very first performance on some early recording, and it had a lot of different things in it. We made a hybrid version where it starts off as the version from the Roxy album but then it morphs into a version that predates the Roxy album. And you get thrown for a loop, because the rhythms that you are used to in the song kind of flip. It’s an interesting new way to hear the song, because if you’re very familiar with it, you’ll be hearing it and saying, “Wait, what just happened there? That’s different.” And to me, I like those kinds of surprises. Any kind of surprise in music is kind of the most fun thing.

“Don’t Eat the Yellow Snow” and “Valley Girl” are well-known as novelty tunes but aren’t necessarily good representations of what your father did in a broader sense. What’s a good introduction to his work?

To me, I think some of the easier records to digest would be Apostrophe (‘), Over-Nite Sensation and Roxy & Elsewhere. That’s a good place to start, because it’s 10 years into his career or more, and he’s taking a lot of different styles of music, and blending them, and creating a good listening adventure. On a record like Apostrophe (‘), you’re going to have jazz, funk, gospel, rock, experimental things, classical elements — they’re all in there. I think that’s a good, broad-strokes album for people to get used to the textures and the sounds, and it also has a bit of a sense of humor as well.

What do you think your father would think of your project?

Well, the thing is, any kind of musicianship on a level of ability where musicians can communicate at the speed of thought and play things and improvise and have a wide vocabulary within their musical abilities, he loved that. That was just a total playground for him. He would have put this band through its paces and then some. One of the things he would like most is that the band members like to be able to take on what their specific roles are and do them well. Where he had difficulties with his own bands is that people would initially be performing their role but later try to draw more attention to themselves and change what they were doing, or try to get attention onstage and change the music in the process. He would not like it when people would want to extrapolate and go in directions that weren’t necessary for the song. He very much was the composer and director of programming and all of that. If you weren’t playing what was required, then you would be immediately told “window or aisle? How would you like to return home?”

$49-$305, 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, Jan. 14, Charline McCombs Empire Theatre, 226 N. St. Mary’s St., (210) 226-5700, majesticempire.com.

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This article appears in Jan 8-21, 2025.