Like Father, Like Son Robin Zander makes his mark with dad’s band, Cheap Trick

ARTS, BEATS & EATS

Robin Zander makes his mark with dad’s band, Cheap Trick

Robin Taylor Zander, left, and his father, Cheap Trick frontman Robin Zander, spend time together in the studio. Since 2014, RTZ, has played guitar and bass and sang backup, occasionally doubling his father’s lead vocals. PHOTO COURTESY OF JAY GILBERT

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By Gary Graff

For MediaNews Group

Thanks to hits such as “Surrender,” “I Want You to Want Me” and “Dream Police,” Cheap Trick has become one of rock’s generational bands.

It’s also become a next-generation affair.

While guitarist Rick Nielsen, frontman Robin Zander and bassist Tom Petersson remain the core, two of their progeny have become fixtures in the Cheap Trick lineup.

Nielsen’s son, Daxx, has been sitting in for estranged drummer Bun E. Carlos since 2010 and has played on the band’s last four albums. And since 2014, Zander’s son, Robin Taylor Zander, aka RTZ, has played guitar and bass and sang backup, occasionally doubling his father’s lead vocals.

The younger Zander also has appeared on three albums.

“It’s a little bit of a family affair, yeah,” Rick Nielsen said a few years back. “We have some kids who are talented — maybe more talented than us! They’ve grown up with us and the music, so it’s part of their DNA and they can come up and play it like they’re part of the band.”

The younger Zander, in fact, has played every position in Cheap Trick during the past 10 years, save for lead vocalists. He’s stepped in for Rick Nielsen and Tom Petersson when health issues kept them on stage. In 2017, when Daxx Nielsen took time off to spend time with his newborn, Zander even got behind the drum kit so Cheap Trick wouldn’t have to cancel any gigs.

“Just watching my dad and (Cheap Trick), just from going to those shows, made me want to do music,” acknowledges Zander, 30, who was dubbed “Cheap Trick’s secret weapon” by Rolling Stone magazine. “That’s where I got my inspiration for doing music — from watching them do it.

“I never thought about being in Cheap Trick, y’know? When my dad would do solo gigs while I was in high school, I’d jump up and play guitar, do background vocals, not in any official capacity. It just kind of developed that way, just naturally. And it still feels exactly the same.”

The Florida-born Zander has been plowing his own musical path, as well. He started out playing the ukulele, then moved on to guitar when he was 5, adding bass, drums and piano as well as singing in his school chorus. “I was an introverted music nerd at a pretty early age,” he says. It took a while to understand that his father was more than someone who just played music for a job, but he was definitely interested in the family business.

“All throughout school I figured once I was out, I would do something in music,” Zander says. “There wasn’t anything else I even thought about doing.” He studied at the Berklee College of Music in Boston and Full Sail University in Florida, as well as Florida State University, but the big learning curve happened when he moved to Nashville in 2015 to record with his own band, Smile.

“It’s a competitive city, but it’s inspiring,” he says. “There are so many really good songwriters, good musicians. It’s a place people come to do music, so I think it hardened me and made me even more determined.”

Those Smile songs eventually turned up on Zander’s debut solo album, “The Distance,” last year. Produced by Jack Douglas (Cheap Trick, Aerosmith, Alice Cooper) for his Confidential Records label, it’s long on melody and songcraft, with Zander playing nearly all the instruments and singing. It shows the proverbial apple has not fallen far from the tree, but you’d be hard-pressed to view it as a Cheap Trick spin-off.

“This is definitely my own music,” explains Zander, who’s currently working with Douglas on his next album. “I don’t try to sound like anything. I’m not really going for a sound. A lot of people try to put all sorts of labels on your music, but I feel like my stuff is just whatever I’m doing at the time. There’s a lot of music I’ve listened to and that’s influenced me, but everything starts inside me and isn’t planned or plotted out.”

Cheap Trick performs at 7:30 p.m. Friday, Aug. 30 on the Jim Beam National Stage at Arts, Beats & Eats in Royal Oak. Visit artsbeatseats.com for full festival schedules and other information.