Watch Zach’s New Video for “Nirvana T-Shirt”

Zach is excited to announce he has published his first crime mystery novel, “Austin Translation.”

Set in Austin, Texas during the summer of 2020, true crime podcaster Rob Stoner finds himself set up for the murder of a young girl. Now, using his amateur sleuthing skills, he has to clear his name, find the killer and save his marriage all during a global pandemic.

Please download on Amazon.com – Physical signed copies will be available for purchase upon request for $10.00 in the near future.

(c) 2020 Desert Hobo Press

All rights Reserved

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The Derby in its heyday, 1997

The Day The Derby Became a Bank * By Zach Selwyn

And the Derby today… A Chase Bank

I live about a mile from the building that was once the famous swing dance club known as “the Derby.” In the mid-late 90’s, when the swing music revolution twirled its way across the streets of Los Angeles and turned regular farm boys from the Midwest into Rat Pack wannabes, “the Derby” was the swing club to frequent.

In 1996, Jon Favreau was so inspired, he made a pretty great film about it called Swingers and suddenly star Vince Vaughn had the entire town looking for “beautiful babies” and saying that everything was “money.” I passed a bootleg VHS tape of the film around my college friends and soon fell in hook, line and sinker. After graduation, I dove head first into the post-Swingers madness that raised dirty martinis all over Hollywood. Lines formed around the Hillhurst/Los Feliz street corner where the Derby resided awaiting entrance into the ultimate haven of swing-cool.

I owned 15 bowling shirts, white “creeper” shoes, Cadillac-emblazoned pants, shoulder-pad heavy sport coats, a flask, three Big Bad Voodoo Daddy CDs and a t-shirt that said “It’s Frank’s World, Were all Just Living in It.” I went to Las Vegas monthly, drank gin and tonics and swept my hair up into a James Dean-inspired pompadour. I remember feeling so confident that my “swinger” image would live with me for the rest of my days, I traveled to New York City around 1999 and searched out underground West Village swing clubs to show Manhattan that a “Real Life Hollywood Swinger” was in their presence. Somehow the façade worked and after ringing up a $290 credit card bill, I managed to make out with a girl named ‘Kitty’ who had a Stray Cats tattoo on her shoulder before retiring to her floor mattress in Brooklyn where she woke up six times during the night to smoke Marlboro Reds.

It was all because of Swingers.

And then, about five years ago, it was announced that the Derby was going to be transformed into a Chase Bank. The bar where I spent my early 20’s was suddenly going to be a place where I would curse the teller for charging me a checking account fee… The club where I once dated the hottest bartender in town was turning into a place where a gal named Evelyn would inform me my mortgage was ten days late. When I heard the news, I knew this was not good. The Derby? I thought… A bank? WWJFD? (What Would Jon Favreau Do?)

Turns out, Favreau had bigger fish to fry. Even though he could have easily bought the Derby and used it to store his Iron Man memorabilia, he ignored my twitter plea for him to buy the bar and turn it into a museum. I’m sure Vince Vaughn most likely drank at “Mess Hall,” the restaurant next door, toasting the ghosts of the barroom that made him a movie star… but he was also too busy and uninspired to save the bar. I even tweeted actor Patrick Van Horn, who played SUE in the film. He at least took the time to write me back by quipping “End of an Era.”

A week before the Derby was to be gutted, I gathered my old “Swinger buddies,” – now dads who had traded in slick sport coats and suspenders for Old Navy hoodies – and we poured out some gin for Favreau and Vaughn, for Sinatra, for dirty martinis, for the incredible wooden Derby ceiling, for the memories we had shared at the bar and for the debauched nights spent watching amazing swing bands like Royal Crown Revue sing “walk right in, walk right out…”

We even quoted the movie a few more times to make sure we still knew all the classic lines. “Get there…” “This place is deaaad anyway…” “He’s all growns up… I would never eat here.” “You’re the fun-loving out going party guy, and you’re sweating some lawn jockey?” The night went on and on.

Seanny Walls, Big Daddy Jake and the author, feelin’ “Money” in 1998. #jawline

As the evening died down, we all retired a lot earlier than we had in the late 90’s and excused ourselves back to our families. The next week, the Chase Bank transformation had begun and the last remaining memories of my first few years out of college were carried out and discarded.

