Angela Maldonado

Pilar Diaz has the kind of style and talent that could make a person cry. As the former front-woman for the now disbanded Los Abandoned, Diaz would work a stage within an inch of its life. She delivered the band’s high energy bilingual pop-rock with such fervor that it’s no surprise she would wear leotards and old school Reeboks for shows.

Now as a solo artist, the Los Angeles-based Diaz still rocks the stage, though in a more layered, singer/songwriter way. Her self-titled album has Diaz mixing her ukulele with brass, strings and electronic elements.

Her recently released music video for “Ilegal en Estyle” has created a buzz leading up to her May 22 performance at Pachanga Fest in Austin. I sat down with Diaz to talk about her projects (past and present) and what she’s learned in between.

In addition to your music, what have you been working on?

Pilar: One of the things that I am doing, besides doing the solo project, is i’ve been working a lot writing music for film, documentaries and commercials. I’ve been working through a company that will call me up and go, “Hey can you demo, you know, a song? It’s for this product and they are kind of looking for this.” It’s really fun to do because as a musician, you work on your chops because it’s like, ‘“We need it in two days,” and you’re just like, “Oh, shit.” And you’re like, “Can I do it; can I do it?” You kind of get to detach. It’s not personal like making your own record or writing your own songs. So, it’s really fun because you get to see how your process is without being attached to it. I think that’s a really good exercise for writing.

How has it helped your own writing?

Pilar: It helps you get better at writing quicker and just kind of problem-solving. I come from a very conceptual background and visual background. I really enjoy it. I really enjoy writing for scenes to create a mood or just lift the mood for a scene. I love writing end credit songs. I love that. I don’t know if it’s from growing up in the ’80s.

What do you like about writing end-credit songs?

Pilar: You get to kind of wrap up the idea of the movie at the end. So, I love doing that. You know what’s been good about it, is that it helps me not to stay so attached to an idea. ‘Cause sometimes, even when you’re working on your own, you  have an idea and you’re just saying, “I’m going to make it work, I’m going to make it work.” And then you have to just let it go when it’s just not working. You know what I mean? You just can’t force it. You can work really hard at it, but there’s a difference between obviously working hard and forcing it.

Let’s talk about Los Abandoned (left). You initiated the break up back in 2008. What happened?

Pilar: It’s a very simple response, but it was a hard action to do. It’s always hard to end things. I think basically I was just looking to see what else I could do. I mean the thing that we all agreed on was that Los Abandoned, for us, was like rock ‘n’ roll high school. We learned everything, how the music business runs, how it is to be a band that tours all the time and goes to other countries and plays. But I think, basically, it was time for me to explore what I could do on my own. But I think creatively and just everything, I started to sense my muse going a different direction. It was time, but it was really heartbreaking and was really hard to do.

When did you start feeling that pull?

Pilar: It developed slowly. It was the first time that I kind of had the confidence to work on my own, really on my own, completely on my own  and write completely on my own, and also work with other writers as well. That was really fun. I wanted to explore writing with friends of mine that I had been wanting to work with for a long time and hadn’t had the chance to and finally I did.

Now that you’re on your own, what’s your muse?

Pilar: You know, my family is a big muse. My friends. And traveling, for me, is a huge muse because you can get away and experience something new.

What do you like best of working on your own?

Pilar: You really get to see your vision all the way through the end. Whereas in a democratic situation the way Los Abandoned was run, sometimes your vision or the other band members vision may not go all the way through because of the rest of the band isn’t feeling the song or it organically goes in another direction and then you’re like, “Okay, well if people are wanting to go that way, let’s just got that way.”

How did your solo career get off the ground?

Pilar: It was like perfect timing because I got a sponsorship to be a Visionary in Residence through a sponsorshop program for artists with the company Quiksilver. So it was like two months after the band had broken up that I applied for it and I auditioned for it and everything, and I got in. It was the perfect thing to have to set my foundation because we were all working in a communal work space, which was also an art gallery and event space and that was really great for me because I felt like I was back at CalArts. I was back in that art school vibe.

