In a past time, you may have heard Aaron Oropeza blithely serenading your aperitifs at Truckee Tavern or telling pointless jokes at a local open mic. For years, he was a Lake Tahoe fixture, often seen walking downtown streets with his trademark curls, beatific grin and acoustic guitar on his back.
But under the surface, it wasn’t all wines and roses.
The two homemade LPs released in November represent some of the most creative and innovatively produced music to ever come out of the Tahoe Sierra.
Upon returning from a raucous 2017 European tour with indie rock darlings Easy Giant, life began to turn dark.
“That’s when everything came to a head and I realized I had a problem,” he says. “All I would do was sit in my room by myself and drink. When you’re that deep down, you can’t see anything else.”
Battling a growing addiction to alcohol, Oropeza split for Portland, Ore., and the support of his loving sister. More than once, he found himself in an emergency room and began to seek professional help. He moved home to Reno to stay with family and get clean.
“Sobriety is always a struggle,” says the soft-spoken artist. “It’s not just one day you’re better. It’s crazy how much making music helps me stay focused and have something to look forward to.”
Living in isolation, the typically prolific composer didn’t write a song for 12 months; until he penned “Year of Silence.”
“The life I used to know completely went away,” he says. “Everything was gone … And I realized: in silence, there are answers.”
It’s the best song on “Kid Sister Blue,” an imaginative amalgam of folky synth pop recalling the curious sensitivity of Yo La Tengo and Dr. Dog. It’s Beach Boys “Pet Sounds” meets Of Montreal’s “The Sunlandic Twins” through the eyes of an idiosyncratic Mexican-American poet.
It’s also the companion album to the beautifully inventive “Say Hello Sad Pretty Pretty” where Oropeza’s distinctive approach to songcraft shines on impressionistic single, “Learned in a Love Song.”
Like eccentric author William S. Burroughs, Oropeza writes a poem, then proceeds to cut up the lines and rearrange them in random order.
“It’s a collage,” he says. “If you’re writing truth, you don’t get to manipulate it. Truth gets to be in the order it wants to be.”
Together, the two homemade LPs released in November represent some of the most creative and innovatively produced music to ever come out of the Tahoe Sierra.
Six Albums in Six Months
Nowadays, Oropeza is anything but silent. A prolific string of recordings began in July with “Useless Doves & Tangled Daisies,” a tender compilation of older folk songs.
“I kept waiting for somebody to give me the OK to do something,” he says. “I just needed to take hold and focus. Maybe it won’t be what I dreamed of, but it will be something. If you are going to go out, it’s nice to leave something behind.”
In September, he wrote and recorded “Electric She,” a tongue-in-cheek British trip-hop album reminiscent of The Streets and Jimothy Lacoste paired with a waggish dose of Ali G.
Cockney accent and all, Oropeza drops absurd lines such as, “When life gives you lemons make orange juice/What you talking ‘bout Willis, is your first name Bruce?” before mixing in samples of the Aflac goose.
“I used to take myself a lot more seriously,” he says. “I’ve been humbled … Now all I can do is laugh and see myself as this silly person. I’m a lot more free than I used to be.”
October saw the release of Halloween album “Phantasmagoria FM.” Like the soundtrack to an 80s John Carpenter film, it lucidly paints bizarre nightmares from the mind of an immigrant child.
“In Mexican culture, there’s just a lot more talk of death and ghosts,” he says. “Every time I crossed the border, my cousins would scare the shit out of me.”
In December, Oropeza released his sixth LP of the year, a humorous Christmas album tentatively titled “Hark! The Lonesome Carols of Hattie Plum” followed up by brilliant French emo EP, “Elle Ectrique.” At this point, he is writing and recording an entire album in a week, playing all the instruments himself.
“I work a lot better with time limits,” he says in the understatement of the year. “All I really need to do is focus. When you put your head down, it just comes. The stuff that I’m really proud of I’m taking my time with right now. I’ve got about 15 years’ worth of songs. So, don’t be surprised to have a lot more coming from me. I’m more inspired now than in a long time.” | aaronoropeza.bandcamp.com
