Episode 691: Rafael Cohen (Las Palabras, !!!)

[00:00:13] She's a music fan. You know, I have this theory that I think, you know, I live in Brooklyn and I think that there's this kind of like over, you know, I think when you and I were kids, I'm assuming we're similar ages, when we were kids, the parents measured like how early their kids read or how, you know, how adept they were in math or that there was a real premium on how smart your kid was.

[00:00:39] I think at least in my community, it's like, how young can your kid be before they know all the drummers from the Ramones in chronological order? It's a thing. No, I'm in Williamsburg, which is... I was gonna say the Ramones onesie is very famous. So you're not in Park Slope, are you? About 22 years. That's something. How long have you been in Brooklyn for? Where are you, by the way?

[00:01:11] Mm-hmm. Funnily enough, I was in Astoria for about 20 years and I just moved up to the mid-Hudson Valley.

[00:01:24] Yeah, I kind of... I moved in August, so it's still pretty recent. And, you know, just living in that, my one bedroom in Queens for the pandemic, it felt like maybe it was time to...

[00:01:44] I mean, like, I'm always... I'm always sort of amazed and I guess I would say impressed by somebody who... It's a thing. I think, you know, it's funny because my mother-in-law has a place up in Woodstock. So I've... I know the Hudson Valley a little bit. I guess that's the Catskills, really. But, right, which is, you know, 30 minutes in that area is like right there.

[00:02:13] You know, everything's going to take you about half an hour to get to it. That's north of 4 a.m. right now. I've actually... Sometimes, I don't know, I spent... We spent a month there in August and I didn't know how people had kids up there because it's like you're driving around all the time and you're, you know... But, you know, it is what it is. I don't know. I've kind of committed to raising them here. So it makes a lot of sense to me, you know, like how it works.

[00:02:39] Yeah. Yeah. Well, there's a six-year-old too. Well, she's 13. I mean, clearly, you're most of the way. You can see the finish line from here. Anyway. For me, I, you know, I have several friends with young children. You know, they're kind of going back and forth on that decision.

[00:03:08] I can't see, but that door behind me is... That seems to be the hardest part about raising a kid in the city. And it's now been converted into my daughter's room. So people will come over and see it and they'll be like, this is my room. And they'll be like, looks like a closet. She's like, no, no, it's my room. So you make do with what you have.

[00:03:33] Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Bathtub is in the bathroom, not in the kitchen. That's a true New York experience. She's getting it at a young age. Yeah. Okay. That's good. Yeah, one of the first places I lived in Bushwick didn't have any running water. That's a bridge too far, I think.

[00:04:03] I also am Jewish, so I can say this, but we had a Hasidic landlord. And the deal was that... I moved in... I'm from California and I moved with some friends from Santa Cruz. And the deal was that in order to live there... Wow. So it's technically unlivable. In order to live there, we had to agree to fix it up. So they thought themselves soldering and plumbing. It was pretty impressive, actually. A character to be reckoned with if you live in Brooklyn.

[00:04:32] And also, as a fellow Jew myself, something you kind of have to be like, yes. You kind of have to explain. You kind of have to be like, yeah, my parents aren't slumlords. You know? No. At least I'm not a slumlord. Yeah. Do you... I wonder if you ever feel this at all.

[00:05:02] That sort of like... It seems so weird to say, and maybe a lot of people can't relate to this, but I expect you might be able to... Like, every once in a while, maybe you're walking down... You happen to be walking down a street that you lived in 20 years ago when things were a little bit harder. And then you get like a weird pang of romanticism for the days when you were kind of like struggling and living in squalor.

[00:05:27] The band that I play where we practice is the same kind of... The same shitty place that like when they moved from Sacramento, very similar to you, in the hostage part of Brooklyn down by the Navy Yard. And they still live down there. And I actually knew a friend of mine, because I'm from D.C. I'm from D.C. Lived there beforehand. And so I'm kind of like... Still able to visit that squalor in a way, you know? I mean, they've cleaned it up nice.

[00:05:56] And it's really only Nick, the singer, who lives there at this point. But it's funny to go back there sometimes and see it and be like, Yeah, we all used to live kind of like this, you know? And, you know, it's a trip for sure. It strikes me now, thankfully, or moved from that, that to a certain extent that I think it is that...

[00:06:25] It is that romanticizing of that struggle in the early years. Yeah, I mean, I've often said that, you know... That's a big part of what keeps you going. I can remember every show from tours where it was like just a disaster, and you had to wait for the kids' parents to leave for the weekend before you could pull the van in, and they paid you in pizza. Like, you remember every detail of those shows. But once the shows turned into like a bunch of black boxes, you know, bars, they all kind of meld into one in a way.

