Live Wires

My name is Aaron Zimmer. I am a songwriter and performer currently living in New York City. I arrived here in January of 2004 from Lincoln Nebraska where I was born and raised. My newest record, Live Wires was recorded and produced in Brooklyn, NY by Christian Cassan (David Byrne, Passing Strange). With a few small exceptions, he and I tracked every instrument ourselves. Christian is a talented multi-instrumentalist, but his true gifts come as a producer and a mixer. Live Wires is 11 terrifically refined pop/rock tunes that will fit comfortably in your iPod shuffle alongside Gavin DeGraw, Switchfoot, or Daughtry. The road to this point though didn't come quickly or easily. Check it out....

My story starts around l999 in Nebraska. I had enrolled in college not far from Lincoln the year before, was failing almost all my classes, had just been dumped by my high-school sweetheart and was sort of spinning off the planet. So, I quit school, moved back to Lincoln and recorded my very first record in the bedroom of my North Lincoln apartment. It sounded terrible, but I pressed it anyway and put a band together. We were called The Aaron Zimmer Band (clever, eh?) and played in Lincoln and Omaha bars with the occasional out-of-town weekend run. Mostly we played to empty houses. One of those shows was at a downtown Lincoln joint called WC's. A couple of jocks from a popular morning radio show happened to be at the bar while we were playing and took a shining to a tune I had called, Angel. They put that song on the radio and had us on their morning show for interviews and acoustic performances. We went from playing to empty houses to filling every club we went to. Before long, we bought a big, old tour bus and set out on tour to take the country by storm one bar at a time. We had grand dreams about the life of a touring band. There would be money and chicks and rock & roll...we had it all wrong. Eventually the tour unraveled and we drove that bus back home to Nebraska with broken spirits and a broken bank account. My band-mates and I all parted ways (it wasn't until years later that we all became friends again) and I got a job as a bartender back in Lincoln. Around then is when I started thinking about recording new stuff and maybe making a move to one of the coasts. So, I worked every shift I could get at the bar, recorded an EP (Inside My Skin' EP 2004) at Presto! Studios with AJ Mogis. And, when the record was done and I had saved enough money, I packed my stuff and moved to New York City, where I've been ever since. More than 2 of my 5+ years as a New Yorker were claimed by the writing & recording of Live Wires. From the earliest scratch tracks, to punching buttons in Pro-Tools while Christian tracked drums, all the way to executing the photography and graphic design for the album's artwork, Live Wires is a true portrait of who I am as an artist. And, I'm excited to share it with you.