ART OF THE IMPROV

Interview With Red Roulette

Garden Grove

November 5, 2018

GARDEN GROVE – He almost lost his job. Well, let’s just say his employment status is up in the air.

“I was supposed to work today and no one would fucking cover me. I was like, I’ll get a new job so I lost my job for the band,” said a sheepish Danny Rico, one of three guitarists for Santa Ana band Red Roulette. “I was there for a month, but I’m broke as fuck. I’ll figure it out.”

Rico, along with the rest of his band mates – singer and guitarist Brandon Mazon, guitarist Chris Munoz, drummer Yoshi Garcia and bassist Irvin Martinez – are sitting just outside the Garden Grove Amphitheatre. It’s days before Halloween at the FYGGY Fest and they’ve just finished their set.

“That’s dedication to play the gig,” Munoz said of Rico’s decision.

The five are in agreement the band comes first and say it’s any means necessary to get there when it comes to making a gig or just playing. Garcia didn’t even own a drum set for the first three months of the band’s existence. Instead, he’d play drums via an app on his phone that was connected to an amp. Luck was on their side when someone from Guitar Center ended up giving him some drums a week before their first show.

“There’s always a way,” Munoz said. “Where there’s a will, there’s a way.”

“There’s always going to be shit that pops up,” Rico added.

Red Roulette, at just about 10 months old now, is best described by its members as experimental punk rock – a kind of proliferation of noise rooted in all forms of good music. When experimental is tacked onto anything, it usually elicits eye rolls and automatic assumptions of something perhaps hippy dippy. In the case of Red Roulette – which gets its name from the game and the idea of taking their shot – the label experimental punk would seem oxymoronic for a genre rooted in brevity, where even two minutes is considered one-minute too long.

Instead, Red Roulette is the culmination of five minds unencumbered by the genre – or any genre for that matter – and history, definitions or rules. They apply a myriad of influences – from the Velvet Underground to Black Sabbath and Black Flag, along with the blues and folk. Their songs, some of which are instrumental, tend to last several minutes with “Waiting” topping out at over seven minutes.

“That’s what I love,” Rico said. “When music can transcend boundaries that people make, you know? When you’re just living a lifestyle. I started playing every day just to play so I’m not held back by the instrument anymore. It’s spiritual.”

“I wanted to do something heavier and with more meaning to it, while being real experimental with noises,” Mazon said of the band’s impetus. 

“Our method, we just go with how we’re feeling. It’s an energy-type thing,” Rico said of their process and what results. “We have a very free form, like improv side. We just feel it out. It’s very in the moment sometimes.”

“It’s intense,” Mazon went on to say. “Bringing that intensity from punk and also the do-it-yourself [ethos]. We do everything ourselves most of the time. We book our own shows. We make our own merch and we put out our own music.”

Rico has been making art prints that were originally going to be sold at shows, but instead they’re handing them out for free. They’re currently trying to work out a tour for the summer that would take them to Oregon. They’re also in the midst of recording a full-length album expected out some time next year, which they’ve agreed has been arduous.

“It’s fun at times,” Munoz said. “But then it goes back to being stressful.”

The full-length follows an EP and the “Waiting” single that they’ve so far released via their own label FEED/back, recorded in Martinez’s garage and Mazon’s living room. Their release cadence has been just as busy as their show schedules, having played in their hometown Orange County and driving as far as Victorville, La Puente, Moorpark and Stanton.

“There’s a lot of bands that wait a year, then they release something,” Mazon said. “We don’t really care. If we have music, we release it. There was an artist and he said some bands think they can afford to not release music every year just because they think it looks better like it makes it seem like they work more. In reality, it’s all the same shit. And he said if you’re actually smart with it, you’d know you don’t really have time to wait a whole year to release it. If you have it, release it. It’s a work ethic. A punk work ethic. Don’t stop.”

This mentality isn’t so much driven by a need to remain relevant or in front of people either, Mazon said.

“The way I see it, I’m putting out a message and it’s up to them to interpret it,” he said. “You can’t do things just because people are going to want you to do them. Just do what you want, because the moment you start doing what others expect of you, then there’s no point to it. You’re doing it for them and not yourself. That’s the way we see it. That’s our work ethic. We just make a lot of music – a lot of different sounding music.”

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Music: Spotify

Instagram: @redrouletteband