[00:06:52] You know, like it's all one big, you know, kind of like soundcheck at the whatever bar, and then, you know, you lose some of the character, and then it's harder and harder to distinguish them in a way, you know? Yeah, you miss it a little bit, and then you realize like, Oh, if for some reason I had gone back to that,

[00:07:21] then something has gone horribly wrong in my life. Yeah, for a little while now. I mean, you've been making a living as a musician for 20 some odd years. Certainly there have been lean times. But yeah, somehow, scraping it by. It was rough. It was rough losing the work. It was rough living in a small place.

[00:07:50] How rough was the pandemic for you in that respect? Probably the two earlier. We were playing some Queens. And it was rough. It's rough kind of emerging from it too, you know what I'm saying? Like, I feel like the landscape of what it meant to be a musician is changing so much. And there was a glut of people trying to tour, a glut of people trying to kind of get everything back at once.

[00:08:13] And I don't exactly know if it's even, like kind of, I think it's a new landscape. It didn't go back to how it was. You know what I'm saying? Like, I don't think anyway. I just saw today, for example, that Pitchfork canceled their festival. And I don't think it's a coincidence that you see a lot of, like, heartfelt notes on Instagram saying, hey, we just can't make this tour work from artists.

[00:08:42] And then a bunch of festivals kind of saying, we can't make this work either. You know what I'm saying? So I think that we still haven't, I use the term we very loosely. It has yet to be figured out by, you know, whoever's Jimmy Ivey and Jeff Bezos and whoever else is running things. Daniel Eck. Yeah, exactly.

[00:09:10] Those famous music lovers. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I mean, you say that as though there's, as though they care. Yeah. Maybe Jim O'Gaiovine, I think, may be the most sympathetic of the bunch. And that's saying a lot about the other. But it's that, yeah, I mean, you bring up a big point. I just saw that Pitchfork thing, like, within the last hour.

[00:09:36] So I hadn't really thought that much about it beyond, I think, a statement was something like, you know, like, this is just happening to festivals. It's hard to do a festival now. But you bring up a good point, which is something that hadn't occurred to me, which is that given the level that the vast majority of bands who perform at the Pitchfork Festival are at. Yeah. Yeah. They already have to have had those tours in place to get there. The festival show will be for the rest of the club tour. And so then suddenly the ecosystem kind of gets thrown off balance.

[00:10:06] And then, you know, then, you know, you know, things things feel a little bit dire. You know what I'm saying? Because you don't exactly know where the outlet is for this this stuff. You know, if you spoke before about the tough days of, you know, quote unquote slumming it on tour or something. But at least for us and for me, there was an ecosystem that existed for that music.

[00:10:33] It wasn't financially viable as a, you know, but it existed. You know, you found the house in the town that had shows. You played the show. People came out because it was the thing to do and you moved on. I don't know. I don't know how that how that would work now or if if if if that does exist for anybody, you know.

[00:11:01] What was the state of the D.C. I mean, hardcore. I think when I first started getting into it, it was into that world. Fugazi was just kind of starting out. It was after their first EP. So there was a lot of excitement about that band. There's a lot of excitement about it was kind of like the beginning of that wave of like it was Fugazi was like Nation of Ulysses was like a, you know, in eighth grade.

[00:11:27] I claimed we claimed our lunchroom as a for for the Nation of Ulysses because we were they were friends with them for their record store. It was that it was it was for me. It was a little bit pre nirvana. So it was still kind of an underground thing. And it was still that, you know, you could see shows in the shows in D.C. where a church in church basements.

[00:11:51] I mean, some of this stuff is just has become kind of lore of many documentaries and picture books. But it was certainly was a time of. Yeah, it was Nation of Ulysses, Slant 6, Bikini Kill, started to think. It was like this whole kind of new crop of D.C. bands that were starting that were had kind of happened in the post revolution summer world there. And certainly was exciting.

[00:12:21] It's funny because at that point you kind of got the sense as a kid there that you had missed it. You know, like everyone was like, oh, man, you didn't get to see Minor Threat. Jeez, what you missed? You didn't see Bad Brains. You missed it. You know, and then suddenly now you're like, I didn't miss anything. You know, I missed it. But I got to see my own crop of things that were interesting to me, you know, so. This gets us right back to the end of the conversation. But that's.

[00:12:49] That's how this romanticization works is you're always, you know, if if if you saw, you know, if you'd seen all the Minor Threat shows that, you know, maybe you'd be bummed that you didn't, you know, you weren't at like CBGBs and whatever year. I mean, it's always it's it's it's it's I was gonna say it's hard, but it's impossible to assess the kind of like there's a kind of a I guess the historical nature of any given.