A few weeks ago, I found myself in line at the Chase, staring up at the exact same wooden ceiling that I had spun girls beneath in the past. The ceiling beneath which I had done shots of Crown Royal a hundred times. The ceiling that watched over me as I tried to find assimilation with a unique sect of people during those weird times when you’re not yet quite sure who you were – who you are – or where you are going.

I got up to the bank teller and deposited my meager check, taking a moment to remark that this building was once my one-time favorite nightclub.

Without making eye-contact she mumbled, “Yep, every one of you middle-aged guys who comes in here has the same story.”

“Fuck off,” I whispered under my breath.

I took another glance at the ceiling and thought of the days gone by. Hollywood is forever a town of transformation. Very few restaurants and bars make it ten years… hence the stories you read about now defunct clubs like The Trip, The Cathouse and Gazzari’s that were the most happening places to be. In my life, the Derby was certainly my place. The place where I was part of a nationwide fad that engulfed my youth when I was a mere lump of clay awaiting to be molded into the lump of Play-Doh I am these days.

As I looked down at my bank receipt and realized how far this journey in Hollywood had taken me, I thought of the dreams I had at age 22 that were still somewhat unrealized. When places that mean so much to you as a kid disappear, you fail to immediately recognize that they will be gone for good and the memories will fade or melt into new ones until all you have left are a few photographs and some journal entries. I look back at my two years as a pseudo-swinger as important remembrances that I will take with me through all of my life. At the time I thought I’d be 22 forever, twirling cute tattooed ladies across slick wooden floors only pausing to sip drinks and wipe the sweat from our brows. I never thought I’d be 40-years-old and in the exact same room looking down at a bank statement stressing about the fact that I barely had enough money that week to cover my DWP bill.

The line leading to these steps would wrap around to Los Feliz Blvd.

Again, my thoughts turned to Jon Favreau. As the worlds most in demand director, he probably never imagined he would achieve the level of success he has back when he was simply searching for familiarity amongst the Hollywood night-crawlers of the mid 90’s. I reached back out to my old swinger buddies and arranged another drinking night to sit back and reminisce about the Derby days gone by, and we all agreed to get together on a following Tuesday night.

Of course, by Monday morning, everybody had flaked and the plans were cancelled so we could spend some time with our families. We all agreed to try again later, and I thought about how a little piece of all of us died the day the Derby did…

And a part of me knew, that somewhere, high up in those Malibu Hills, Jon Favreau was feeling the same thing…

Buy Zach’s Book “Talent Will Get You Nowhere” on Amazon.com!

http://www.amazon.com/Talent-Will-Get-You-Nowhere/dp/0983723737/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1397244717&sr=8-2&keywords=Zach+Selwyn

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Zach and Missi Pyle have a new podcast called “Missi and Zach Might Bang!” Exec. Produced by Anna Faris and Sim Sarna of “Anna Faris is Unqualified” – the show takes on celebrity guests, improvisational music and offers entertainment business advice as well! Head to http://www.ewpopfest.com to buy tickets now!!!

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Buy Zach’s Book “Talent Will Get You Nowhere”

Available Now on Amazon!
48 hours into a nine-day cruise on the Baltic Sea, I successfully traded a first season DVD of the TV show SMILF for a bottle of French wine.

Confused?

About two weeks ago, my friend Dan asked me to help punch up some scripts for a new live music/theatrical show he was producing on the Lightdream Cruise Line – a ship that is the size of some small cities – with 4000 passengers aboard and over 1200 staff members… Always one for an adventure, I took the gig, fondly recalling the last time I was on a cruise back in high school… I bathed in crystal blue waters, ate unlimited five star food, seduced beautiful women and sipped tropical cocktails by the pool… I was hoping this would be the same thing.

Ehhh, not so much.

Following a 17-hour travel day, Dan, the show’s producer Mark and I boarded the ship in Brest, France. Following our long trip, I was craving a glass of red wine and some Netflix. We met our cruise liasion, Sarah, and she gave us the lay of the land…

“So where’s like, the best bar on the ship?” I asked.

“Oh honey, there’s no alcohol until we reach Copenhagen in four days,” she said.

“Excuse me?” I replied.

“Yep. And all the restaurants are closed. Oh, and be aware that there’s no internet or facilities open now… This is called ‘Dry Dock.’”

“And where can I jump overboard?”

As I contemplated learning how to make “toilet merlot” in my cabin, I got the rundown on what exactly “Dry-Dock” is.

