Drinking with Clowns was drunk with confusion while attempting to come up with a fitting name for their bilingual five-piece band. Inspired by Bob Marley, James Brown and Primus, these boys have tied together a unique sound of melodies that could easily be comparable to the audacious music of Black Eyed Peas.
Randomly switching languages from Spanish to English throughout the duration of their songs, guitarist Baldo Bobadilla, percussionist Chris Trujillo, keyboardist Daniel Lopez Carballido, bassist Hector Urtubia and drummer Marrio Williams have found comfort in the realm of indecision over whether they are a Latin American band or just an American band. Let’s say they’re somewhere in between.
“I know that saying we have our own ‘unique sound’ is very cliché, but I truly believe that we do,” confidently says Urtubia, 28. “We densely mix together Latin, funk, jam, disco, pop, hip-hop, rock, reggae and even some punk-rock, when appropriate. Moreover, we mix Spanish, English and Spanglish in a lot of our material, sometimes all in the same song. Besides the different styles that we combine, we always try to project a really good vibe when we play live. We really enjoy ourselves when performing and love to get feedback from the crowd. If the people have fun, we play better, and then they’ll have more fun, and one of these days, we might just explode from that energy circle. Sometimes we bring party poppers and other props on stage, just to get the people started. Silliness is one of the underlying themes of the group,” Urtubia says, making the name of the band seem quite fitting—drunken clowns with party poppers, taking over the stage.
“We chose the name ‘Drinking with Clowns’ after about a year of trying to come up with something else. We had chosen a previous name until we found out that a metal band in South Carolina already had it. After we were completely tired of searching, we settled with the name we have now because it’s somewhere between silly and evil. Besides, it leaves an interesting image. You’ve hardly ever seen it, but if you do, you’ll remember it,” says Urtubia.
Drinking with Clowns’ sense of being all over the place is also seen in their physical appearance. Bobadilla, 28, sports a dark, lengthy goatee, as do a couple of the others band members, and Williams (in his mid-30s but unwilling to elaborate) has chosen to remain absolutely hairless and often cloaked in black. this five-piece band of silliness has been playing shows all over Reno, from the Hacienda to Record Street Café.
“We would like to get to a point where we create a great overall show that is amazing visually as well as musically,” says Urtubia. “We want to play with everyone in town, from all walks of life, and create a huge jam session, making it a great party and to ultimately self-combust in the middle of a very intense live jam.”
Self-combustion doesn’t sound terribly enjoyable, but Drinking with Clowns wouldn’t be content without creating some sort of onstage explosion—whether it be party poppers or self-combustion. Audience, prepare to make some noise.