[00:13:18] We went to see the Henry Rollins band play at the 930 the 930 Club at that point. The guitar player for the Henry Rollins band was guy Chris Haskett who had the Rollins band, I guess. This guy Chris Haskett who had gone to our high school was Georgetown Day School, which is like place where a lot of DC punks had gone. And I remember we went to meet them and he said, oh, you guys go to Georgetown? I want to come by the school tomorrow and see how it's doing and say hi to some old teachers and blah. This is 19, you know, 90, 19, something like that.

[00:13:46] And I remember he came and he saw, you know, a teacher there who had taught him who would also taught us. And I remember I was wearing a Minor Threat shirt and Chris says to the teacher, man, who would have thought that 10 years later people would still be talking about Minor Threat? But, and you know, now we're 40 years on and I feel like people are talking about Minor Threat almost more than ever, you know? So it was like this feeling of like, man, those, that, those weird little, little punks made it, you know?

[00:14:15] But then it was like, now it's, you know, literally 40 something years later and, and it's still going on. You know, I experienced a little bit of some of those, you know, I grew up in the, I grew up in the East Bay. So there was that punk scene happening around Gilman at the time. And then as I said, went to school in Santa Cruz and we had an, it was much smaller, but we had a nice little, little scene there.

[00:14:44] But like, again, with all of this time removed, like that. Yeah. Yeah. My wife grew up in the East Bay. Her high school band was on lookout. A special time. In Berkeley. She grew up in Berkeley. So, you know. Oh, where, where about?

[00:15:03] But, um, yeah, I think in DC it was, you know, I think that, um, I kind of didn't understand because like I said, like those were, like I went from being into like the Beatles and the Beach Boys just right into being punk. Like, like there's, uh, people make fun of me because there's these huge gaps in my classic rock, like in those years when you're supposed to be kind of into Led Zeppelin and, and, um, stuff like that. Like that, that stuff that I was like later, I had to be like, man, Led Zeppelin's kind of good.

[00:15:31] Cause I like went, started, I went right into punk and then, um, and I just thought it was, that's how it was in everyone. I thought in everyone's city, you know, I remember, you know, uh, repeater coming out, uh, by Fugazi. And we, we knew all those songs cause they'd been playing them live, you know? So we were like, Oh, I wonder which of the songs from the, that they haven't released yet are on this record. Oh, merchandise is on there. Oh, wow. That's good. That's cool.

[00:15:55] So it was a sense of like, you were seeing these bands kind of, I didn't re, but again, I didn't realize it until much later. Until much later, I was like, Oh man, I saw Fugazi, the X in no means no at a church. And that was as mind blowing as it was to me as a 14 year old, it was just mind blowing period.

[00:16:14] So there's a lot said there's about punk generally and, um, you know, how, when it comes along, suddenly it's making musical music accessible for, for a lot more people.

[00:16:36] But what you saw firsthand again, uh, specifically in that scene was that, that it was possible to do, to do that, to, to, to, to make music and to have music be your life. Like, and just as far as like, I, I got, I get the sense I, you know, it wasn't, I actually, I read a Kathleen Hannah's book recently and, you know, she talks a little bit about, about Ian.

[00:17:05] And it just, it just sounds like everybody, uh, supported each other. And if it was, I think so. And, you know, I frequently, generally competitive. Uh, you know, it's, it's interesting because, uh, I think that, you know, what I, what I, what I remember about it. And as I grew up into it too, it's like, it was a bunch of kind of, um, it allowed kind of weird individuals that had their own kind of worldview of things, you know, like, um,

[00:17:31] um, you know, Ian Sinonious or Christina Bellotti from Slant 6 or, you know, later Mick Barr, who was an incredible guitarist, uh, who was there and stuff like all these kind of like individual islands of people that were almost allowed to become themselves in this, in this place or whatever. Uh, I remember, you know, the, Ian McKay would always call punk the free space. You know what I mean?

[00:17:55] And I, I always took that to heart because it made me think, you know, in, in many ways, I still kind of identify first and foremost as a DC punk, because I think that's where I kind of got the idea of like,

[00:18:07] Oh, I want to make a acoustic record in Spanish. That sounds like Georgie Ben records off. I'll just figure it out. I don't have to go apprentice for 30 years. And, you know, uh, only for the first five years, you just clean the studio for the next five years. You just play the E string on the guitar. You know, I can just kind of like, uh,

[00:18:28] uh, futz around and see what I can come up with and, and, and, and, and, and be feel free to do that. You know, like the, and I think that that's very much that, that to me was, was kind of what I, what I took from it was like, I don't, I don't necessarily need any training or permission or anything. I just kind of have to, I'm, I'm allowed to do it too. Yeah. So.

[00:18:59] So how does one get from the DC? I talked to you a little bit about, it's funny cause studying the oboe at Wesleyan. It's a strange story, but so that same show where I talked about, where I met that Chris Haskett or whatever, we, we interviewed Rollins at that show for the school paper. And we were asking him just the most inane questions about his high school band and, and, you know, high school newspaper questions, you know, like, you know,

[00:19:29] when you said, you know, whatever, you're asking him high school, you know, that was awesome. You know what I mean? And, uh, yeah, is that true? And, uh, I remember he was in the back of his van. He was looking, he was like, is that true?

