Meet Franco Zizza

We recently connected with Franco Zizza and have shared our conversation below.

Franco, so great to have you with us and we want to jump right into a really important question. In recent years, it’s become so clear that we’re living through a time where so many folks are lacking self-confidence and self-esteem. So, we’d love to hear about your journey and how you developed your self-confidence and self-esteem.
Generally speaking, I have developed my confidence over the years by expanding my consciousness and understanding of who I am, what I want to achieve and what vehicle that comes in. My experiences with life while growing up in a diverse area (Union,NJ) and having a great foundation for a family has made it easier to understand my path. Life is hard and growing up isn’t easy, but if you trust yourself and find something you are passionate in, I feel the development of confidence is easier to attain because of the belief you have in yourself on that journey. So musically speaking, at first when I started playing you obviously feel very fresh and naive. Especially with the pantheon of players that have come before and exist at the same time you are playing. The key to confidence is practice and passion. If you love what you do and constantly work at it, the progress becomes apparent. Music has developed my faculty of hearing to higher level which allows me to be a better player but that took over 10 years to get to. Once you understand the instrument and see the result of your hard work it’s pretty easy to keep growing from there. It’s a matter of not stopping until you reach your goal, do not stop before that point because then you just wasted a ton of time and energy. Believe in yourself no matter who else does.

Thanks, so before we move on maybe you can share a bit more about yourself?
What I try to do is fuse the past with the current of now in a creative output that truly reflects my life. I went down the path of the arts and started making films at first. Filmmaking is a great outlet for the subconscious and I admire people like Maya Deren, David Lynch, Alfred Hitchcock, Dario Argento and Stanley Kubrick. So initially I made surreal films in the vein of these artists while at film school and lost interest in how much it takes to pull a film off. At the same time of making films I started making music. I formed a band with my best friend who wanted to really have a go at music. So I got bit by the music bug and went full on into songwriting,lessons, shows and learning all I could about being a musician. I’ve been surrounded by musicians but never thought I would be in a band. My love for the guitar is what turned everything around as I continued to write songs, go through bands until here we are 4 albums later with my band for the past 11 years Handsome Karnivore.
I was always enamored with artists that could make a career of albums that reflected their life as the years go by. (Prince, Neil Young, Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen) This notion really inspired me to make albums and have them go along with our lives at the time so when it’s all over, you can look back and say I really did something while on this planet. It’s the search for eternity, leaving something behind.
Thankfully we have found a nice crowd that enjoys what we do, though we cannot make a living off of the music that doesn’t stop us from trying. We believe more in the artistic aspect more so than business, but equilibrium is the key to life. Handsome Karnivore has developed a brand of music over the years by being known as a great live band that has the touch of the golden past of the 60s and 70s. People always come up and tells us that if we were in that time period we would been a well known band which is nice to hear cause that is my two favorite decades but doesn’t help us out so much these days. We do live our lives like some of those characters of the day and believe there is truth in playing your instrument and writing a song that comes from your soul. Also that one live show with the right audience,venue, day, can change everything. So we have been working constantly to try to achieve our goals and leaving a discography behind.
At the moment we are recording our fourth record and intend to release it next year. As each record sound changes, this record has percussion, horns and strings on every song. This is a big step up sonically to where we want to go. It’s like Santana meets Hector Lavoe at an Isaac Hayes concert. We are very exited to see what the reaction will be.
Other than music, I am a published poet and released my first book “An Erotic Rebellion” back in 2011. While making this new record, I am starting to compile poems and ideas for my second poetry book (bout time after 12 years). I intend to start working on it after this record is made and it is my hope to make a companion album to go with it ( like The Doors did with “An American Prayer” after Jim Morrison died.) Hopefully the spirits of the past and of now will guide this journey to brighter shores!

Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?
Looking back I feel the three qualities anyone should have in order to make their lives align with what they envision for themselves are perseverance, the will to learn and experience, and trusting your intuition.

My advice to those who are early in their journey is to make sure they love what they do. If you do not, you will spend the majority of your time in this life doing what you don’t enjoy. The whole point of being here and now is to find the key that unlocks the universe for you. If you care and invest into your dreams and manifest them in this world you are a step ahead to an enlightened experience that many are too afraid to chase after. Go for it, the biggest failure is not believing that you can achieve your true will.

How can folks who want to work with you connect?
Handsome Karnivore is definitely looking to expand our lineup and sound. With the new record being a mix of r&b, funk, latin, world music we would love to get a saxophone, trumpet and trombone into the lineup. We feel that we could expand to endless horizons in this direction. Also we need a new bass player who isn’t an Aries. Obviously everyone should be competent and passionate on their instrument. We just wanna make music with people who have the same fire as we do. With getting a new lineup that would open us up to playing shows again. So anyone interested in playing with us feel free to contact us [email protected].

Contact Info:

Image Credits
Header picture – Madison Truscan Image 1 (book cover) – Xlibris Publishing Image 2&3 (solo shots) – Madison Truscan Image 4&5 (live shots) – Lori Lea Photography Image 6&7 (live shots) – Don Marcelo Photography

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