“Dry-Dock” is when the ship is being refurbished, rebuilt and cleaned. For weeks, it is in a state of disrepair and thousands of contractors from over 50 countries tear up carpets, put up stages and gather for their three meals a day in the makeshift dining room. People are monitored, allowed 45 minute meal windows, told to avoid sexual contact, can be kicked off board if they have weapons or contraband and nobody is allowed off the ship once they are on…

Sound familiar? Yeah, that’s because it sounds exactly like prison.

The view during ‘Dry Dock.’

If I was going to write a Yelp review about the makeshift dining room where we were forced to eat, I would describe it as “Just a cut below Cracker Barrel…with all the ambience of a shopping mall Red Robin.”

Still, it was our only option and Dan, Mark and I became our own little prison gang, talking under our breaths about Broadway shows and musical theater as massive Scottish, Irish and Croatian guys cursed in their own languages, swallowed gallons of coffee and made us feel like we had to kick one of their asses to establish our dominance in the jail yard…

“I guarantee you we’re the only guys in this dining room right now discussing The Greatest Showman,” Mark said.

The food was constantly recycled and turned into a “new dish” the following day. For instance, the leftover “Breaded Chicken and Peppers” from the night before suddenly showed up again the next morning in the “Breaded Chicken Veggie Scramble.” At one point, I counted four meals in a row featuring a fish called branzino.

Enjoying my 5th Branzino dish of the week…

Common Mistake

One day in the slop line, I chatted up one particularly nice Irish pipe-fitter named Lochlin as we were served what was being passed off as “Lamb Stew.”

“Hey man – where’s the booze on this ship?” I whispered. “Somebody’s gotta have something?”

“Booze? You gotta cohme to Deck One,” he replied in a thick brogue. “We smahggled in everything… booze, dihrty mags, DVD’s.”

And just like that, my trip was saved.

“Wait – why do you have DVDs?” I inquired.

“Shite – with no intehrnet – DVD’s are our only fohrm of entertainment. They’re in high demahnd… Unless you have a thumb drive with pornahgraphy on it – that’s what everybady wants.”

He wasn’t lying. As it turns out, thumb drives with porn on them were traded among the contractors like cigarettes at Riker’s Island. If I could only download my weekly browsing history on Redtube.com, I’d be a very rich man.

“So how much are DVD’s worth?” I asked.

“Depends,” he said. “I just traded seahson one of Stranger Things for four pahcks of smokes… it was fookin’ brahlliant.”

It was then that I remembered I had a few DVD’s with me in my backpack. With any luck, I’d have something valuable on me… I also had a thumb drive that, if I recalled correctly, had Toy Story 3 on it from a family trip a few years back. I ran to my cabin to assess my stash.

In my bag, I had brought DVD’s of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (Why I had this I have no idea.) Major League and Major League 2 (Research for a baseball comedy I was writing) and the first season DVD screener of the Showtime TV show SMILF – about a single mom who dates the wrong guys in Boston. It didn’t look very good, but the actress was hot. (I was sent the screener by the Emmy nominating committee, fyi).

I then checked my thumb drive, for Toy Story 3. It was gone. The only thing on it was my latest acting “demo reel.”

That night, Dan and I went downstairs to Deck One to see if we could get our hands on anything… a sip of wine, a beer… something to take away the endless jet lag and long nights of rehearsal.

Lochlin vouched for us – and the DVD’s were thrown on a table. About nine guys came and glanced at them, seeing if any of these films seemed appealing. Sadly, nobody was interested in Benjamin Button or the Major League movies.

“The Benjamin Button movie is too sad and we all fookin hate bahseball,” Lochlin informed me.

SMILF however, had some people intrigued. They wanted to know if the girl got naked, had any sex scenes, if it was funny, etc. I told them I wasn’t sure because I hadn’t watched it yet, but a small bidding war began.

My SMILF DVD’s started a crew-wide bidding war

One guy offered up a German porn magazine and two Heinekens. A Croatian guy said he had two packs of cigarettes and homemade Rakia – some type of homemade alcohol. Finally, Lochlin offered me a bottle of Bordeaux he had paid a Phillipino busboy 5 euros to smuggle on.

Lochlin took me to the bowels of the ship. These were the DiCaprio cabins from Titanic and the party going on down there was exactly what you think it would be. A guy was DJ-ing off a laptop, people were dancing and drinking… and there was even a guy giving makeshift haircuts using what I would refer to as my “pube clippers.”

