Building Worlds with St. Terrible

Dressed in striped pajama pants and a worn-out sweatshirt, St. Terrible takes the stage at the back of an abandoned downtown Boise, Idaho, classroom. It’s late, and the pajamas remind the heavy-eyed audience how long they have stayed up past their bedtimes. But the strange lullaby about to come is well worth the sacrifice. 

Beginning as a solo project in 2011, Boise-based musician Zach Herbert combines music, visual storytelling, and performance art to create St. Terrible. Herbert’s music is best described as Pacific Northwest gothic, with his most recent release, the 2021 EP, An Endless Fiction, sounding like it was cultivated from the dirt of ancient mountain ranges.  The album is full of ghostlike harmonies layered over gentle moments that give way to bursting walls of sound. An accompanying video spans the four-song collection. Combining a hazy daydream-like setting with nightmarish imagery, the video feels like spying on a private exorcism, a running theme throughout Herbert’s music. His songs are steeped in personal folklore, making them simultaneously inviting and achingly untouchable. After a brief hiatus, Herbert returned to performing at this year’s Treefort Music Festival. We sat down with the artist to discuss his attempt to reform his hermit ways, the benefits of world-building, and the future of St. Terrible.

Zach Herbert performing with St. Terrible. Photo by April Massey

AM: Have you done the festival circuit before?

Zach Herbert: I’ve done some here and there. I just played M3F last month. Treefort is the festival I play, no matter what, every year if I can. 

AM: Why is Treefort the festival you play no matter what?

ZH: It’s exciting to have a festival that prioritizes a wide range of music over one specific genre that might be considered more approachable. Artists come here from around the world and engage with people excited about music that’s not mainstream or super accessible. It’s really cool and provides a community that’s not always present in my life.

AM: The Boise music scene gets this one week every year to show off.

ZH: When I first played Treefort in 2014, it blew my mind. I saw a lot of music that I loved but didn’t realize there was much of a scene for. Seeing other artists play that kind of music changed my expectations of what I could do live. 

AM: You’re relatively self-contained in how you make music. Does that affect the way you show up in the Boise music scene?

ZH: There are parts of the scene that I’m very friendly towards. I love the artists here, and I enjoy seeing their work. I’m close with Ross and Riley from Wend. We work on stuff and play together a lot. Sean Dahlman plays with me in St. Terrible - we’ve been making music together since we were 16. But I can be insular. I’m not sure how that affects what I do. I’m orienting toward the community the longer I stay here. There’s a shared quality of experimentation here; hopefully, I’m considered a part of that. 

AM: You had stopped performing for the past two years.

Zach Herbert performing with St. Terrible.

Photo by April Massey

ZH: I was still performing, just not aggressively. There were four or five shows a year, but most were hidden away. 

AM: What was behind the slowdown?

ZH: I’m going through a musical transition and don’t know where that’ll land. I’ve done smaller shows where I have the freedom to experiment. That allows me to play around with different ideas in a setting where I get feedback, but the stakes aren’t as high. I’m making room for rest so I can keep doing the work in a way that feels good. 

AM: You’re a very quiet and self-reflective person. How does that affect the way you perform? 

ZH: I was lovingly forced into playing music. I had terrible stage fright but was making music by myself. My friend Sean Dahlman suggested we start a band and began booking us shows. We didn’t have any songs, but we were both good at improvising. Through that, I found a method of communication that felt safe. On stage, there’s an agreement that you can take up space. That enabled me to be comfortable doing so in a social setting. 

AM: Besides being a musician, you’re also a performance artist. How did that develop?

ZH: Around 2015, music started not feeling expansive enough. Providing an experience became more important. I want to express things that aren’t just music by creating a larger context.  Performance art, whether theatrical elements, visual art, or dance, help me curate those experiences for the audience. 

AM: Do music and performance art always come hand-in-hand for you now?

ZH: Not necessarily, but I’m quite a performative musician. I move around a lot; I put a lot of thought into what I wear on stage and how everything is arranged. I also play with Sheep Bridge Jumpers. With them, there’s no performance art; it’s just a straight music show. So the performance art does not have to be there, but I do notice a difference in the quality of experience I provide to the audience. 

AM: What does being a visual storyteller mean to you?

ZH: I didn’t start exploring that until 2016; I am still discovering it. It does feel like an identity crisis sometimes. I’m trying to be an artist with a wide range of expression and a musician. They mesh well, but figuring out how to tell those stories can be confusing. St. Terrible is a music project, first and foremost. Storytelling and the visual elements support the music, but sometimes I lean towards it being the other way around. 

AM: Is there a difference between the stories you can tell with visual art and the stories you can tell with your music?

ZH: I’ve never tried to do a project that was just visual, so I’m not sure about that yet. Music has always been the center point for what I do. It does an incredible job of being an emotional translator, which is why I’ve mostly leaned into it. But it would be interesting to do a visual project first and see what music would relate to that. 

AM: Your process is music first, then visual elements?

ZH: I would say concept first. Gospel of Nothingness started as a collection of writings. I begin with a word or phrase that becomes the vessel for the music. 

AM: Is there a musician or artist who helped you realize it was possible to make music how you wanted to?

Zach Herbert performing with St. Terrible.

Photo by April Massey

ZH: I loved The Gorillaz growing up; they were a huge influence on me. I wasn’t into David Bowie then, but I understood what he was doing. As a child, I created containers for different personalities and worlds. I gravitate toward artists that bring a secondary aspect into their work. Artists who have a visual element or a personality element are pretty standard now. As we move into an age of AI, there’ll be more of an expectation for artists to have those world-building elements. 

AM: Do you think escapism plays a role in world-building?

ZH: It depends on the intention.  Anything that creates a safe space for someone to experience the parts of themselves they struggle with, I don’t see as a bad thing. Some forms of world-building are escapism, but the artists I follow use it as the exact opposite— building a space for something we don’t want to look at while creating a context that makes it safe for us to look at.

AM: There is also an element of self-invention.

ZH: I used to wear masks when I performed. It’s interesting how much more authentic you can be wearing a mask. They’re associated with hiding, but masks also give us freedom. It allowed me to be something other than the person others expected me to be. Removing the layer of self that feels inflexible is a huge coping mechanism.

AM: You’ve been exploring self-identity. What was the motivation behind that?

ZH: I’ve always felt like my brain is categorized into different personalities with a separate genre of music for each one. To not feel limited, I have been finding ways to express and explore those parts of myself. In an age where it’s so easy to see everything we could be, it’s hard not to want to interact with all those possibilities. 

AM: What does the result of that exploration look like?

ZH: I’m not sure. I have a project in the works right now, but it has a separate focus. I’ve toyed around with doing projects outside of St. Terrible. I would like to do something outside of the genre spectrum I’ve been working in, but no one has an expectation of me. I’m not a big artist; no one is breathing down my back to show up a certain way. 

AM: Are you performing more this year?

ZH: I’m doing a few shows, but I tend to procrastinate by playing live. It hit me last year that I’ve created a significant amount of music as St. Terrible, but almost none is recorded. I’m hoping to buckle down this summer and finish those recordings.

This article has been edited and condensed.