[00:19:44] While lifting, which was just like super intimidating, obviously. It's like that. Anyway. So halfway through the interview, Henry's like, look, stop asking me about these bands. Here's 10 records. You should go five records. You should go out and buy. And he says, you know, got it.

[00:20:06] If you can hear me, um, can you just try reloading and coming? Oh, sorry. There we go. Okay. You're back. Um, yeah. Last thing I got was, um, okay. We might actually, I'm going to turn my camera off. If you want to try that too, that might make it a little bit smoother. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So we, we, uh, in that same story, like I said, the same. So yeah, I, I guess just start over.

[00:20:30] We also interviewed, uh, the, uh, Rollins. Henry Rollins for the school newspaper. And he was in the back of his van, kind of lifting weights, fielding our inane, you know, ninth grader questions about, um, you know, when you said, when you sang the song girl problems, like, were you really having girl problems? Like stuff like that. And then he kind of stopped us in the middle. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. That's awesome. And he stopped us in the middle.

[00:20:56] Love you take is equal to the love you make. This stuff is great, but like, you need to, you need to like get into some other music and start to figure stuff out. And he gave us, he said like, you need to go out and get these records. And he said, you need to get the Shape of Jazz to come by Ornette Coleman, Funky People Part Two by James Brown, The Stooges' first record, Suicide's first record. And he just like listed these five records, which were not easy to find. Some of them were not easy to, like, I didn't find the Suicide record for years after that.

[00:21:25] But, but, so then, that ended up defining kind of the, the next couple years of my life when I got into Ornette Coleman and I got into, I sought them out. And that opened like a whole world of, like, kind of. You sought out to the best of your ability to sought out those five records.

[00:21:42] The stylistic part of punk rock. It opened up this whole world of kind of music, freak music, you know, that, you know, I remember when I went out and bought the Shape of Jazz to come and I was like, this is just incredible, you know, like it's cathartic and it's energetic and it's insane. And obviously, like, you know, and James Brown's record too, the Funky People Part Two record, which has a song called, like, you know, you can have Watergate, but give me some bucks and I'll be straight, you know, it's seven minutes long.

[00:22:12] And I remember just being like, this is insane, you know? And so then I, it was funny because there was a punk record store in Silver Spring called Vinyl Ink. And then across, like, a block away, there was another record store called Roadhouse Oldies. It was an African-American owned record store where, like, hip-hop producers would come shop there and dig in the crates and stuff. I kind of wandered in there one time and I said, you know, I'm looking for, that's where I got the James Brown record. And they're like, oh, you like this kind of music?

[00:22:41] And they were like, oh, you like this? Get, you know, listen to this Funkadelic record and, you know, listen to the Stevie Wonder record and stuff like that. So I started, like, it was through that, weirdly through that conversation, that weird kind of blip in the radar interview with Rollins. And then I started to get into, really into jazz and I started to get super into free jazz and I was already an oboe player, so I just started to get super into it. And then I got, I read that book Forces in Motion by Anthony Braxton.

[00:23:08] I said, this guy teaches at Wesleyan, I want to go study with him and see what it's all about. And then I went to, so I did that, you know? And so it was like this, it was this moment of realizing that maybe musically there was this kind of tradition of outsider or freak beat kind of music stuff that I needed to kind of get into or something like that.

[00:23:38] There was more to the world besides just, you know, hardcore, you know what I mean? What's interesting to me is, so the other records that you described on there are ones that I feel like you would have, you would have some context for, right? Like James Brown, everybody who grew up in America knows who he is and could probably name a couple of his songs.

[00:24:07] You know, the Stooges and Suicide are like, at very least, punk adjacent. But Ornette Coleman, you know, he didn't tell you to listen to like, you know, Kind of Blue or something, right? I mean, it's like, it's not the most difficult jazz or jazz record in the world, but, you know, it is or was avant-garde at the time. Well, you know, the first song on that record...

[00:24:36] Did that take a while for you to really kind of get hooked on that? I remember just hearing it, I mean, just melodically, it just kind of takes your breath away and then it kind of like melts into the free kind of craziness of what Ornette does. So that got me pretty quickly, you know? And then I remember quickly after that, I got, I ended up buying an Albert Isler record. And I remember...

[00:25:03] He's out there and I remember listening to Albert Isler and actually, I think Henry might have talked about Albert Isler. He was out there. Like Jay Leno, Dennis, you know, like something like that. But I remember listening to Albert Isler and thinking like, I just don't understand this. Like, this is just a mess. And then I remember one day putting it on and I fell asleep and I took an... I was asleep. This is in high school. I was taking a nap and I woke up just in the middle of this like, one of the most ecstatic parts of the record. And then suddenly it made sense.

