Art by Jose Berrio
We’re stoked to announce that our faves in Tall Juan hit us up to premiere the music video that’ll get everyone and their grandmas shimmying into May (even if you can’t believe a full dang month has already passed in The Quar). The band’s video for “Rocio” is a live session that feels like the bright, beachy tune that’s about to jumpstart the warm weather.
Known for his high-energy live shows, it truly feels like a blessing to have a live session from this Queens, NY band right now. While it feels like we’ll never be able to truly capture the feeling of live music virtually, (and we’ve made some great efforts before) watching Tall Juan jam in his living surrounded by all his friends comes darn pretty close. He also recorded the audio live on his 8 track cassette recorder. Like, we dare you not to smile and dance a little while watching this one. Buenos Aires-born frontguy Juan Zaballa exudes silliness and charm, and that’s the energy we all need right now—don’t you think?
WARNING: This video may potentially trigger seizures for people with photosensitive epilepsy.
A bit about the song and video:
“Rocio” is the first single off Tall Juan’s forthcoming album, Atlantico, due out May 11th [stay tuned ;)]. The song is definitely leaning more toward the self-descriptive sound of their 2019 release, Tall Juan Plays Cumbia, than their previous psych-rock/classic punk rock releases like Olden Goldies.
When we asked Juan about his personal style, he answered, “I started wearing more colorful clothes a while ago because I needed a change, since most of my life I wore black, and I’m sure because that’s attached to rock and roll. But for the past three years I’ve been connecting more with South American and African music as well, and that’s reflected in my music and my clothes.”
In the video, you’ll see the living room decorated with a variety of flags. Juan says, “There’s not really a significance, but I wanted to get all the flags of these countries that have political conflicts together. I think those are just symbols and the wars between all those countries are governmental, and not really coming from their people. We can all be together no problem.”
The live session features Nico Espinosa on drums, Carlos Cabrera on maracas and percussion, Mario Cianci on guitar, Ben Trimble on keys, Jose Berrio (who also made all the art for the Atlantico) on the djembe, and Pat Tintle AKA Psycho Pat on bass. Robert Anderson filmed it and Matthew Volz did the lights and edited the whole thing.
After filming, Juan says the crew “ate pizza and had some drinks and fun! It was a beautiful night.” And the official Allston Pudding recommendation after watching this video is to do the same!