So for your self-titled album, who worked with you?

Pilar: While I was going to CalArts, I met a lot of musicians, a lot of writers and a lot of visual artists that also make music. I get along with visual artists a lot because I’m very conceptual, that’s the way I think of songs, too. I think of them in a conceptual way, I got to work with two of my friends that are visual artists, but they make amazing beats and music and they have a dub duo called Gold Cobra. Clay Morrow is one of them and he’s just genius, and he remixes a lot of music with a gameboy, so he writes music with a Gameboy.  To produce the album, I produced it with Gabrial McNair, who also went to CalArts. He went to CalArts before I did, but everybody kind of still keeps in touch and knows everybody. He’s been the keyboardist and trombonist for No Doubt since the beginning of time, since ‘93, since before they got big and he’s still with them. He also was on Gwen’s solo records and stuff so it was perfect timing, he was on break from the band and touring and we had always wanted to work together.

Now that you’ve taken that leap with your first album, is it easier to keep going?

Pilar: I hope so. Yeah, it is. You know that’s what happens with any artist, you grow.  Hopefully you grow into a big tree and you just keep growing up and out, right?

Where’s your tree, then?

Pilar: I think it’s almost spring. I love trees. I have books about trees. I’m such a dork; I love the trees in the Lord of the Rings. I love those trees, like that’s why it’s a good metaphor for an artist. The more you grow and the older the tree, it’s just wiser.

Do you feel wise?

Pilar: Not yet. [laughs] I feel wise on some things, you know? I’m still under construction.

Pilar Diaz will perform at Pachanga Fest in Austin on May 22. Watch her music video for “Ilegal en Estyle.”

Hanging out with Los Angeles’ La Santa Cecilia is the same as hanging out with a group of brothers and sisters.

The uni-named lead singer, Marisoul, sits comfortably on the couch at In the Flesh Tattoo Parlor on Sixth Street. The boys, accordionist Jose Carlos, bassist Alex Bendana, percussionist Miguel Ramirez and drummer Hugo Vargas, jostle each other to make room for guitarist Gloria Estrada.

The LA band’s mix of Pan-American-by-way-of-California music has been used in an independent feature film, a documentary and Showtime’s Emmy-award-winning program Weeds, but it’s their homespun style that endears fans.

Austin Vida’s Angela Maldonado sat down with La Santa Cecilia to talk about their music, the homemade CD covers for their six-track EP and what it means to let music “simmer.”

Why “La Santa Cecilia” for the name of your band?

Miguel: We just thought we wanted a really strong name to represent the faith that we have in music, so it’s not like a religious thing even though she is the patron saint of musicians in the Catholic religion. It’s more so we wanted something to represent our faith in music, you know, so it just made sense. And it’s a feminine name for a band that’s fronted by two girls, so it’s special in that way.

Marisoul: And also there are Santa Cecilias all over the world, like bandas Norteñas, cumbia bands, all over and especially in Mexico. You go to any pueblito anywhere and there is always a band that’s called La Santa Cecilia and we thought it’s a really nice thing to have a band that has the same name that reprents the pueblo, so we wanted to be La Santa Cecila de Los Angeles.

Miguel: Hey, Los Angeles is son pueblo tambien, eh? But people forget because it’s a huge city, but it’s originally a pueblo.

Your EP has been out for a while. What’s the story behind the recording?

Marisoul: We’ve been together for two years and a half years, so it was recorded two years ago. We had just started and we just wanted to record something because we wanted to get more gigs. We wanted to play and we just saved up our money and went to a studio, and a friend was doing an internship so we got to go into a really nice studio to record. And it’s just that little thing we recorded has been great to us; people have liked it. But we definitely want to record something of better quality; we want to show what we’re doing now. I feel like we’ve grown and we’ve meshed more as muscians together. Yeah, we’re happy about the EP but we’re so looking forward to recording a fuller album, hopefully soon.

