>> From the Library of Congress in Washington, DC. >> I'll just have you guys first start out by introducing yourselves and the instruments you play. >> Noah Martinez: Hi. My name is Noah Martinez, and I play live -- I play bajo quinto and quinto huapangera; and in the studio different acoustic bass, guitarron, and tololoche as well. >> Leticia Gonzales: My name is Leticia Gonzales, and I play violin, percussion including a wood block and a snare, and jarana, and I also sing and sometimes I dance. >> Jordan Wax: My name's Jordan Wax. I play the fiddle and the piano accordion and sometimes I play the mandolin also and button accordion. I think that's it. And I sing, yeah. >> Michelle Stefano: I think it will be good to first start out by talking about the history of Lone Pinon. >> Noah Martinez: Yeah. I met Jordan and another guy we used to play with on a Sunday morning. There's a coffee shop in Albuquerque called Zendo Coffee, and I was playing -- been playing every Sunday there with people who play Son Jarocho music. And I just went in -- I was there playing like normal and these guys came in, they fit the bill of the coffee scene crowd, handsome, hip young men. And I didn't think much of it because people didn't pay attention to the music so much. But then I saw them kind of mouthing the words and I thought, whoa, that's crazy. So I took a break. I went outside. And when I came in, Jordan was tuning his violin. And we played a few songs, right. >> Jordan Wax: Yeah. >> Noah Martinez: And these guys were really cool, so I just invited them back to my place and we drank apple spiced tea with plum and played music for hours, like four hours. >> Jordan Wax: Propelled by the apple spiced tea. >> Noah Martinez: Yeah. That clory and raven [phonetic] special plum sauce. And then they had a gig on every Wednesday in Santa Fe. And this was on a Sunday. And they're like, well, we're playing Wednesday if you want to come up. If you come up an hour early and we'll rehearse some tunes. And it kind of never stopped from there, it's been that since. >> Michelle Stefano: Great. And how about -- I don't know how to begin with unpacking all the rich, as I said before, traditions that you draw upon. But maybe just first talk about what was the inspiration of Lone Pinon? What are your aims, so to speak? >> Jordan Wax: Well, kind of how I came to it -- I'm from Missouri originally, and had a chance to learn the fiddle from older traditional fiddlers, square dance fiddlers there and contest fiddlers. And I wanted -- I think that was a cool chance to get to experience that way of interacting and the intergenerational thing and being involved in a really regional tradition. And I think I have that motto when I moved to New Mexico. And after a while I kind of quit playing music but I started really missing it, and I wanted to have that kind of relationship with older organizations. And so that I think having brought that helped me kind of know what I was looking for and that got me interested in finding the older New Mexico fiddle traditions and working with those. So that was kind of one inspiration. You guys probably have other inspirations that brought you in this direction. >> Jordan Wax: Would you like to go first? >> Leticia Gonzales: Sure. So I learned music through mariachi, which is kind of a tradition that lays over what we're playing now. It came after the string band style and in a lot of ways supplanted the string band style in New Mexico. So then my family is from New Mexico and predates the mariachi style, they have a lot of identification with mariachi. So I started as a mariachi player very young and started playing classical music. I played a lot of classical music. And have always been interested in folk traditions. And a few years ago, before I met these guys and joined Lone Pinon, I was working a lot in sort of the community choirs and things like that. I played in a gamelan orchestra and started wondering where that was happening in New Mexico, why it wasn't happening in New Mexico, if it could happen in New Mexico. And when I met -- I met Jordan first. When I met Jordan, he and the other member of the band were playing and I was really excited to see young people playing the music. And then I met Noah later, and was like super delighted to hear all of what they had going, the musical fusion. And I think that in addition to loving the music because I'm from there and to loving the community aspects of knowing how to dance a polka, dancing a polka with my grandfather and my father and my mom and all my cousins, you know, my whole life. To be able to generate the music that those dances come from. And so I feel like my participation in the band was a fusion of a lot of things. But in trying to reclaim some of the community practices that I had seen the last vestiges of growing up and was kind of wondering about. Yeah. >> Jordan Wax: I guess for me I started playing music when I was 12. And I grew up in kind of a rough neighborhood. And so a lot of us kids were kind of like getting into trouble, starting to hang around with the wrong crowds, and myself included a little, just a little. But a friend of mine moved back to the neighborhood who was my best friend from second grade. And he had started playing guitar. So I kind of just jumped on the wagon with him and kind of kept it up. So when I was a teenager, my late teen years, my