[00:25:32] I was like, oh, this is just... This has that same energy, that same kind of cathartic energy that I've looked for in music, you know, in certain kinds of music and in punk music or whatever. And it's almost like... It just shook me by my... It was like having to be in that almost dream state. That's what it took me to kind of break it open for me. And then after that, I was just hooked.

[00:26:01] Like, I just loved it, you know? I feel like kind of under-discussed on-ramp. I'm just thinking about this because... I remember the first time I listened to Albert Eiler and on one of his records, I can't remember. He plays a standard, like a very well-known standard.

[00:26:28] And I think that that is... That's an on-ramp to the more difficult kinds of jazz that other sorts of music don't necessarily afford in the same way, right? I mean, like, you know, you can hear, like, My Favorite Things, but hear Coltrane deconstruct it. Yeah, I think so. And that's like a nice little, like, shortcut that you get into the music. There are certain links between the...

[00:26:54] You know, there was the L.A. Blues track at the end of Funhouse, which is just like, you know, such a free... It's a free track. It's just so... And it's clearly, to me, influenced by... You know, I mean, they got Steve McKay playing sax and stuff on it. It's like very kind of cathartic in that way. So I think that, you know...

[00:27:17] I think that the on-ramp is a slightly wider if you're already looking to kind of extreme music to kind of jar you out of whatever malaise you have in your life as a teenager. You know what I'm saying? It's more available to you in that way. You know, it's funny. I love the Minutemen quite a bit. My bandmate... Where did you land with the Minutemen?

[00:27:47] Who you would think. You know, you'd think people in Chick-fil-Chick love the Minutemen, but he doesn't get them. You know, I... You know, the Minutemen were a huge, huge deal for me. You know, huge deal. So, um... I suspect that they're kind of... Maybe even for Rollins specifically, being in Southern California, are part of that link. I think you're right.

[00:28:16] And also kind of grew... Punk and the experimentation of jazz. You know, the way the bass and the drums work together in that band and stuff. And the brittle guitar, kind of Jane Brown-y too, you know. So, yeah, I think definitely that was... That was... For them, that was probably a big deal, you know. You know, it was one of those like... My sister played the clarinet. She's a professional clarinet player, actually.

[00:28:45] And then I remember I was in the band and I was like, what about that one? And the guy was like, no one does that one. It's too hard. It sounds annoying. It's weird. And I was like, yeah, I want that one. You know? And then, you know, I kind of sometimes regretted it because, you know, there wasn't that much of a repertoire for like weird oboe. There was, you know... The guy plays oboe on a...

[00:29:13] Ken McIntyre, I think, plays oboe on a Cecil Taylor record. And there's some oboe, maybe John Gilmore or Marshall Allen, one of the two, and Sun Ra. And, you know, I always really loved the Roxy music, you know, had the oboe sometimes. So it pops up occasionally, you know? But there wasn't that much of a... There wasn't that much of a kind of a canon for like weird oboe playing, you know what I mean? So...

[00:29:42] But then, you know, when I was in school, I remember, you know, I ended up one day just having like a blow around session with Anthony Braxton. He was my teacher. And I remember being like, yeah, I don't know, oboe, blah, blah, blah. And he was like, nah, it's great. It's going to be great. You know, you've cornered the market, you know? Like, it's going to be awesome, you know? I was like, all right, let's do this, you know? So... Yeah. Yeah, I was.

[00:30:12] I was already... You were already a little player before. You know, I think... Then I took it more seriously in college and stuff like that. And, yeah. I mean, it's, you know... Does it lack versatility? Is that the problem? It's whiny. It's the duck in Peter on the Wolf. It's not like the most soulful.

[00:30:49] Clarinet's so weird because, you know, you got like Benny Goodman. But there are a lot of, I think, examples of... It hasn't, you know? ...dorky instruments that have subsequently become cool. And the oboe just hasn't quite cracked that. Yeah, obviously. Like the harp, right? Like jazz harp is amazing. I think, you know, my thought about the... The thing I think is kind of interesting about the oboe is it's part of a lineage of like double reed world instruments. You know, there's like the Chennai in India. There's like Chinese oboes. It's like...

[00:31:18] It definitely is like... It's a thing that's supposed to blare out a melody over everybody else in many cultures. You know what I'm saying? So I felt some like kinship to that. You know, I think if... The harp is cool because to me because it accompanies... It can accompany a voice or it can accompany... You know, it's almost like a piano or like a... It's a supporting instrument. I think the oboe is like a... It's meant to be like, listen to this melody over the din of the town square or whatever.