Gloria: Well, we had different members initially, so it’s partly recorded with a couple different musicians. We were just getting a sense of who we were. Like Marisoul said, we weren’t quite gelled yet, some of us had just met. I had just met Marisoul and Miguel that summer. We started making music a couple of months after that, so it was a matter of getting to know each other and getting the feel of our dfiferent styles because we all have different specialties, I think, and you hear that. We’re all a different spice, so it took a while to get to know each other’s strengths…

Marisoul: To Simmer! [laughs]

Alex: We were watching a Michael Jackson documentary and he’s telling the musical director, “You got to let it simmer, man” and Marisoul’s like, “I’m going to use that!”

Marisoul: But it’s true right? It’s like que cosa rico, you know? Cuando haces un caldito, you just don’t put the stuff in and then it’s cooked. If it’s cooked great, you got to let it simmer til all the flavors come together.

What’s your process like?

Miguel: The process of writing our music? Well, it’s pretty challenging. We first come up with an idea, and we try incorporating all different styles or whatever works with that song. It’s kind of like Marisoul says, it’s like a soup; we throw all our influences in the bowl of soup and then we mix it.

La Santa Cecilia has been described as a having a “Pan American” sound. How would you describe the music?

Miguel: We’re very much a California, LA interpretation of a Pan American sound, right? So we’re interpreting these things, our influences or styles through a very like California/Southern California/Los Angeles lens, you know, like filters, because that’s where we grew up. We can’t deny our sound’s going to be natural from where we come from. So it’s not like a pure traditional samba or pure traditional Norteña or a pure traditional shuffle, jazzy song. It’s how we feel or how we interpret, naturally, our songs. So I guess it’s cool that it comes out that way.

What’s a “Southern California” lens?

Alex: It’s everything. You got Latinos from all over Central and South America. You got people from Europe and of African-American descent. You got all sorts of things, like a melting pot. We grew up with American music like The Doors, Red Hot Chili Peppers, a lot of mexican influences, mariachi, there are a lot of mariachi’s there, you know. There is just a melting pot of different types of music. You’re going to hear all that influence there. You’re going to hear that American influence with the Mexican. That’s kind of what our music represents there.

What track from the EP speaks to you?

Marisoul: From the CD, I love “Chicle” because it talks about esos consejos, the advice that my mom, grandma or my tias would give. And when we wrote that song, it was very much about how sometimes, when I was young, I’d be like “Mom, you don’t get me. Man, like my problems and my feelings have nothing to do with your consejos, dichos or none of that,” you know? I was going through my own thing, right? But I was wrong, I was so wrong and it wasn’t that she didn’t understand me, it’s just that I wasn’t understanding what those dichos meant. And with that advice, I think, it’s very important to keep in touch with our family, with our mothers, our fathers, our tios, our tias. They alway have something to say there’s always something to learn from your elders. I love that song because of that.

An interesting way you package your CDs is by having parties where fans can decorate the covers. How did that get started?

Marisoul: I’m like the Glue Gun Queen, I can glue anything, you know? We just wanted to paint them, and like one day I was like, “Guys, we should just paint the CD covers,” and they were like, “It’s going to take forever.”

Miguel: Which it does!

Marisoul: It does take forever, but I think it’s a beautiful way to do things different, you know? Getting a CD printed a thousand times or who knows how many times is just so generic. I dont’ think we’re generic with our music; we really try to detail and experiment with the sounds and things like that, that I think doing it handpainted is another way of expressing who we are and setting us apart from all the bands.

Miguel: Marisoul has always pushed it in the sense of saying the art, the visual artwork is just as important as the music. It was when records were huge in the ’60s and ’70s. The cover was huge, so it’s like taking it back to that; this is just as important than what’s inside, so it’s a big thing for her and she pushed that and it’s worked out really well.

Photos by Mari Hernandez for Austin Vida. Check out La Santa Cecilia online: www.myspace.com/lasantacecilia

Ray Benson, of Asleep at the Wheel fame, said it best: “I think the lesson here is don’t try to stop a Tornado.”