neighbors played old style ranchera music, just acoustic guitars, some beers, friends, neighborhood style in a ditch bank under a conwood [phonetic] tree. And they let me kind of come and hang out. So I always sort of followed that. I love blues and the traditional music. So there's another group in Albuquerque called Felix y los Gatos, who sort of do a fusion of blues and polka styles, and they're from generations of traditional musicians. So I kind of got with them and played with them for a few years and really learned the -- they're a blue-collar, hard-core band that just plays gigs constantly. And then I wanted something a little more refined, so I've just been chasing the traditions. So from them, you know, which is what led me to me meeting Jordan. Because I was just trying to find the elders in the community who played older different styles of music. And now it's totally -- we're on the path together searching and forging forward. Because we're discovering new music weekly, things that we've never heard before that -- so it's very alive right now in that pursuit of the old ways. >> Michelle Stefano: I'd love to ask you about your process, but first let's talk about some of the traditions that you are drawing upon. I don't know where you want to begin, but maybe where you've grown up. I know you grew up in Missouri. But nonetheless, New Mexico? >> Jordan Wax: Yeah. We started with the old-school northern New Mexico dance repertoire, which is what normally it's violin-based and there's accordion, violin and accordion melodies for dances. There's different dances, like the varsoviana we played. There's the cuna. There's the indita, the chotiz, valse [inaudible] -- different valses, polka of course. And each of those tunes has komancha [phonetic]. Each of those dance rhythms has a special genre of tunes or just one particular tune that goes with it. So we started out just trying to learn those, and then that kind of lead us into other things, probably because people would request it when they saw we were playing old music. They'd say, play Margarita, Margarita or. >> Noah Martinez: Play [inaudible]. >> Jordan Wax: Yeah, [inaudible]. And then from there we started getting into the huapango huasteco, which is I think is some of the first waltzes I was learning in that period of the New Mexican music, have a little something to do with the huapango music. You can tell there's some connection. And that's the style that comes from the Huasteca region, which is normally played with a quinta huapanguera and a jarana huasteca. Noah plays the quinta and Leticia plays a jarana and the violin in the trio format. And we also learned some from Ken and Jeanie -- Ken Keppeler and Jeanie McLerie, some musicians in New Mexico that have worked with a lot of the elders. And they introduced us to hona oda [phonetic] music from some of the musicians they'd worked with in Arizona. And so we incorporated -- we've been doing some of that. >> Noah Martinez: Our friend Scott Mathis gave us a bunch of music from [inaudible]. In the early days I remember we had our first road gig and we were kind of a new band. And he gave us a stack of CDs. We were listening to [inaudible]. And we were all amazed in the van. We're like this -- we could do that. That gets us. That's our music right there. >> Jordan Wax: Yeah. You can hear, it's the same instruments at play, doing much more complex things, and we were really inspired. Like, oh, we can do that like this. And that kind of helped us understand, and we can play the New Mexican music like that too. We can open it up and make it more engaging in that way. And it helped us diversify the palates, because there aren't a lot of examples of the old New Mexico music to have like a real broad representation of it. So we kind of borrowed them from those other things too. >> Noah Martinez: And also when Jordan started learning huapango music, he got in touch with our friend Juan Rivera out in Chicago, who is actually from Michoacan -- but he plays amazing huasteco violin. And he turned us onto a lot of [inaudible] and kind of the music from his land, and that's inspired us greatly. And our instrumentation as well. You know, we don't use typical instruments for all the traditions, so we kind of have adjusted -- or we don't have the amount of members. So I think that kind of has helped us. Where we say, okay, like we did with Serafini Vara [phonetic], where we go, this sounds like something we can do, this is what we have, and we sort of make -- we make it fit. So that's kind of nice. >> Michelle Stefano: You talk a lot about meeting and learning from elders. How does that come about, just from your families, the communities you grew up in? Or, what is the landscape today or these past years in New Mexico for traditional music? I know that you've noted that it is diminishing a bit or you're tracing this history. >> Noah Martinez: Well, a guy who we've worked with a lot, our buddy Thomas Mize, we met him at a farmers market, and he just walked up to us and asked us if he could record us. And we said, yeah, sure. And he pulled out his phone and recorded us a bit. And then after a song, he came and said, hey, let me play your violin, let me try this song out. And oh, yeah, try this, and then he played a melody and went yeah, this is this tune. And it's just really organic meeting people like in life while we're playing. And