Meet the band: La Real Academia
Here at Eastwood we're always interested to hear from new bands who play our gear, so we had a quick chat with Carlos de Lima, the guitarist with La Real Academia, based in Houston, Texas.
We first came across La Real Academia via their Instagram, because they've been posting some great pics showing our guitars and, guess what, like many discerning players who choose Eastwood and Airline, they rock!
La Real Academia is a truly international musical project that has travelled the world: it was born in 2014 in a small city called Punto Fijo in Venezuela and after living in London for a while, they recorded a 4-song EP called 'Fundada en 1988' (founded in 1988). A couple of years later at the end of 2016 Raul Rodriguez joined this trip as current drummer and composer of the band. They're now based in Houston, Texas, but still very much concerned with the going ons in their homeland.
We've been recently hearing a lot from musicians in South American countries such as Brazil and Argentina showing interest in our guitars, so it's good to see Latin American bands playing our gear!
We had a chat with guitarist Carlos de Lima, to find out more about his band:
WHAT ARE YOUR MAIN INFLUENCES?
Genres such as Rock and Blues are part of our influence, artists like Howlin' Wolf, Muddy Waters, Son House, The Black Keys and The White Stripes play a fundamental part in our music, at the same time, we like the strength from Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin - they add something dark and aggressive to our compositions. Also, and one of the most important, Dermis Tatu, a 1990s Rock/Grunge power trio coming from the city of Caracas, the Venezuelan capital. This band only had the opportunity to publish one record, due to the death of the lead vocalist of the band, Cayayo Troconis, that was recorded in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
WHICH AIRLINE GUITARS DO YOU CURRENTLY USE?
At this moment I play the AWESOME Airline 59 Town & Country, I bought This guitar in the Denmark street in London. From the moment I saw its vintage cream color when I entered the store, there was no way to go back! The definition of its sound, the different modalities of use, make it an incredible guitar, without mentioning how elegant its appearance is, for me these guitars are purely "where vintage & beauty go hand-in-hand!"
I recently bought an Airline 59 3P DLX, I am also a great admirer of JB Hutto.
WHAT OTHER GEAR DO YOU USE?
One of my favorite tools is a Classic Electro Harmonix's Big Muff, the simple fact of being able to move from a soft verse to an explosive chorus is one of the things I enjoy most, I give a lot of use to the BOSS tremolo fx and also to the BOSS Super Shifter, shifting , Harmonies, detuning, and wild tremolo arm with this pedal, For amplification, Orange and Silvertone make the perfect combination for me.
WHAT ARE YOUR PLANS FOR THE NEAR FUTURE?
Since the middle of this year, we have been working on what will be our next album, to be called EL DESEO ("THE DESIRE"), a collection of songs where we express how cruel people can be with power and how they can terrorize innocent people by just moving their Fingers, a real situation that is traversing our country Venezuela.
HOW'S THE MUSIC SCENE IN HOUSTON, TX, IN YOUR VIEW?
This is a city where the oil industry predominates, an excessively large place but you can find artists of all kinds, and dare I say the music scene of this city is something exquisite... and being part of it is something incredible, the main street of downtown Houston is one of our favorite places, you can find treasures and characters along it.
This year we had the opportunity to give a show at the annual Pecan Street Festival in the city of Austin Tx, in two weeks we will be present at the Musikfest in the city of Pennsylvania and also share stage in the Uateke Rock Fest with greats of the Mexican scene like Kinky, Panteon Rococo and our Venezuelan brothers of Desorden Publico -undoubtedly a national pride ... we are looking forward to that!
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