Merseyside is revered for its music and in recent years we’ve seen a real surge in quality bands coming through. La Vida Liverpool Bands is a series that brings you the best local bands — from ones you may know to up and coming ones to watch out for. If you’re looking to discover a new band and find out about more about them such as their biography, music videos and gig details, then check out La Vida Liverpool Bands as we introduce you to the best bands Merseyside has to offer. In this piece, we focus on TASTE IT!
Ok, so TASTE IT aren’t actually a band from Merseyside. Taste It are an international band consisting of musicians from Chile and Canada and we had the pleasure of meeting a couple of their members, Alonso and Aldo, at one of Liverpool Jazz Club’s nights. These great guys rocked up and brought the house down and as a result we promised we’d run a feature on them at some point — so here it is!
Guitarists Alonso Farias and Austin Rossitter first met in Liverpool in 2015 and went on a trip playing music around Europe in 13 different countries as TASTE IT. This led them to form La Doctrina in Chile, where they had success playing for their own crowd in local festivals and casinos. In 2018 they turned their attentions back to TASTE IT and have been performing as a five piece band around Europe and Canada, before heading to South America.
As part of their 2018 European tour, Alonso and Austin came to Liverpool with Francis Marcus (tenor saxophone), Sebastian Muñoz (bass) and Aldo Abarzua (alto saxophone) where they settled for five months. They first had a little residency at the bars Alhambra and The Old Gas Station, both located in Cains Brewery Village (Baltic Triangle), where the band performed for the whole summer. They later had weekly spots at the bars McCooley’s in Concert Square and Baltic Market in Cains Brewery.
We caught up with Alonso to ask him about the band and their experience in Liverpool:
LVL: So what have you guys been up to recently?
Alonso: Since the band left Liverpool last October, TASTE IT went on a self-managed tour with dates in Amsterdam, Brussels, Canada, Peru and Chile. We are currently in Toronto for the month of November, and we are having weekly performances until we fly down to Lima for the first of our shows in South America.
LVL: How would you describe the band?
Alonso: We are a high energy band, and so is our music! We have been influenced by a fusion of afro-descendant rhythms like traditional blues, funk, jazz and especially all the different Latin music styles we have down there: cumbia, bolero, cueca, bossa-nova, samba and many more. We also love travelling and performing in front of different audiences from the world all the time. It’s interesting to see how people react, depending on where you’re playing.
LVL: What’s it been like touring the world?
Alonso: After exploring the world in 2015-2016-2017, this year has been particularly special. This is the first time that we all come to work abroad in a band. The path is always full of surprises as you can imagine, you meet people from all over the world and there are many unforgettable memories made. It takes a lot of work to do it properly, and even more if you are independent. A band needs to take care of working on their music, of course, but also needs to care about booking shows, posting on social media, making connections and be constantly seeking for new opportunities… if you’re lazy and by yourself, then you’re done!
LVL: What did you think of Liverpool?
Alonso: We definitely developed a unique connection with the amazing Liverpool crowd. We felt the energy of a city that has a great sense of music, as well as a huge sense of community. We know the up and downs that the city had to pass and we were amazed by how most of people treats each other with love and respect. Most of our musicians are from Chile, a country where people is forced to be constantly dealing with institutional violence that sometimes affect emotions. The way people are honest and upfront in Liverpool had a big impact in our lives, by the fact that we are coming from a place where people usually remain in silence.
LVL: Other than Liverpool, where is your favourite place to play?
Alonso: Well, we had a fantastic time in Brussels last October 27th. In the middle of a five-show tour in Amsterdam, we rented a car and went all the way down to Belgium, performed at the Chilean community’s “La Casita de Pueblo” (People’s House) and offered our best repertoire to our people. The reaction was fantastic, with an elder crowd respectfully listening and dancing to the whole set. That was the first time that we performed for a Spanish speaking audience in a while. They also had loads of food and beverages from Chile, which made us feel home after leaving our country last March. We came back to Amsterdam the morning after, to perform two shows that Sunday 28th, two more shows on October 29th and take a flight to Canada on October the 30th morning.
LVL: What are your plans for 2019 and the future?
Alonso: We are working hard to achieve our goals in Chile: we’re coming back with the band TASTE IT but we are also going to work on our band La Doctrina, which has made a few things in our base city La Serena. Our main objective is to release our first album, recorded before we started the tour, as well as play shows in different cities and keep growing our audience. We have some links in other countries now and would love to have another international tour this 2019!
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Check out TASTE IT on SOUNDCLOUD
