Tell us first how you got started making music. Where do your musical tastes come from?
I was born and Raised in Texas, I grew up in Houston and Austin to be exact. I have always been an avid listener of music being that my father was a musician in Chicago and had a great record collection ranging from rock and roll, soul, psychadelic, krautrock etc.. Also just being around the Houston and Austin music scenes exposed me to a variety of local music and musicians with whom I’d regularly jam with. I moved to mexico about 6 years back, initially for a short term project that turned long-term. I figured that the only way to plant roots here was to make a band.
You spent some time getting an education in Austin, TX. Has that affected the way you approach life in Mexico City?
More than anything being away from my home makes me miss the local rock scenes, there’s great stuff here but not much of a scene per se, that’s something I hope to accomplish with the band; networking with local musicians, putting on our own shows, and seeing if we can perhaps kick-start a true local music scene. Because bands like Metallica can play here for a week, or Radiohead can play for three days (both true), but you can’t get 20 people to walk into a bar to go checkout who might be playing tonight. [ed. ain’t that the truth, just about anywhere?!]
Do the “locals” get out for indie rock shows? Do you get a lot of tourists?
This really depends on the place where we play, being that Mexico City is a megalopolis, you get to play in different areas of town and different communities. In certain bars we might play for american expats or other foreigners, in other cases its the locals, it all really depends where you go.
Tell us about your songs. What are they about? Do you write in Spanish or English, or both? Do you stick to the rock style on your latest record? Do you play in the “traditional” styles from Mexico? Most of [my writing is] mainly in English being that its my first language, and the one that I can express myself with better. I have an appreciation of Mexican and Spanish language music, and I do hope to eventually write music in Spanish. I’m not a big fan of integrating Mexican music into rock form, that’s really not something that I would be able to do well. My family has lived in Texas since it was still Mexico, so through time there has been a bit of disconnect, but I do feel a calling to my roots, I just usually express that through other art forms such as dance and visual mediums. Being that I usually write my songs starting with the rhythm section, then melody and finally lyrics, I’ve had a free form approach to lyrical writing that has brought about a very interesting exercise into my subconscious since I tend to write out a couple of lines that might come out at the moment I hear what I’ve created and write a theme based on that. Afterwards I reflect on what I wrote and lean something about myself usually.
Where can we find your music, and where are you playing, soon?
You can find our music on bandcamp, spotiffy, grooveshark, pandora under the name Red Light Abstract