10 Euros got you a trim.

In Lochlin’s room, he showed me how he and four other guys slept in the same room and shared a “Shoilet” – which is a combination of a shower and a toilet. I looked in the bathroom and nearly had a panic attack. These guys were living like pirates in the 1700’s but without barrels of rum, wenches and chests of gold.

He also told me the ship’s morgue was only two doors down the hall.

“The morgue?” I cringed. “For what?”

“About ten fuckers a year die on this ship,” he said. “Someone will prahbably die before we set sail tomorrow.”

Jesus Christ.

I urgently prodded Lochlin to produce the wine and I swiftly stuck it in my bag. I also noticed a couple of other bottles in his room as well. With two more days until Copenhagen, I offered up my thumb drive for another one.

“OK, look my friend – I’m actually an actor – on this drive is a three minute demo reel of a bunch of TV shows and movies I’ve been in… it aint much, but maybe worth at least a glass of wine?”

“Hmmm, “he said, actually contemplating the trade. “What mowvies have you been in?”

“Uhmm… A couple Disney shows, a Jim Gaffigan movie … I dunno – nothing you’ve probably ever seen…”

“Fuck that, Ill just take SMILF.”

I handed it over to him, and with that, I had my hands on a mediocre bottle of French Bordeaux.

Dan, Mark and I savored every pour of that wine that evening. As we giddily went off to bed, hoping to finally have a decent night’s sleep, we passed three contractors casually walking from the top deck somehow holding six beers in their hands.

“Woah, what the fuck?” Dan said. “Where’d you guys get that?”

“At the contractor bar upstairs,” the guy said.

What? A contractor bar? We ran up and caught the last five minutes of a ship regulated “pop-up bar” for the workers. It had been here the whole time and nobody had told us. As it turns out, all of the ship contractors were allowed to come to this bar for a two hour drink window… It was like when the caddies are allowed an hour in the swimming pool in Caddyshack.

Beers were $1.00 and a mini bottle of wine was $1.75. Mark bought the entire bar a round for $14.50.

$1.75 for a Mini Bottle of merlot? HELL YEAH.

The following night we were back up with the contractors, who were amazed that a couple of Americans had actually gone down to Deck One and made a wine deal with a Irish guy. One guy from Warsaw informed me that I had been ripped off. He would have given me three bottles of wine for SMILF.

We finally sailed towards Copenhagen and I was reminded of how beautiful the world can be outside of Los Angeles. The contractors left and the passengers got onboard and the drinks flowed and a lot of overweight older couples explored the ship and bought things that nobody in their right mind should ever buy.

At an onboard art auction, I watched two 75-year-old women violently bid on a 72 x 36 painting of a unicorn walking through Times Square… The lucky winner paid $2875 dollars for it.

Meanwhile, the cruise sailed on. We helped establish the flow and structure of the show. After a few days, you start to learn a lot from cruise employees. Most of them are on board for nine months at a time, and many of them are running from some dark, hidden past. It’s almost like the porn industry mixed with hotel management… Which often leads to bad decisions.

Sarah explained it further.

“Everybody sleeps together at first,” she said. “But then you realize you’re gonna have to see them every day for nine months. One night you have sex, the next day you’re fighting over the last box of Frosted Flakes in the buffet.”

“So I’m guessing you’ve stopped sailing your boat in company waters?” I joked.

“No way,” she said. “I banged a sushi chef last year.”

Another thing about cruise employees is that they are obviously extremely removed from current pop culture. At one point, Sarah told me that her favorite film of the past five years was “That amazing Ben Affleck move The Accountant.”

“You have to get off this ship,” I said.

The final night of the cruise and our show was up and running. I had befriended a bunch of new people and watched the show come together. One of the stage directors actually told me that I’d make a great cruise employee as I enjoyed talking to everybody and having a good time.

“I’m flattered, man – but I gotta get back to my family,” I said.

“Oh, you’re one of them…” he said with a sense of disappointment.

I had just been “Family Shamed” by a cruise ship employee.

He apologized for the way he reacted and just said he didn’t know a lot of people who were married with children. I told him not to worry about it and we wrapped up the show for the night.