I think a lot of the elders appreciate that. Where some people are on social media and because of the Internet and everything, you can kind of reach out to people and make contact. But we have met a few people just in just playing music too. Jordan's studied a lot. He went in and studied with Serafini Vara. Maybe you could talk about that a little. >> Jordan Wax: Yeah. I tried to seek out people to learn from and have that connection with the music. In New Mexico, our friend Thomas has helped us all a lot, and he kind of grew up -- he was kind of the youngest of his cohort of musicians. So he's one of the only ones that are still playing. And there's another guy named Mariano Romero [phonetic], that he played with as a violinist, but because of arthritis in his shoulder he can't play. But he still -- he came to our dance last time, which was really cool. >> Noah Martinez: And he's got a Cadillac, and he's got his name on the license plate. It is awesome. >> Jordan Wax: And then we also still have Antonia Apodaca, who I think she's 94 now and she lives in an assisted living place in Albuquerque, and still plays great. She gets tired sometimes after a couple songs. But she plays wonderful. And I like to go play guitar from her. >> Michelle Stefano: And again though, how did you find out about all these? >> Jordan Wax: I found out about -- I'd heard about her. And she, you know, plays in like at the Spanish market and fiestas and stuff. >> Noah Martinez: She's a legend. >> Jordan Wax: She's kind of -- yeah, she's really well known in New Mexico. And some friends of us -- of ours from Silver City, Ken and Jeanie, who are called Bayou Seco, their group are really accomplished traditional musicians. They had spent a lot of time with her and toured with her and came to Washington, DC with her and really inspired her to keep playing. And I had talked to them and they said, oh, you should just call her up and go visit her one day. And I kind of hadn't done it, I was too or something. But then one day I called her to ask her a question or something, and she was like, are you coming up later? What time will you be here? And I was free that day so I was like, okay, I'll just come up now. So I drove to Las Vegas, New Mexico where she was living there, and then just started going every week to visit her for a while. And now she's down in Albuquerque. So that's how that happened. And then, you know, when I got there -- she is older and, you know, has trouble finding people to play with and she's really particular about her backup too and sensitive. She says like if someone plays the wrong chord, she gets a stomachache. So it works great because she likes to have someone to back her up. And then she'll practice because she doesn't like to play by herself. So that's how that happened. >> Michelle Stefano: So you guys are young. How do the older musicians and masters of these traditions feel about? >> Noah Martinez: At first they didn't really like us very much. They sort of scowled, like who are these boys, or who are these children over here? But then I think with time, we just kept playing and then you sort of earn their respect just through repetition and kind of like not going away. And then Antonia, someone -- like she's a master. She accepted us pretty quickly. Some of the other people like don't like us. But everyone is cool with us now. I mean, in the beginning it was odd, but everything's fine now. I mean, I feel like -- like Ken and Jeanie, we just played with them last week a string shows, and we got to really bond with them in a way that's different. We've gone and learned from them at the house and spent lots of time. But playing next to each other in real time, you just develop this sense of relationship that's totally different. And, you know, there's always the super sensitive emotional talk after the gig where our hearts are all open still for music, and I just had some really kind words with Ken. And he was like, you know, we love you guys and the fact that you guys really care about tradition and are doing it, trying to keep this going. I think maybe that's a sentiment that some of those people have of us now after they saw that, well, maybe we're just not trying to make a quick cash grab with traditional music. It's like, well, we love this, it's really our life. We're not doing it because it's a trend, you know. So I think once you get past that, people seem to treat you pretty with respect. >> Michelle Stefano: Traditionally what are some of the places and spaces where one would hear this music and dance? >> Leticia Gonzales: So I think there are a couple of different layers. I also have a background in folklorico, so I spent a lot of time when I was younger like at fiestas throughout northern New Mexico, which are celebrations. They're like annual -- they coincide kind of with harvest. But they have a longer history. They're religious and social celebrations that have survived for quite a while. And they're in the middle of kind of a transition right now, so it's an interesting time to think about the fiesta in northern New Mexico. And each larger like city area has different traditions that they follow, but essentially it's a reenactment of the Spaniards coming to New Mexico. So it's under a lot of fire right now. And, as it should be kind, it's kind of being questioned and updated. But I heard a lot of this music