Sutter Zachman

At the brink of just twenty years old, dumb luck had him signing a big publishing deal in 2008 with Chrysalis. It first started when Zachman and his then songwriting partner, Jason Mandell, sent their demo around to some people in the Los Angeles neighborhood where they were living. All of a sudden, they were getting A&R folks coming to their shows. Zachman says, “We spent a little over a year trying to record an album, but it never panned out. We tried co-writing with other songwriters in some of those workshop-type settings, but we weren’t good at that.” 

Unable to find immediate success as a songwriter, Zachman moved to the Midwest to attend college and wouldn’t return to Los Angeles until 2013 when he formed the band La Route, consisting of Cameron Meshell (Forever Like Red) and Angela Russell. The trio’s regularly performed street shows on Abbot Kinney Boulevard eventually caught the attention of a local producer who invited them to record at his studio – resulting in Zachman’s debut EP, Repeat Offender. The single off the EP, “Back to Sleep,” received international airplay on BBC and Rte 1 Radio and earned him an in-studio performance at Yahoo Music. Zachman spent the next few years discovering ways to be a self-sufficient artist with the release of his EPs, Fireworks! (2015) and Crude Magic (2017).

In 2018 Zachman released his fourth EP, Up All Night. Zachman says, “I’m really proud of this collection of songs. I feel like I had the confidence and self-awareness to go back into a proper studio with a great band and allow it to take shape without much obsessing.” As he was wrapping up the production of the EP, an auspicious dinner set up by his wife’s co-worker led to Zachman meeting Grammy-winning engineer Austen Jux-Chandler (Adele, Wolf Alice, Vance Joy), and the two became fast friends. 

Adopting a very low-key approach and allowing songs to ripen naturally, Zachman and Jux-Chandler spent several years working on End of the Arcade, his debut full-length album. A few studio sessions and one pandemic later, Zachman found himself relocating to the East Coast with only a partially completed album. Determined to get the vocals right, and with the aid of modern technology to work with Jux-Chandler remotely, he put the finishing touches on the album in early 2021. As the End of the Arcade release date draws near, Zachman will be relocating again (this time more permanently) to Omaha, Nebraska.