I chatted with ZANDER JOEL of the young Las Vegas rock band SPLIT PERSONA. We talked about his parents, Guitar Hero, Van Halen, and Foo Fighters, writing songs in high school, moving from Truckee, California, to Reno, Nevada, and then Las Vegas, their harrowing first tour, and their brand new single, ‘Hypo.’

RYAN J. DOWNEY: WHAT WAS YOUR FIRST EXPOSURE TO MUSIC?

ZANDER JOEL: I grew up in a diverse music-listening household. My mom was a big fan of Grateful Dead, Fleetwood Mac, and The Rolling Stones. My dad was into heavier stuff like Metallica, Iron Maiden, and Ozzy Osbourne. My parents gifted me something that changed my life: Guitar Hero. My dad was in the Coast Guard. He’d come home, and we’d play Call of Duty Black Ops or Guitar Hero.

I was about 12 years old when I watched the movie Whiplash. My dad was like, ‘Oh, you thought that was cool? Let’s watch some Alex Van Halen.’ He showed me the drum solo in Van Halen’s Live Without a Net. When I saw Eddie Van Halen play ‘Eruption,’ I wanted to play guitar. All I did for almost two years was learn Van Halen and Metallica riffs. Then my dad took me to see Foo Fighters…

THOSE SOUND LIKE GREAT PARENTS.

They were very musically rounded, though they didn’t play anything. They love music, which is super rad. And once I saw Foo Fighters, Dave Grohl was just a perfect frontman. I said, ‘Okay, that’s what I want to do.’As a freshman in high school, I started seeing what life was made of. I began writing music around that, which became the first Split Persona EP. I wrote all that music by myself and played all the instruments in my room. We moved from a small town called Truckee, California to Reno, Nevada, where I started going to local shows. 

WHAT WAS THE PROCESS OF ASSEMBLING PEOPLE AROUND YOU TO FILL OUT THE BAND?

I joined local projects as a fill-in guitar player or whatever they needed. My school in Reno was centered around talent. And it wasn’t a private school or a charter school. It was a public school that was just all around, big-picture learning. Your academics will help you graduate, but you will work on your talent and whatever you want to do most of the time at school. So, most of the time at school, I went from learning algebra straight to the band practice room, where I would hang out with friends playing music.

That’s where I got introduced to the Reno local scene and started going to shows in small venues. I snuck into a fair share of 21 and over shows just to be involved with some local bands. I also started doing concert photography to hang out with bands. I was pitching my little demo tape to everybody.

Eventually, a couple of members of a band I was in were like, ‘Why don’t we play your music?’ We won a battle of the bands and eventually changed the name back to Split Persona. We moved to Las Vegas this year, but half the band wanted to stay in Reno. So, we found a new drummer and bass player in Las Vegas.

WHAT’S ON THE HORIZON IN THE NEXT SIX MONTHS TO A YEAR?

We’ve made our first full-length album. It contains everything we’re capable of and captures the sound we’ve sought for years. We spent most of the summer mixing, mastering, and getting it ready to go. It’s weird because when I came up with Split Persona, I never thought it would come into the music. But the music I write for the band is all over the place. This album has some rap and metal elements and even some pop-punk. The goal for this band is Wembley Stadium. I want to play for thousands of people who love our songs. We want to go on a tour next year.

YOU HAD A CRAZY EXPERIENCE WITH THAT LAST TIME.

We raised money on GoFundMe for our first tour. We bought a van for about $4000, which was huge for us. We asked an agent to book us for a two-week run. He left us in the dark for a month while he booked it, and then, at the last minute, he told us, ‘I booked the shows; now you book the bands you want to play with you.’ He’d booked us in 13 venues without other bands on the bills.

We decided to push through even though nobody knew who we were. There were maybe ten people at each show. We called it the ‘no gas money tour.’ We took Venmo donations. We camped for the entire tour and took showers at rest stops until our drummer’s parents booked us a nice room in LA. On the drive to the hotel room, the second-to-last day of the tour, our bass player fails to yield at a green light, takes a left, and gets slammed into by an Acura going like 45 mph on Sunset Boulevard. We end up stranded in LA with a totaled van and broken gear – every musician’s nightmare. Thank God nobody got hurt. We rented a car to drive all the way home. My parents rented a trailer with my dad’s truck and drove to LA to get our gear out of the van.

So that was our last tour, and we hope to do it much better this time.

TELL ME ABOUT THIS FIRST SINGLE.

‘Hypo’ is a song I wrote about some crazy health drama that I had. I had Covid and ended up getting this condition called pericarditis. It gives you the same symptoms of an oncoming heart attack. I had no idea what was happening. I’m 19 years old; there’s no way I’m having a heart attack. I ended up taking all that anxiety I was having and wrote ‘Hypo,’ which is short for Hypochondria. With this record and an extensive tour to back it up, we have so much more to share, and we’re going to places we’ve never been before.

The sky’s the limit. We’re just going to keep going and never stop. #