there and I heard only recordings played for like a specific folk dance group that tries to keep doing the cuna and the varsovienne and these older dances, the indita, which comes to us from Spain. So I don't really remember, I probably saw Thomas when I was really small and I probably saw him playing. But my primary source for the these older recordings -- or older styles was through recordings at fiestas. And so I think that that became the case during my parents' generation or like from the '50s onward. And before that they were played at like fandangoes or dances that were done not only in like each specific locality but even in like specific neighborhoods. So like the east side of Santa Fe where my dad is from had a fandango, and the west side of Santa Fe where my mom is from -- which is, you know, 15 minutes by car -- had its own fandango. So there were different -- you know, they danced the styles differently and they had different music. But that would've been my grandparents' or great-grandparents' time. So from kind of a living fandango community dance to a more stage sort of representation of like, this is what it means to have new Mexican music and New Mexican dance. But most of the styles that we play have something to do with dance as well. So they're not usually -- I was thinking that as we were playing in the auditorium. It's a little bit special to be playing for just a listening audience. You know, a lot of the accordion snare bajo stuff, you would just be dancing at a square or at somebody's celebration. So they're meant to be felt with your body and with other people, and there's a very lively aspect to all of these dances. And too with I think the sonplaneco, huapango, there are specific dance styles that go with them. So not so much in an auditorium, very much outdoors, very much for ritual celebrations, for planting celebrations, harvest celebrations. >> Weddings. >> Leticia Gonzales: Yeah, baptisms, weddings, matanzas. Moments when the community comes together to celebrate or to be in joy together. >> I think that's kind of part of our experience and interests in doing this kind of music too is kind of -- because my understanding is that -- and when electricity came is basically when people started then amplifying instruments and, you know, electric guitar came in and then drum set could come because they had louder instruments. And about that time, from the recordings and from elders we've been able to talk to, it sounds like there's just a brief period where they kept up the fiddle tradition and the old dances with that electrified instruments. But then it quickly, as that new instruments got adapted, all the old music went out the window kind of and adopted new music too that was just simpler. You know, I mean, great dancing but not any of the other more specific dances. And so I think like what Leticia is saying, like that chronologically is kind of how that played out, that it went from being, you know, an active part of these celebrations to more like something everybody remembered and responded to and wanted to see the dancing, but that wasn't being recreated, renewed. >> Leticia Gonzales: Yeah. It's kind of a specialized practice to see these folk dances done. So, you know, people go specifically to this group once a week to learn these dances. And part of our -- we've started hosting bailas [phonetic] in the last six months or so, with the hope that people can come and have of an interaction with these dances in a less like institutionalized way. That, you know, you don't have to even really be able to keep time, you can participate as a member of [inaudible]. Which, you know, I think probably is true to how that was practice in just a community setting. So in that way too, to try and ground some of our own experiences with the music and the experiences of those people who are getting to hear our music and to save it from becoming too specialized or not for like the people. >> The public. >> Leticia Gonzales: Yeah. >> Which is -- those associations have done a great job of keeping those traditions alive. And I think now with our generation, I think it's sort of our duty -- we've taken on the duty to sort of take those and say, okay, now let's take all the fancy stuff off of that and we can learn and do it in kind of the old way where -- like we did a dance with Bayou Seco recently. And it was amazing, you just you don't get those moments. I mean, even if we were to do a show all together on a huge stage in front of everybody, that would be awesome. But to get to play one dance tune for 15 minutes where we're watching the crowd and then it's like it's totally -- it's just amazing. And to see the people and the interaction and the kids and the older people and it's like, wow, it's really a true sense of community. And I think that's what kind of the purposes is of that, of those situations. Like Leticia was saying where it's like each community had their own dance, well, I mean, part of that played into that because they wouldn't mix so much, because it's like, well, we can do something with our people over here on this side of town, have fun. You know what I mean? Everyone's going to be there. It's great. The dance is sort of secondary to the social get together . So yeah, we're sort of in the middle of bringing that back around. >> And that's how we approach a lot of the music too is figuring