WITF Music: Zero to One

Distractions are necessary.

• Joe Ulrich
  BioRecent Stories

  

  Joe has been interested in audio and music since he was a kid. What started as a fascination with his parents’ vinyl records and cassette tapes turned into a love of both performing and recording. He grew up in Elizabethtown, Pa. and moved to Pittsburgh in 1999 where he majored in Photography at the University of Pittsburgh.
  
  In 2004, he attended the Conservatory of Recording Arts & Sciences in Tempe, AZ. He returned to Pittsburgh to work at a recording studio.
  
  In 2008, Joe arrived at WITF, where his skills have found a good home as an on-air host, audio engineer and producer of WITF Music. In 2016, Joe earned a National Edward R. Murrow award for Best Use of Sound.

 Jeremy Long / WITF

Ben Meier, left, and Chad Meier, right, of Zero to One performs for WITF Music on March 14, 2024. (Jeremy Long - WITF)

The three members of Zero to One lugged their piano and electronics into our studio to perform a couple songs. Afterwards we talked about their surprising entrance into music at a later age and the things they’ve learned about the writing process.

Joe Ulrich: So you guys hadn’t played instruments prior to college.

Ben Kerkeslager: Prior to college you would not even think of us as musicians.

Joe Ulrich: That was the intrigue to starting. It’s like, what have we never done before. What was it like when someone first suggested this?

Ben Kerkeslager: I remember it distinctly. Me and Ben were at my college. We knew we wanted to do something.

Ben Meier: We can’t just like separate and go do other things and I’ll see you in 20 years.

Ben Kerkeslager: He’s like what if we like made music? I was like, that’s a stupid idea. Who’s gonna sing? What are we gonna do? So I pretty much instantly wrote it off.

Chad Meier: I recall visualizing, would this be fun if I was good at it?

Joe Ulrich: Tell me about the piano.

Ben Kerkeslager: I saw it on the side of the road being thrown away. I went to get my dad’s truck. We could barely get it in the truck. But we got it in there and then we brought it back and deconstructed it. Took out the entire metal bow in the back, all the strings, all pins and everything, which was pretty brutal. Painted it.

Ben Meier: I feel like it was when we were like, are we going to do music?

Chad Meier: It was a sign.

Ben Meier: It becomes a thing you can use. Jumping off it. And it’s abnormal. It’s like a ridiculous thing to have, in a place like this, too. You’re just lugging this monstrous shell around. But that’s becoming a thing. It’s got character.

Chad Meier: I tried to use that approach that I knew before from like sports and school, which was a linear approach. Like, I’m going to sit here until this is done and it’s good. And I would do that night in night, night out. And I would come back the next day and it would be worse.

Ben Meier: It’s like sometimes you make the best things when you’re working the least. I can be like, I haven’t done anything for a week. But here’s this demo. And this is better than all the demos we made in the past three months.

Chad Meier: So distraction is a huge part of creating.

A collection of interviews, photos, and music videos, featuring local musicians who have stopped by the WITF performance studio to share a little discussion and sound. Produced by WITF’s Joe Ulrich.

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