And with the release of the new Texas Tornado album, Está Bueno, it seems even the deaths of Tornado members Freddy Fender and Doug Sahm couldn’t stop them.

Released on Benson’s label, Bismeaux Records, it’s the legendary group’s first studio album in a decade and features fresh tracks, including the last five songs Fender wrote before his death.

Shawn Sahm, son of Doug, headed the project as producer and legacy protector. Shawn brought together Augie Meyers and Flaco Jiménez, as well as original backing musicians Louie Ortega on second guitar, Speedy Sparks on bass and Ernie Durawa on drums.

“This record is a great example of the guys trusting me to just come in here and do it,” Sahm said at a press conference hosted at ME Television studios. “This is where I feel the best, playing the style of music that I played with my dad. Obviously, with everything else, I kind of have to think about playing; this stuff is from the heart.”

Since Sahm was 13, he’s played with his father in the Sir Douglas Quintet. Sahm says he and his father collaborated so well, they called it ‘eyeball to eyeball’ and they’d call each other wherever they were to let each other know about having a musical breakthrough.

The record features a song from the senior Sahm, “Girl Going Nowhere.” When Doug passed away, Shawn cataloged his father’s work, hoping to find the song recorded.

“Before pop passed away, he was going through a resurgence of being very prolific, writing a lot and really working on his songwriting and paying attention to detail. It’s one of those songs that I always thought was one of the last great Dad originals, and people really deserve to hear it.”

Of the original members, Flaco Jiménez (pictured right; photo by Mari Hernandez) says getting in the studio again felt natural.

“Of course we don’t have any problems ’cause we’ve played for years and years,” says Jiménez. “It’s very simple to put the puzzle together. We got the same vibes as when Freddy and Doug were alive. In my opinion, I feel the same vibes and groove as when the guys were around. So now we did this record, I feel like Doug is here and Freddy’s here with us. We’ve never lost that punch or feel of the Tornados; we’re still burning.”

Fender was in the studio at the beginning of the project and Sahm was able to get a lot of takes that helped in the making of the album.

“Freddy was there and he was very into it; he was present and kickin’ butt,” Sahm says.

The track “If I Could Only” came out of those final requests from Sahm and it’s a classic Freddy Fender swamp-pop ballad, though Sahm recalls how Fender would want to change it up.

“Freddy always pulled me aside and would play me these artists that were very modern and very different and I just kind of said, ‘Yeah, Freddy, that’s all great. Whatever you want. But in my opinion, these people are probably singing because of you, bud. I don’t think you should sound like them because they influence you; let’s just be the best Freddy Fender you could be.’ Man, he loved that kind of stuff.”

As far as live shows go, the Tornados are playing live with replacement singers. But to be clear, it’s not a matter of ‘replacing’ Fender and Doug Sahm, says Shawn.

“Here’s the cool thing,” Sahm says. “We’re not trying to pull the wool over anybody’s eyes. Everybody knows Freddy and Dad aren’t here. We’re presenting the show the way we feel people want to see it, and it’s a celebratory thing. We’re not trying to say we’re moving on without Doug and Freddy—you don’t replace Doug Sahm and Freddy Fender; you celebrate them.”

From childhood friends swapping baseball cards to playing in the Sir Douglas Quintet to winning a grammy for that first Texas Tornados album in 1990, Meyers was a lifelong friend of Doug Sahm.

“We still do what we do,” says Meyers. “Doug’s gone and I miss him everyday, but Shawn—when we’re on stage and I close my eyes and Shawn’s singing a song I think it’s Doug and my hair on my neck rises up. Shawn’s like a son to me.”

As far as what Doug would think of the album, his son would know best.

“I think he would love it,” says Shawn. “Straight up, no BS, I think he would love the songs—he would love the trip. And honestly, if I felt like we were doing anything he wouldn’t approve of, we wouldn’t be doing it. I think he’d be behind us 110 percent. It’s all from the heart.”

Texas Tornados performed at Waterloo Records recently. View our photos, taken by Ajay Miranda, below.

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