Culture Cabinet

Zack Keim is an artist you need to hear. 

On his sophomore album, Battery Lane, out today, Keim puts himself at the forefront, offering listeners eleven tracks of indie-folk-with-just-a-touch-of-rock-n-roll goodness. Think Paul McCartney meets The Kinks. 

Though, if it feels that way, it’s likely because it was intentionally made so, as Keim cites McCartney as one of his biggest inspirations not just for the album, but for his work as a musician overall. 

“My dad was a really big music fan. Unfortunately he did pass away, actually, two years ago,” Keim explains in an interview with Culture Cabinet. “I went to a lot of concerts growing up. I don’t even know exactly how many. Too many. I really wanted to pursue music, but I think at such a young age, being exposed to so much music just inspired me at a later age to be just obsessed with music, which wasn’t intentional. I think my father just exposed me to so much at a young age.” 

That exposure naturally led to Keim being able to boast an expansive taste in music by his middle school years, which consequentially led to him trying his hand at being in a band. 

“I formed some early bands in high school,” he reflects. “My first band was called Nox Boys, and we started going more towards the garage rock direction.” 

After signing a record deal at the age of seventeen, Keim toured all around the United States and Europe with Nox Boys, while simultaneously putting out his debut solo record, 2017’s First Step. 

While Keim is a Pittsburgh native, he garnered the title for this new album (and its titular track) from the street that he lived on during his time in Washington, D.C, which he cites as his inspiration for a lot of the tracks. 

“I lived in D.C. for two or three years, and that was a sort of pivotal moment in my life. I was there during 2020, I was madly in love with somebody, I almost got married. But then, my band’s tour got canceled during COVID, and that made me have to reevaluate things. I started writing a lot of these songs in my apartment, on a street called Battery Lane. When I wrote ‘Canyon’ [the album’s first track], while I was delivering Uber Eats, just singing into my phone while delivering Chipotle. I think a lot of the songs for the album sparked from just demos on my phone, and then when I was in D.C, I thought, ‘I could just record this on my own, or I can record this with people that I really admire.’” 

Those “people” include Jake Hanner and Animal Scream In Pittsburgh. In addition, Matt Costa who discovered his music. 

“It’s kind of a crazy story,” he says of collaborating with Costa. “I was just posting Canyon on social media, and Matt reached out to me, and I’m like, ‘I used to have his song on my iPod Nano back in the day.’ He reached out to me on Instagram, and I said, ‘Hey man, it’d be an honor to work with you,’ and he replied back and said, ‘Let’s do it.’ I went out to Laguna Beach and had a couple of demos in mind, and songs that didn’t get recorded. We just sat in his house in Laguna Beach and we wrote ‘Better Days’ over four or five hours, and then recorded it that same night. We started around noon and finished the song by 1 a.m. I’d never experienced songwriting like that before.” 

At the other end of that collaboration was the finished product of Better Days, which ultimately lead to the winding road that brought Battery Lane. Which in many ways, feels like a long time coming for Keim. 

While “Canyon,” a catchy folksy tune of an opening track is certainly a standout, other standouts include “25 Years,” another album single, and “Comet,” the album’s last track. At the forefront of each is not only Keim’s songwriting talents on full display (he is credited as either the only or a co-writer for each song on the album), but also his vocal and styling talents. Each song has some sort of clear tie to Keim’s personal lore, which provides a chance for the authenticity in his writing to shine through. He’s able to take me through most tracks on the album, citing some sort of specific story or general memory for each one, and the authenticity of his inspirations are obvious on the album on whole. 

In talking to Keim, it’s ever apparent music is simply embedded in his soul. We spent a good portion of our interview talking over our shared love of The Beatles and Bob Dylan, and reflecting on the importance of trying to see as many of the remaining living “greats” while we still can. It’s a passion that clearly translates to the recorded tracks, that is all but certainly going to propel Keim to greatness to come. 

But, as for right now, he’s okay with just sitting in the joy of releasing this album. 

“I hope [listeners] enjoy the record. I would just like to inspire other musicians, artists, or people to just follow their passions. I think this is a pivotal moment in my career, where I’m just going all in and I have everything on the table. So, I hope people are inspired to do whatever it is they aspire to do.” 

You can stream Battery Lane below: