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Question and answer with the Truly Lover Trio Interview with Marcel Riesco Q: Marcel, where do you live now? A: I live in Hollywood, California. Right where they make the movies!...(laughs) Q: were you born there? A: Oh, no, I was born in Uruguay, South America and lived there until I was 18 years old. Q: so when did you first come to the USA then? A: Let's see, first time was in 1996 for the Rockabilly Rebel Weekend in Indianapolis and that was an experience, so I stayed for a bit more playing and touring. I seem to remember it as a struggle, maybe because I was very young and didn't know anybody. Moved out here to Los Angeles back in 2002, and I didn't know anybody either so I basically had to start from zero again. Q: how long you've been playing for? A: Well, when I was very little I used to fool around with a tennis racket in front of the mirror! And my house was always full of music. Divorced parents, but my Dad and my Mom loved listening to good music, so I grew up with it. My Dad plays guitar, and he taught me the basic chords when I was about 11 or 12. I didn't have a guitar then, so I used his. Then I got a guitar, it was a big acoustic guitar but it didn't have strings, so I used to put fishing strings on it and it didn't sound very good, but I just wanted to play it so bad. So I finally saved up some money and got guitar strings, and then all those blisters started coming. I would put on a tape and play and sing along for hours on end, I wanted to be a performer from early age. And I was a dreamer for sure, still am, but dreams come true, you know? Q: what made you start singing and performing? A: I just wanted to be up on stage, and I told my Mom that, so I kept working on it. Singing came naturally. I would just sit around and play the 4 chords I knew and try them out with the songs I liked. I would just strum and sing and after a while things got better, but it all happened very fast. Q: so, when did you form your first band? A: In High School. I became friends with this guy who also played guitar and I asked him if he wanted to be in my group although I really didn't have one. But we got together and tried out some songs. It was a guitar duo for a while and I think we only had 3 or 4 songs altogether, one or two of them were mine. By then I had an electric guitar, and he had an acoustic guitar so it was a nice combination. I still have some of those recordings I believe. Then we brought in a drummer, but we didn't have a bass player and we didn't care at all. We got on a few contests and school things and we had a lot of fun. I met this other fellow a few months later and he also played guitar and I started playing with him and we found another drummer who didn't have a drum set but was eager to play, and a bass player. But I had to teach him how to play bass. So things were real hectic a real adventure, and we were all starting and trying to figure out how all this band thing worked. It was a very intense learning process for me, and it obviously was a necessity for me to go through all that fighting and experimenting. Q: did you always write songs? A: Yes, and that is a very complex development that you have to go through to find your own style of writing. It took me years to understand this and to realize that it is true, and that writing is a alone kind of thing. For me it is anyways. So, for years I didn't show my work to anybody. Q: how long you've had this trio for? A: For a while I had a 4-piece band where I had a lead guitar player. But he wasn't playing the way I wanted him to play so the best way to solve this problem was to do the lead myself. I had been teaching myself for a couple of years and listening to records and things to figure out how the riffs were and the technique was. I took a couple of guitar classes that put me on the right track too, but I did pretty much all the learning on my own. So, then we became a 3-piece band and things got real good. This was back in 1993. The trio became tighter and we recorded a few demos and started getting a few gigs here and there. Playing live really helped us out. That makes your musicianship, stage presence and your playing in general stronger. We would go on at about midnight and play all night till about 4 am. That was tough but very productive. We became real busy and quite popular down there, appearing on TV shows and things like that. Q: we notice something different with the way you write songs now. Tell us about that. A: Well, I wrote in a very standard way for a while. But see, it is a process. Now, I just write songs they way they come out. I don't sit around and say, "ok, lets write a verse-chorus-bridge-chorus song". I just write it. And some songs have weird structures, but that's very interesting for me. The melody usually comes first, and if it stays with me then I know it's worth it. If you have to fight for the song to come out then it probably wont be that good, you know? I guess it is the mixture of influences and personal taste that really come across when I write. Q: do I hear a Roy Orbison resemblance there? A: I'm pretty sure you do...