He then excused himself and went to the shoilet…

MIGHT BANG IS COMING BACK! DOWNLOAD THE NICOLE SULLIVAN LIVE BONUS EPISODE BELOW!

https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/missi-and-zach-might-bang/id1217686743?mt=2&i=1000411754247

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From April 25 – 28, ZACH will lead a band featuring Nashville legends -while performing LIVE at the world famous Tootsie’s Orchid Lounge in Nashville during live tapings of the hit NFL Network show “Good Morning Football”Zach’s band Zachariah & the Lobos Riders recently released their new album “Hacienda” to high praise Lead singer Zach Selwyn, a former ESPN personality and digital sports content talent for TBS currently hosts the new interactive game show “Stacks” – Returning fall 2019. Stay tuned for more NFL Draft information! Show airs 6am-10am – prepare for NFL FREESTYLES, COUNTRY REWRITES, COVERS, EPIC CLOTHING and Zachariah ORIGINALS!

Zach Selwyn Photo by Brie Childers

Watch the band’s newest music video HERE

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Zach recently began shooting a multi-episode series for History Chanel – where Zach travels deep into the heart of America to find the most unique and unusual people, jobs, locations and history he can find! Produced by Bullet Point Films, expect the series to premiere on TV and online in late 2017 or early 2018! Here’s a sneak peak of Zach at Rhinebeck Aerodrome in upstate New York and in Grand Teton National Park… Look for him on the road!

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Dir. by Lauren Banuvar

Cloud Road EP streaming everywhere now!

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Zachariah & the Lobos Riders are set to release their newest 6 song EP “Cloud Road.” Z details how this surprise record came about…

Cloud Road EP * 2020 By Zachariah & the Lobos Riders

In December of 2019 I blew out my knee playing basketball. I vowed to return to the court within a year and elected for surgery in January of 2020 – Following the surgery came the Norcos. As a decent wine drinker, painkillers were never my thing and I have been able to avoid them after major surgeries – of which I’ve had my share… But this time, things were a little different. Lying in bed, unable to walk or barely get up to use the bathroom, I would play a lot of music and drift off into the spacial tranquility of a few pain pills. At first it was 2, then it became 3 and I was pretty soon out of my bottle… The doctor had told me it would take about three days to not need them anymore, I was on day 11. What came to me during these lost moments was a lot of lyrics about childhood memories, dreams dying, and the main street that I grew up on in Tucson Arizona in the 80’s and 90’s… Cloud Road. The first song is the raw file you hear “Cloud Road Painkiller Freestyle.” That was done in one take off the dome. I quickly understood why so many artists get involved with Vicoden, Percoset etc. These five songs came to me in three days. The sixth was written for the TV show “Breaking Bad” but ultimately not chosen.
CLOUD ROAD (CLICK FOR SAMPLE)

A different approach for me for sure. A nod to my teenage years in Tucson dying to go anywhere… now looking back and realizing I have gone everywhere. What’s next? I need another motivating factor to push me into whatever is next…

PRAY TO THE LORD

Back in high school, my friends and I would drive around all night and break into unlocked cars and steal stuff. We then took the stuff to Zia Records for trade money, Play it Again Sports for cash and second hand shops… One night a few guys broke into my old football coach’s truck and he was watching us from his window. At one point, one of the guys said he saw him flash a gun. We ran. The part about dropping my high school ring at the scene of the crime is based on a separate incident involving a girl’s bedroom when her boyfriend stopped by – but combining these two incidents into this song made sense.

MY MIND GOT MIXED WITH WANDERING

Yeah, where does the motivation go? I think I speak for a lot of young people here when I talk about how we all want to find that one comfortable place but then see something else a little more appealing just around the corner. I wasted a lot off my 20’s looking for something else and not recognizing what was in front of me.

JUST A LITTLE INTERMISSION

Again, painkillers had me rapping to myself a lot. And for some reason I was doing it in a Humpty Hump – Special Ed voice… This is a nod to the 90’s hip-hop I loved – and it’s really just a joke – as most of my rap songs are.

CLOUD ROAD PAINKILLER FREESTYLE

When putting this EP together, I came across this a week before releasing it. It is the seeds that grew into the title track of the record as well as the “Intermission” song. I was rapping into my phone on a galaxy of pain meds… In a studio this might actually be dope.

THE BALLAD OF JESSE PINKMAN

Since I rhymed about Jesse Pinkman in “Intermission,” I felt like this fit on this record as well. I wrote this before a season of breaking Bad and sent to the EP’s, tweeted about. And had a lot of show fans RT it as well. Ultimately, someone heard it and said they did not need any new music. So FUCK THEM. This song deserves to be heard, even if the show hasn’t been on for six years.

“ALEXA PLAY RED FUCKIN WINE!”

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