[00:31:50] So it cuts through. Exactly. And not always in the way that's the most pleasant to the ear, you know? It cuts through. There was no plan. But yeah, I mean, I went through... So the plan then at that point was to pursue... I was just like trying... The jazz oboe? You know, I really did. And then I started this band called El Guapo in college, which opened that up where I was like, well, maybe I can just start playing the oboe here, you know?

[00:32:19] And then when we graduated, we moved back to DC. And then that's when we got signed to Discord. And that's when we were really a part of... A more active part of what was happening in DC at that point. So then it was like... I think it's the only oboe ever on a Discord record. You know, I think it's also the only... I think we were one of the first drum machines on a Discord record.

[00:32:44] You know, we definitely like expanded a little bit of what sonically the label did. You know what I mean? Maybe to people's annoyance and indifference. But so, yeah. So then I kind of started to have the practice be more, you know, trying to combine everything and do everything together and that kind of thing. I'm not embarrassed to say I was looking through your Discogs. I recorded the last Q&I record, actually.

[00:33:11] And you played on the last Q&I record, is that right? Oh, you recorded it. Because to me, like, you know, they're a great example of Discord really... Yeah. Yeah, and that was our people. You know, it was us, Q&I, you... Embracing an entirely new direction. ...reunited recently and been very popular. That was kind of our little world on Discord at that point. And yeah, Q&I, you were really close friends of mine.

[00:33:39] And we toured together a lot. And then, yeah, on their last record... Yeah, me and... You know, me and another guy produced... Well, I don't know. They don't like to use that word. But we recorded it, you know. And Ian will be... Makai will be quick to tell you it's the one record he didn't work on. And it's the one that hasn't been reissued for lack of demand. But... That's a weird one to me.

[00:34:09] I... Because I was at their last show. In D.C. Well, yeah. Was it in New York? It was one of their last shows. The last show was at the Black House. We actually opened... I can't remember if they played the last show in New York or D.C. But... Um... Okay. Yeah, I saw... I... Hmm. Okay. Yeah, I saw them in whatever the New York venue was on that. Yeah. And it's surprising to me that they haven't... You know, I think they're... Really gotten a second wind in that way.

[00:34:38] That's why, you know, it seems like that's the way to... To get some purchase again these days. But, um... Yeah. Yeah. Sure. Yeah, I... I'm embarrassed to say that, uh... Prior to reading up on you, like, I... I didn't know Anthony Braxton at all. Um... Which is apparently a big blind spot in... In my musical... I... But he is, uh... Yeah.

[00:35:09] Just, like... I mean, I don't even know... I don't even know if you would call him, like, a jazz guy, really. Well, you know, it's funny that... Like, he was classical and... There's a book about some of his... I don't know. How would you describe his approach to music? It's just, like, really made its way around us and young people in D.C. The... Our... Our... Our group of people in D.C. Who... Who was into that stuff. Oh, hello. Uh, yeah, there's a book called Forces in Motion. You're breaking up on me again.

[00:35:37] It's like a tour diary about some of his... Yep, okay. Some of his, uh, tours in England in the 80s that really made its way around, like, us kind of... Our kind of forward... That's... Our kind of weirdo crew in D.C. Uh, and... And when I was in high school. And, you know, in it, you know, he presented, like, you know, he had been a chef hustler in Washington Square Park. And, and he, you know, he had... You know, his compositions were, like, drawings and stuff like that.

[00:36:07] Like, it was just stuff that you were like, what is happening here? You know? So, it was... And he's a real intellectual. Like, he... I think he really sees, uh, the connections between, you know, Stockhausen and Charles Mingus and, you know, all these kinds of varying people that he, that he, that he has an idea of how they connect in his brain and stuff. It's definitely kind of brainy and academic, which I think is a turnoff to some people.

[00:36:33] You know, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it, it works in the academy, I think. You know? Um, so I think that that, that's, that can be a real... It can limit its scope, I think. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. Yeah. Did, did he have any context for, for punk or hardcore or any of those kind of underground, like, rock-based musics that were happening? Well, it's funny, because I remember one of the first weeks I was there. Do you remember that band, God is My Co-Pilot?

[00:37:05] I don't, actually. They were kind of a no-wavy band in the 90s from New York, like a New York band from before, like, you know, um... Sure. The New York... Before Williamsburg. Before Williamsburg, yeah. Lower, still kind of a lower, anyway, they came, and I remember they came into class to give him a CD and stuff like that, and I remember he was like, yeah, I don't really understand this kind of music, but then his son, who's Ty Braxton, who's, who ended up being in battles in a lot of indie bands. Oh! Yeah, yeah. Oh!

[00:37:35] Sorry, I just had a moment. Yeah, yeah. So I think through his son, who we knew back then, too, he was in a, he was in kind of a grunge band. I mean, this is 1994, so he was in a grunge band. I think he was kind of like, yeah, my son's playing guitar in this kind of rock band. He was kind of like trying to, trying to get into it, you know what I mean? Trying to figure out, like, because he, and realizing that his music had reached into that world a little bit, you know?

