From the outset, Greyhound Soul founding member Joe Peña, a local of Elgin, Texas, was immersed in music, serving figuratively as baptismal water.
Peña’s father, a pianist, and grandfather have been each skilled musicians.
“I grew up round music. My dad’s mates, training, understanding elements, smoking and consuming beer,” Peña recalled. “My grandfather owned a bar. They’d reside music all the time.”
As underaged youngsters, Peña and his brothers would hand around in their grandfather’s bar testing all the bands that got here in from Austin.
“We have been uncovered to the whole lot from conjunto and orquesta music to nation music, jazz, soul, blues and R&B.”
In fifth grade Peña took up the trumpet, with some reluctance. Quickly, an overabundance of trumpeters within the college band prompted a change to snare drum. He would finally rise to assert first chair on snare drum in his highschool marching band.
“There have been guitars in the home, too. Once I was a child my dad would present me blues riffs. He taught me the best way to play ‘La Malagueña’ [a Latin standard popularized in 1933 by Cuban composer Ernesto Lecuona, based on a folkloric Spanish tune.] All the stuff I realized again then I nonetheless bear in mind to this present day. It’s loopy, whenever you’re that younger and also you study one thing it actually sticks with you,” Peña mentioned with amazement.
Regardless of his father’s affect, on the time, Peña had different aspirations.
“I didn’t wish to be a musician. I needed to be like an architect or a cop. I needed to be one thing else,” he mentioned.
Music was a given. It crammed the home day in and day trip. His father’s rehearsals would typically run into the useless of evening, preserving Peña and his brothers up, regardless of them having to be up for varsity early within the morning.
In his adolescence, when Peña’s household left Texas for Arizona the music that when soundtracked his life took on a distinct that means.
“My mother and father divorced… And impulsively all the musical stuff was gone. There was no piano anymore. It was one thing that grew to become necessary to me. My dad’s path,” he informed the Tucson Sentinel.
That path was one Peña would quickly embrace wholeheartedly.
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In 1983, Peña relocated to Arizona along with his mom, step-father and siblings. A transfer that originally was devastating.
“Are you kidding me? There was no water, no grass, no bushes.”
Coming from a small city in Texas, Peña felt like he had landed on the darkish aspect of the moon.
He would go on to attend Sabino and Rincon excessive faculties.
Assembly kindred spirits — guitarist Larry Vance and bassist Jason Steed throughout a fortuitous encounter throughout teen evening on the Sundance West — helped ease his adjustment to the cruel terrain of the Sonoran Desert.
By the early Nineteen Nineties, Peña was drumming with completely different bands round city.
“Throughout the Good Fools (a preferred different/school rock band he performed in with Steed, Vance and frontman Robin Michael Johnson), I don’t know, one thing occurred throughout that point. I simply needed to get away from taking part in the drums.”
“I solely knew just a few chords then,” he mentioned. “However, I had some concepts for songs.”
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After discovering inspiration in some cryptic graffiti sprayed unexpectedly in pink upon a wall on the outdated Greyhound Bus depot downtown, the newly christened Greyhound Soul made their efficiency debut in 1994.
“It was at Jaime’s (a long-since defunct watering gap on North 4th Avenue) on March eleventh,” Peña recalled with spectacular accuracy. “I bear in mind making the flyers for that present.”
The gig went properly. Peña was happy. “Not less than I wasn’t lugging my drums round anymore,” he mentioned with amusing. However the lineup was not strong. Peña instinctively was in quest of one thing that he couldn’t but outline.
“Then got here alongside Duane and Alan. They have been taking part in on this actually, actually heavy band (progressive thrash/energy metalists Shok Hilary).”
“On the time, Alan (Anderson) was taking part in an enormous double bass package and had this actually lengthy hair. They have been monsters. Alan and Duane (Hollis) may play their asses off.”
Though incorporating heavy steel in with the sunbaked blues/rock sound Peña was creating wasn’t going to slot in… The depth, musical chops and fervour that Anderson and Hollis dropped at the band match like a glove.
“Not lengthy after, Jason Decorse got here as much as me to ask if I wanted a guitar participant, at a present we performed at The Rock.”
Additionally a local Texan, Decorse was taking part in in different rock outfit Propaganda Baby, on the time. His gritty blues-based guitar type blew Peña away.
“I went to see him play and thought… This man is insanely good. From the second once we sat on my again porch, the 2 of us with our guitars, we have been taking part in collectively ever since,” he mentioned.
Their connection transcends music. A bond that regardless of distance — Decorse now resides in San Diego along with his spouse and kids — stays robust at this time.
“It’s not about music. It’s about our roots in Texas, our fathers and the way we have been introduced up.” Peña mentioned. “I believe that connection is why we’re nonetheless collectively.”
As soon as the basic lineup was in place, issues coalesced quickly.
Peña obtained encouragement early on from Jakael Tristram — a famous studio engineer who had minimize his enamel on the legendary Report Plant in NYC — who would go onto produce/engineer “Freaks” (Purple Beard Data, 1996), Greyhound Soul’s debut album.
“I performed Jakael a tune,” Peña remembers. “He mentioned, ‘Man, we must always report this.’”
It was a prolific time. “The songs have been simply flowing.”
Quickly, they’d a supervisor, Dan Kennedy, who noticed the band’s potential. He had a imaginative and prescient: To ascertain a report label and recording studio to advertise native expertise. Greyhound Soul recorded their debut album for Redbeard Data in 1996.
Peña is grateful, acknowledging Kennedy’s function within the band’s growth.
“If it wasn’t for him, none of this might possible have occurred.”
As soon as “Freaks” was launched the whole lot gained momentum.
A South by Southwest showcase ensued, adopted by excursions by California, Texas and Europe.
“Everyone was all in. We didn’t have actual jobs or actual grownup lives. We have been simply dwelling for the music. It was a very powerful factor to all of us, and it lasted a very long time,” Peña mentioned.
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Greyhound Soul has launched six albums: “Freaks” (Redbeard Data, 1996), “Alma De Galgo” (808 Data, 2001), “Down” (808 Data, 2002), “Stay & Dusted Vol. 1” (Line Music, 2003), “Tonight And Each Evening” (Re-silence Data, 2007), and “Stay at Yucca Faucet Room” (Re-silence Data, 2008).
Over the course of 29 years, the lineup has seen a number of adjustments. Previous and revolving members embody: bassist Duane Hollis, drummers Alan Anderson, Winston Watson, Tommy Larkins, Bruce Halper and Rick Bailey; guitarists Larry Vance, Jason Decorse, Robin Michaeal Johnson and Jim Vancza; keyboardists Glen Corey and Bobby Hepworth; and lap metal participant Invoice Elm.
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In a universe dominated by chaos, most of the revolving forged members that comprise Greyhound Soul — with Peña being the one fixed — now have actual grownup lives that embody spouses, kids, jobs and obligations.
“Talking for all of us… It will likely be exhausting to sometime say ‘goodbye,’” he informed the Sentinel forward of gigs this weekend that mark the band’s anniversary.
After shut to 3 many years in existence the motivation to hold on is straightforward.
“As a result of it’s enjoyable,” Peña ethused. “At our exhibits individuals know the phrases to our songs and are singing alongside. That also blows me away.”
For a lot of followers Greyhound Soul will all the time be particular.
“There are folks that used to return see us play at Third Rock (an erstwhile venue in downtown Tucson the place the band minimize their enamel) means again when. Those that met there, fashioned relationships, and are nonetheless in relationships,” Peña mentioned. “That to me is particular, extra particular than anything.”
Greyhound Soul perdues.
“In any case is time.”