UNLOCO
Band Members
Joey Duenas - vocals
Brian Arthur - guitars
Victor Escareno - bass
Peter Navarrete - drums
official site
MySpace
Albums
Apr 25, 2000 Useless Captiva Mar 20, 2001 Healing Maverick Mar 11, 2003 Becoming i Maverick
This is the story of a band that beat the odds. A band that blasted
out of Austin just one year ago on the force of its debut album … and
ran face-first into a wall. That's all history now. In the end, what
we're left with is the story of a band that got a second chance and
made it work. This is the story of Unloco, a band reborn and triumphant
on Becoming I. For Unloco lead singer Joey Duenas, 2001 was probably
the worst year of his life. He was depressed. His romantic life was
unraveling. His voice -- ordinarily terrifying in its power and
intensity onstage -- was falling apart beneath clouds of cigarette
smoke and a stream of Jack Daniels. Most distressing was the letdown
that followed the release that year of Healing, the band's first album.
Dark and aggressive, it captured much of the intensity that had
established Unloco as hometown favorites among Austin's heavy music
community. Even so, Healing wasn't the smash that the band -- and the
label -- had anticipated. A tour was set up in hopes that Unloco's
explosive live shows would build the album's momentum. But as they were
preparing for the road, another crisis erupted when Bryan Arthur
suddenly left the group to take over the guitarist gig with Goldfinger.
Moving quickly to fill the vacancy, the band connected with Marc
Serrano, a young veteran of the Dallas music scene who was having
second thoughts about the band he was working with at the time. The
three members of Unloco drove north to hear Serrano at a local club.
They were not disappointed. In fact, they invited him then and there to
hang with them for a week in Austin, rehearse a bit, and see how things
felt. The combination clicked immediately. Right after his arrival,
Marc and his new bandmates took off on their tour. Slugging it out on
stages for more than eight months, they deepened their sound and
heightened their energy night after night. For this reason, when they
received word from Maverick that they had to head back home to crank
out a new album, they were more musically ready to be tested than
they'd ever been. Still, it was no easy thing to be told, in effect,
that this album would be their do-or-die project. They all knew what
was on the line as they gathered back in Austin. From September through November last year they wrote new
material -- 14 songs in September alone. These were demoed in November
and December, then delivered personally by Duenas to Maverick in L.A.
"I was like, 'Here, take this. I'm sick of it all.' The next day they
were like, 'When can we get you into the studio?' They were just on
it," the singer says, snapping his fingers. Purely in sonic terms,
Becoming I is a revelation. Working closely with producer Mudrock
(Godsmack, Powerman 5000, 3rd Strike), Unloco examined their own
assumptions about themselves and explored possibilities they hadn't
considered before. "I remember sitting with Mudrock in Dallas one
night," Duenas says. "We were talking about where I wanted to go with the sound on
this record, and he said, 'Well, heavy is good, but who are you to
judge your own band and say you can only be heavy? I think you have so
many different sounds in you, and I want to bring them out.' That's
what I love about Mudrock: He has great ears and great ideas, and he's
a great friend." More focused, more accessible, harder hitting, and
softened at times by moments of unexpected reflection, Becoming I
fulfills the band's promise of poetic candor and riveting performance.
There are songs so personal that Duenas had to be persuaded to present
them in public ("Texas"), songs that speak to the growing legions of
fans who see in Unloco a mirror of their own fears and hopes ("Empty"),
songs that are without exception honest, no matter what the cost of
honesty might be.
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