Getting to know the El Paso transplant
Out in the west Texas town of El Paso, plenty of bands have had their roots embedded deeply within this creative community. Holy Wave has made Chuco shine with their unique take on garage-psych. We had a chance to pick the brain of Ryan Fuson (who handles mostly guitar duties and vocals) on how the band got their start and sound.
FUSION – There are a lot of articles out there about the type of music Holy Wave creates music, but not any on how the band started, so how did Holy Wave come to be?
Ryan– we had all been in bands in El Paso since 2005 some of us were in a band called Bubu Benny and the Jets and some of the guys were in a band called Civil Friends and through playing shows we met each other and when those bands ended. Three dudes from Benny and the Jets, me, Dustin, and Kyle wanted to start another band and we wanted to start it with two dudes from civil friends Julian and Joey we were talking about it for years, call it a supergroup I guess. When Kyle moved to San Antonio to go to school there. The idea kind of sat there for a while then we just decided to move to Austin and start a band there. Austin was the next logical step it can be very difficult to find Traction in El Paso unfortunately. So we all move to Austin and within 6 months we did our first show as Holy Wave. Some people don’t know we are from El Paso since the band did originate in Austin but all the seeds and everything happened in El Paso.
In the beginning, was it hard getting used to the difference in audience from El Paso to Austin?
Ryan– OH YEAH. El Paso, it’s really fun to play shows in El Paso, I love the people and we have a lot of friends there whenever we come back. It feels great you know, the shows are great. Austin at first, we were newbies so really nobody cared about us at all, but on the same token we never used to get paid for shows in El Paso, and for the first time we were making money, and it was pretty crazy too. There would be like 5 people at our shows and we make 70 bucks, and we were like, “Yeah this is awesome.” It’s kind of difficult you know, don’t what kind of scene to jump into, and in El Paso, there’s like one scene and it doesn’t matter what kind of band you’re in. You generally would play shows at the same clubs with different sounding bands, and in Austin, there’s so many bands and clicks and scenes, and some venues only play certain kind of music. We didn’t know any of those rules, so we had to figure that out the hard way.
Do you remember the show where you looked out into the crowd and people were singing your songs with you, and how did you guys feel about that?
It was right after Relax came out in 2014 and we had just gotten back from Europe and we played a festival, and that was the first time I noticed that people knew the lyrics, and I was like, “Wow what a great feeling.”
You guys started off making music really young, how has it changed from when you started to now?
Relax is pretty much straight forward a garage-rock type album you know, 2 guitars and organ bass and drums. We did the same thing for Freaks of Nurture we didn’t really expand, we tried new things but we stuck to that same type of formation. But with Adult Fear it was the first time that we use synthesizers, we will use a song that had just a drum machine with no drums at all, and I think with every album unless you’re trying to not to change, you’re never going to really change. I don’t think any of our albums are a giant leap into one direction, we started wanting to write longer songs.
Holy Wave has been put into psych-pop genre, how do you guys identify Holy Wave?
I think we are experimental-pop I would say, maybe not experimental in the grand scheme of things; we’re not trying to do things that have never been done before. We are trying to experiment with the knowledge that we possess and I think we all love music, and we don’t want to make music that is really difficult to grab.
Can you tell Fusion magazine readers something that not too many people know about Holy Wave?
That’s a tough one, I don’t think a lot of people kind of understand the situation what it is to be in a band nowadays, it’s difficult to comprehend how the culture of the bands you come up with the friends you meet along the way. We never communicate the fact that despite retired at a show we’re not as socially active we don’t communicate the idea enough that we are always honored by any attention that we get we love the whole thing. We love meeting people on the road the friends we make.
We hope fans experienced Holy Wave at this year’s Neon Desert.