[00:38:02] Yeah, I mean, even if you don't get it, that must be cool, realizing that you've had some influence on that. Yeah. What, uh, so what, at what point does El Guapo really kind of, I guess, fall apart? Well, we fell apart in, uh, I don't know the year, but it, you know, it kind of fell, we, we, we did a couple records on Discord, we did a couple, we had to change our name,

[00:38:28] we did a couple records on Touch and Go, uh, and then the Super System, and then at some point it just kind of fell apart, you know? So, um, and, uh, yeah, on that last tour when it was really falling apart, kind of on a whim, I bought this, like, little nylon string guitar. I'd gotten super into Brazilian music and, and I just started to write these little songs on the guitar that were kind of, like, unlike anything I'd ever done before.

[00:38:54] You know, like I said, like, I was like, oh, I, you know, I, I certainly don't have the sophistication to know, like, what the chords are and stuff, but I could just kind of pluck around and figure it out. And that's kind of when Las Palabras started, and like, as that was kind of sinking, you know? Uh, and, and then, and then I ended up joining Chick, Chick, Chick, and then kind of had a second wind in, in that world a little bit. I mean, that was a while ago now. Yeah, it was a long time ago.

[00:39:23] And it's really, it's, it's something that you've continued to pursue that entire time? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I did the first, I did a seven inch, I did a bunch of recordings, you know, a lot of it was done. It's very like, um, weirdly personal to me because it isn't Spanish, which is like my native language, but one that I don't speak, I speak with kind

[00:39:49] of like the sophistication of a fourth grader, because that's when I moved to, to, to, to DC. Uh, and so it was always something that I was kind of like, uh, and you know, there's a certain sense, I think, I'm, I don't know if, I'm sure you've heard this from people you've interviewed, but sometimes you'll make a song and you're like, man, I can't believe I made a song that sounds like that. Like, you know what I mean? Like, you know, like there, there's certain joy in making, like your band writes a song and you make a song, you

[00:40:16] know, it sounds like the Minutemen or it sounds like whatever. And you're like, this is great. Like you didn't think you would be capable of doing that? Yeah. I didn't think it was in me to make these kind of like guy on a stool with a nylon string guitar singing, singing in Spanish. Like I just, it was outside of what anything I had ever done. Like, you know, I, I'd always made either super weird music or like music

[00:40:39] with electronics or amplified, you know, it was like, it was just not in my, my, uh, it wasn't even in my kind of a list of things I was aspiring to, to do, but I started to do it. And it was a great, it was a great surprise to me. I was like, God, I didn't know I could, I didn't know this was in there. You know, like, so I, in that sense, it was like, I better pursue this, you know, like, cause I don't know where it's, I don't know

[00:41:07] what, what the deal is with this, with this stuff I'm making, you know? Uh, and so I've kept at it, you know, it's like, and it's easy cause it's just, it's, it's really just based around vocals and guitars. So it's like, anytime I have a guitar around, I can do it. And I, and I just kind of kept, kept at it like very slowly. You know what I mean? You feel like there was just some like osmosis there? I don't know. You know, I feel like, I feel like, you know, it's funny cause at the risk

[00:41:37] of getting a little woo woo, like the first guitar I had was my dad's, my mom's old guitar from the sixties, an old nylon string guitar. Certainly my dad had tried to show me how to play it a little bit. I hadn't really picked up too much on it or anything like that, but it was, it was very, it kind of felt a little bit like this is a path that I was kind of,

[00:42:01] that belongs to me. I didn't even know it was there for me to, to, to take does, if that makes any sense. And, uh, and that was meaningful to me. And it was also like meaningful. I found that writing lyrics in Spanish, when I felt like, first of all, I had a limited vocabulary, which I think is actually great for writing lyrics. Like the less, you know how to say that probably the better the lyrics are going to be. And then also I felt like it was, um,

[00:42:28] it just felt like very instinctive in a weird way, but also surprising. There's a brief mention of this, you know, we talked a little bit about, about being Jewish up top. Um, I'm, I'm Ashkenazi, which is, you know, what most people I think think about when they think about, um, Judaism. Um, I've always been in brisket and yeah, and all that stuff. Yeah. Yeah. You know, yeah. Um, but yeah, the Sephardic, I, I've always

[00:42:57] been, I've always been fascinated by that. Um, do you get a sense? I'm just going to sort of quote, I'm going to do what you did in high school and quote back to you, but, um, something along the lines of, of, um, of, I've always wondered how my faith fits in. Um, is, is it, does that play a role in the music that you're making now?

