Balancing A Career As A Pro Snowskater And Touring Rock Musician

Odds are, the members of your favorite band—unless that band is U2—likely don’t do it as a full-time career.

Most indie or alternative rock musicians work other jobs to make ends meet between touring and recording. Many do something else in the industry, such as producing, pressing records or manufacturing merch.

Some do something altogether different—accounting, maybe, or teaching.

That’s the case for Zack Alworden, a touring bassist for rock bands Charmer and Liquid Mike who is also trying to balance a career as a professional snowskater for Ambition Snowskates.

As did many kids coming of age in the ’90s, the 32-year-old, a proud product of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, developed a childhood interest in skateboarding. Alworden grew up on a steady stream of skate videos, including Enjoi’s “Bag of Suck” and the “Bummer” videos out of Illinois.

Alworden had a special affinity for videos featuring Midwest skating in particular. Marquette, Michigan, does not boast a large skate scene. “It’s a lot of relatable skateboarding,” he said. “It’s the type of spots we’ll find when we skate.”

But even as he consumed as many skate videos as one can download on Limewire, witnessing a neighbor across his cul-de-sac riding a snowskate set Alworden, then ten years old, on a different path. And the stakes involved in riding on snow were certainly much lower than on concrete.

For the uninitiated, snowskating is more closely related to skateboarding than snowboarding. The single-deck boards look much like a skateboard with no trucks or wheels, and the sport is primarily performed on street features like stair sets, rails and ledges.

There are bi-deck, or mountain, snowskates designed for carving on hills, but Ambition doesn’t manufacture those. Some snowboard manufacturers, such as Jones Snowboards, offer bi-deck snowskates.

At 16, in his sophomore year of high school, Alworden had honed his snowskating skills enough to join the flow team at Ambition, a Canadian brand established in 2004. Like in other action sports, a flow team is essentially a development team for a given brand. Flow athletes are still considered amateurs, but they receive free product and have the opportunity to participate in brand projects to raise their profiles.

“I was very intentional when I was that age,” Alworden said. “It was my dream to be sponsored. It was such a small community, with a very limited amount of videos and coverage coming out. But I’d see footage and think, ‘I’m somewhat in the skill range of these people.’”

Alworden rode for Ambition for 12 years before he got a pro model board. “I was 28, but I wasn’t a young buck by any means,” Alworden said. “It’s harder for someone to get a pro board in snowskating that it seems. There are a limited amount of molds they make every year; only so many people can have a pro board on the team.”

Alworden brings three snowskates to every session. His own, a mid-size model, is great for flip tricks. His friend and fellow Ambition team member Dan Bergeon’s signature board is the biggest the brand produces and is great for boardslides or ollies.

At 32, Alworden is living his dream of being a pro snowskater. He had the opening parts in Ambition’s “Bleached” (2022) and parts in other videos like Ambition’s “Encore” (2019) and “Solstice” (2017).

But now, the scope of his goals stretches beyond his own career.

Alworden is tirelessly trying to increase the sport’s exposure. He handles social channels for Ambition and he also mails out all the brand’s product in the U.S. “My basement is filled with hundreds and hundreds of snowskates,” he says.

For this reason, it’s difficult for Alworden to take off for large stretches of time to play bass for Charmer and Liquid Mike, especially in the winter months, which are prime for snowskating.

But Charmer has a new full-length album, Downpour, coming out Friday, and life came together to allow its four members to embark on a brief six-stop tour in June to promote it. In April, Alworden was out on tour with Liquid Mike.

“I have a very up-and-go lifestyle at this point,” Alworden said. “It’s how I carved out my life, and it’s all I ever wanted. But getting older, I’m like, ‘Wow, this is becoming a lot.’ At the end of the day I do love touring. I’m such a music fanatic. But if I had to drop it all to snowskate and skateboard, I would.”

In some ways, Alworden has snowskating to thank for his music career.

At 13, Alworden was at a movie theater when Neil Berg, then 12, approached him. Alworden was wearing an old snowskate brand’s T-shirt, and Berg couldn’t believe he’d found someone else in their small Upper Peninsula town who was interested in the sport. The two started snowskating together the following winter and continue to do so to this day.

Berg joined Charmer as the band’s lead guitarist in 2015. At that time, Alworden, who has since moved back to Marquette, was living in Kalamazoo, about seven hours away. When Charmer was on the road, they—Berg, vocalist/guitarist David Daignault and drummer Nick Erickson—would stay with Alworden, thanks to his existing relationship with Berg.

“Neil is really the reason I was ever able to join the band,” Alworden said. “He also designed my last board graphic. He’s such a talented skateboarder and snowskater, and I’m very grateful we’re still skating together nearly 20 years later.”

Alworden is working as part of a small committee advocating for a new skatepark to be built just outside Marquette. As a snowskater, he can also highlight how the park could be used in winter. The inverse has happened; Alworden pointed to a Montreal park built for snowskating that remains open year-round for skateboarders to use too.

It starts at the local level; snowskating has to cultivate local scenes for anything to happen with the sport on a more mainstream level.

Sometimes, big companies show interest in the sport; in 2015, Ambition partnered with Red Bull on a collaboration. X Games has been keeping an eye on the sport for the better part of 20 years, though the seminal action sports event has trended toward decreasing, not increasing, its sports offerings.

“Snowskating doesn’t seem to have this staying power,” Alworden said. It’s heavily dependent on snow conditions, which vary from day to day. And unlike skateboarding, snowskaters can’t always just show up and hit features; they frequently do hours of prepping to make spots viable for snowskating.

“These companies look at snowskating from the outside and see us at our best and they’re like, ‘Why are we not trying to get in on the ground floor on this?’ But when they see the inconsistencies, just because every day is going to be different, maybe they distance themselves.”

Still, the exposure is much higher now than it was when Alworden took up the sport nearly 20 years ago. Alworden does his part, sending out snowskates every year to skateboarders. Recently, Ambition released a board for pro skateboarder John Shanahan in collaboration with Public, which also carries a Shanahan pro model snowboard.

“Someone like John Shanahan, a very respected professional skater who’s been in the running for Skater of the Year, to watch him dip his toes into snowskating rocks,” Alworden said.

The biggest names in skateboarding, like Tony Hawk, Jamie Foy and Thrasher, have also posted snowskating videos.

“I’m glad they’re not seeing it as this kooky thing anymore,” Alworden said.

“I mean, don’t get me wrong; it still is a little kooky,” he added with a chuckle. “But when these big names get involved, it’s really gratifying.”