Indie rock band Los Shadows from San Diego, Calif. paid a visit to CWU last Thursday to headline the SWEECY Day concert. The band consists of Andy Saldana, Pepe Gonzalez, Xavier Prieto and Mark Bullard.
Their visit to CWU was a part of their “The Kontra Tour” which includes a stretch of Washington concerts. They started with performing at CWU, followed it up with a performance at Bearded Monkey Music and wrapped up their tour with a performance at the Funhouse in Seattle.
Gonzalez talked about his first time in Washington and how beautiful the Pacific Northwest is. “It’s so cool, I dig it here, I am contemplating moving here. I say that about everywhere we go though.”
The band used to be a part of a label until they eventually moved on to becoming independent. Los Shadows said that change has brought some benefits and some drawbacks.
“I think the number one benefit is travel. I grew up knowing that music wasn’t going to pay the bills, like I never thought I’d be rich and famous off of music, but I always told myself it would be nice if I could go to places I never thought I would. So far we have done two national tours and have gone as far as Connecticut, New York and I even got sick in Arkansas last year,” Prieto said.
“It is much harder for bands on the west coast because it’s so sparse. In order for us to drive up here it is 22 hours and then the same on the way back. So in order for us to drive here it is about a two week tour because that’s a lot of driving. In order to make up all that money, you’ve got to play shows along the way and sell merch along the way,” Prieto said. “For us to get two weeks off of work, we can maybe afford that like once a year … We eventually were just like, ‘what if we just book a flight and figure out how to go for a weekend?’ So we figured it out and now we’re here.”
Gonzalez touched on the difficulty of balancing the band and his own life. “The hardest part sometimes is setting these goals and reaching them, but you know in personal life certain things happen and you’ve got to be with your family but you also have your professional obligations and ultimately you’ve got to revert back to this which is hard but it’s fun.”
Los Shadows Washington debut was supposed to come much earlier than at SWEECY Day but due to the Covid pandemic, weather and other budgetary reasons, they had to cut their losses. “We’ve been trying to get back up here to the Pacific Northwest for like two or three years now … The furthest we have got to is Portland which was cool because we had not done that yet but we felt like we owed it to Seattle and Washington just because we missed out on coming here a couple times.”