[00:43:21] I think so because I think that, you know, I come from my grandparents were not high school graduates. Some of them fairly religious. My parents were the first generation to go to college, to go to graduate school. They're dyed in the wool atheists, you know, like, uh, and so I've always kind of tried to find a space in between that and ask questions in a way because

[00:43:50] neither of them particularly makes feel satisfying to me, you know? And, um, and I think I've often found myself like surrounded by people that are very, um, either extremely kind of, uh, into esoteric things in a way that I don't, can't relate to or extremely kind of like, look, man, if I drop this glass, it's going to shatter, you know, like, I don't know what to tell you, you know, like, that's it, you know? And so I've always kind of like worked, tried to work

[00:44:20] I don't quite get the way. What do you, what do you mean by that? Like, um, what do you call it? Positivist. Like, look, like gravity, like, like, uh, like science, you know, like just pragmatic, pragmatic, you know, if, if the sun's going to come up tomorrow and, and, uh, yeah, I just remember someone telling me once, like, I don't know, all I can tell you is I know if I, if I drop this glass from a high enough, it's going to break, like nothing's going to like catch it and make it float in

[00:44:45] the air. Um, and I've always found myself kind of like, uh, in between that, you know what I mean? And, and I think that, you know, uh, in a way it took me approaching the songs in Spanish to be able to even feel comfortable dealing with that subject. Cause I think in English I'd be too embarrassed or too, like, I wouldn't know how to, how to, I wouldn't know how to approach it or something like

[00:45:11] that. I don't, I don't know. I don't know. So in a way it was like, that's the other funny thing that happened with, with this project was that the lyrics actually ended up becoming more, it was like, I allowed myself to write about things that I would be too embarrassed to write about in English or something like that. You're able to be earnest in a way that might come off as corny if you did it in English. Yeah, you know, and I've never, it's funny because like the label putting this record out

[00:45:39] is in Spain, there's a chance I might go over there to play. And I don't know what it would be like to play these songs for an audience that understood all the lyrics. Like, you know, like here people will be like, oh yeah, cool. And I'll look at like, sometimes I'll kind of explain like, this one's about this crazy or whatever, but there it's like, they can really get it. And I don't know if I'm going to be like, all right, you're about to hear some weird stuff. You sort of like backed into that kind of, um,

[00:46:08] I'll, sorry, outsider is probably too strong a word, but that, that kind of like that naivete that a lot of great artists have, have, you know, like I thinking of like, you know, Jonathan Richmond or like Daniel Johnston, you know, people who like really sort of transcend with that. And, tying, if you're right-handed, tying your right hand behind your back and, and teasing yourself to, teasing yourself to play guitar with the other one. It's...

[00:46:37] Exactly. That's exactly, that's a really good, I think that's a really good analogy. And I think that, you know, uh, I think there's a certain freedom in feeling like no one, that you can write anything and no one, maybe no one can, can understand it. You know what I'm saying? But that, that's not true. There's millions and millions of people that can understand that. But obviously there's excitement, this idea of going to Spain or, you know, I say, I assume it would be similar in like in Latin America too, but, um, is there a little bit of fear

[00:47:06] in that? Yeah, certainly. I mean, it's, it's, it's funny because like, you know, my parents, my family, my extended family, like they've, they've always kind of been like, wait, what do you do? You make me, like, I remember one time like Chick to Chick was playing at Lincoln Center. Uh, like we had gotten this very kind of really cool, like kind of prestigious concert at Lincoln Center. And, and we had asked that, that kind of let us put together a dream bill. We had asked Lenny Williams from Tower of Power to open. We played a song with him. It was like a really kind of special night.

[00:47:36] And I remember calling my mom, um, because, uh, or calling somebody as, you know, um, and saying, you know, we're playing at Lincoln Center, you know, and I think Zabar's was doing the catering. So I was like, check it out. Zabar's doing the catering, which is very New York evening, very New York and very Jewish, you know? And I remember her being like, how does that work? You playing at Lincoln Center? Do you, do you like leave a hat out? Do you, do you pass a hat

[00:48:00] around? You know? And, and I remember being like, she thought we were busking, you know what I mean? So it was like, and, and it's, it's not till this project that they've kind of been like, whoa, like they, they, they all really like it. Like they'll be called the, they'll be like texting me like, oh, I saw you got mentioned in this or whatever, you know, like it's almost like this is the first time, you know, they, they, they had no, they had no understanding of like punk rock or DIY or anything like that. They, they didn't, they were just like, this is not something for,

[00:48:30] for us, but with this project. So it's almost like it is, it almost, it feels doubly exposed, you know? I assume that they get what your sister, the clarinet player does. Exactly. Yeah. They have very clear understanding of that. But with me, they're just like, I'll be like, you want to come to the show? They'll be like, where? No. What time? What are you talking about? You know, like, no.