(laughs) Q: did you take singing lessons? A: No. Q: do you get compliments about your voice? A: yes, and that makes me feel very happy. Q: what are your influences and how do you think those influences affect your work? A: They do affect it of course. I've been a Roy Orbison fanatic since about 1988 and really studied his singing style, how he could do incredible things and generate an incredible sound without barely opening his mouth. A singing teacher would beat you with a stick upside the head for doing this.....but Roy was something else. And he was a heavy smoker you know?. His voice was a special gift and I totally learned from him. Roy was Elvis Presley's favorite singer, and I love Elvis too. He was just marvelous! I listened to a lot of Carl Perkins and all the SUN Records stuff, and some of the other Rock and Roll greats like Chuck Berry. He's very unique. He's like a black country singer. But I don't limit myself to that. I also love The Beatles, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Tom Petty, some 80s stuff and some bands that are playing now. Q: how do you describe your sound? A: It is a pretty powerful sound now. My guitar playing is a bit different and maybe a little heavier than other players in the scene. Also, what makes a difference is that being a 3-piece band I do all the singing and lead guitar, and rhythm guitar, and there are not many bands that do that. I use a lot of the bass strings on the guitar also. The guys that are playing with me know are real good. The drummer Bobby Garcia is formally trained to be good, so he is. Santiago Graciano plays a fast stand-up bass and he is a wild player. People go wild when he stands up on top of the bass!! But the style is basically a mixture of my past, the present, my influences. Sound is rockin'. Q: you play around town quite a bit? A: Oh yes. I'm happy about that. And the crowd loves it. We don't limit ourselves to the Rockabilly clubs but we play all over town, and out of town, you know? Q: your show is wild! A: do you think so?....(laughs) Q: Yes, so, is this your first record? A: Yeah, I'm very proud of that. We had a 45rpm EP out in about 1998. But yes, this is our first full length CD. Q: how did you come across El Toro Records? A: Carlos Dias heard a few of our tracks and liked the stuff and asked us if we wanted to put out a record on his label. We went back into the studio and recorded some more tracks and he loved those too. Also, there is something special about El Toro that I love, something mystic. I'm a Taurus and Toro means bull in Spanish and everything fits just perfectly. It's amazing how life can be so strange. I was glad to do the record for El Toro because they have a good reputation, and I think we do too, so I'm sure it's going to work out great. Q: where and when was this CD recorded? A: We recorded a bunch of tracks at Omar Romero's house down in San Diego, California. He's got a little studio there and he's a great friend of mine so he helped us record the tracks. He also played in a couple of them. We used 3 tracks out of like 14 we recorded at his studio. This was November 2003. We also used a studio downtown LA and you have to go through some rough parts of town to get there, but it is a cool place. We did a few recording sessions there. We also ended up using a couple of older tracks recorded back in 2002, but they are great original tunes and I wanted to use them. They needed to be on the CD. Q how did you record? A: what do you mean? Q: what methods did you use? A: Let's see, the San Diego recordings were 100% live in the studio and the room was so small it was like a closet. We used a little 4 track recorder and we got an amazing sound out of that thing. I was singing without headphones and no monitors so I couldn't hear myself at all, and the boys couldn't hear myself either so we just played it by heart. It came out great. We miked the stand-up bass, the drums and my amp, and one more mike for my vocals. That's it. I remixed it and mastered it. The other recordings downtown LA were done digitally into a 16 track board and we did some overdubbing. Sound is very modern and fresh on those recordings, the studio is located in this old brick building and that helps a lot. I am very satisfied with the sound. It is just a killer sound. Q: how do you think this is going to change your career? A: With the CD out on the street? Exposure will be tremendously bigger, and people will be able to take the CD home and listen to it at home. Before they could only hear us live, now is different and I'm happy about that. It is also a "proof". It is a milestone in my career and a childish dream come true. We fought for this for a long time and it finally happened. Q: you played Viva Las Vegas this year, the biggest Rockabilly Festival in the world, how did that come about? A: Nobody got me that gig. I had to wait a couple of years and show the promoter and the fans that we were something serious and something different and that we would last through the years. We did the "new band" showcase though, but I don't mind. It turned out perfectly for the band and we had a chance to show that we deserved it. Q: how can we get your record? A: Through El Toro at www.eltororecords.com, Hepcat Records at www.hepcatrecords.com, other on-line stores, and pretty much every record store that carries good music will have it in stock. We'll probably have some copies at our shows too. Q: hope to see you in Europe soon and we wish you all the best. A: You will see us there very soon. Thank you very much. Check out the artist's website: http://www.eltororecords.com Track List: 1. Hey Little Girl! 2. Blueberry Eyes 3. Mean Little Mama 4. Forever Is Not For Us 5. Lonely Blue Dreams 6. Tu No Eres Para Mi 7. My Laurie 8. Cast Iron Arm 9. King of Hearts 10. Honey Hush 11. Sleepless Night 12. Surfrider 13. Vamos a Rockear 14. Blueberry Eyes (Original Demo) 15. Surfrider (Original Demo) Suggested CDs:Other Genres:
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