out, well, this is how it worked before, and obviously it's not working anymore. But we have all the pieces and we're, you know, we understand somewhat what life is like now. And we're as qualified as anybody to try to figure out what it might take for it to get some new life again. And you know, not just in a sense of performance or recordings, but in the sense of the community and for actually -- you know, for the tradition to have life and be renewed. >> Leticia Gonzales: Yeah. I think as Noah was saying, these kind of institutions or organizations have done a good job of preserving. So there's a lot of New Mexican culture that has been preserved. You know, we work with archives, the One Beat IL Archive and the John Donald Rob Archive at the University of New Mexico. And we an amazing amount of source recordings. So we might not have those elders anymore, but we have their recordings, and we also have video of dances. We have costumes that have been, you know, preserved. But the idea of preservation I hope is to be revitalizing and to be re-introduced. And so, you know, New Mexico being such an interesting and complicated place, and in a lot of ways remembering what it was like to be itself before electricity. I have stories of my dad, you know, not ever getting to use a shower until high school, which was in the '60s . They had no running water and they had no electricity, yeah, in the house that I live in now, until the '60s. Which is an important thing for everybody to just take a minute and think like, wow, a generation ago, in parts of our country, there was no running water and people lived and they made things and they had traditions and culture. >> Beautiful lives too. >> Leticia Gonzales: You know, that in addition to preserving it, that we try and find a way to marry that to what's, you know, our particular challenges in this time right now. Growing isolation. I mean, I see a lot of -- a lot of my elders I knew kind of like at a remove, you know. We were no longer able to care for them at home and to give them good lives at home in their older years. And so trying to not only preserve the dances and preserve the music but to preserve the sense of, well, you know, I see you at dances. I've danced with you. I know what it's like to dance with you. I've prepared food for you. You've prepared food for me. And to remember what it's like to be human together in a community within the wider sort of global idea of the world in which we live. So for me, I think that that's a big piece of what this music is about. That it is, we're musicians, so we do the music. We're artists, so we focus on the art. But if I was, you know, a social worker, I would be doing similar hopefully initiatives to try and bring these values and the ability to be human with each other to individuals and hopefully also to a larger community level. >> Michelle Stefano: You remind me -- you wrote about the many traditions that you draw upon, that they represent radicalism, creativity, and cross-cultural solidarity. Can you talk a little bit more about that? >> Noah Martinez: I actually don't know what any of those words mean. No, I'm just kidding. Yeah, I think that's it. I think to be radical is to be different then what society wants to be, right. Like so for us it's the main -- like Leticia was saying about that connection you have with an elder, and you see each other as like, we're all in a circle, right. So a lot of times you're in that circle and the older people are looking down on you because you're just the young kid, then we grow. And then we -- a lot of times elders get forgotten that there was a whole life that was lived and all these lessons. So we sort of look at them in a down way. But when you get to that point where we're looking eye to eye, that's really the awesome part. But it takes you a little bit to -- it takes a while to get that. And that idea is radical. I think it's -- you know, it's like, well, look at us. We're obviously young people. We shouldn't necessarily want to be hanging out with older people more than our own age generation, but we do. So I feel like that's the solidarity of that. And really that -- and with music, it's sort of -- once you're old enough to kind of play in bars, you're like all the same age, depending on where you are and the music you love. So we can be we're, you know, young people in our 20s and 30s, but we're -- I see -- I look at Ken and Jeanie, who are into their later years of life, and it's like, we're the same. It's just they're a little further down the road or something, you know. I don't know, what do you think, Jordan? >> Jordan Wax: I was thinking about the radicalism from older musicians. I think about like -- and getting to work with older fiddle players in Missouri and Mexican musicians and musicians in New Mexico, there's a lot of ideas that we just have as a society about what the musicians are, what they're doing, what the traditions are, what cultures are. And music's a wonderful thing because the people who are practicing it often in a really deep way and a committed -- you know, the level of like lifetimes of commitment and generations of commitment, they don't have -- they don't share any of those ideas about what the divisions are and what the purpose of it is oftentimes. And so I feel like there's -- I've had a chance to see where there's society is saying, well, this is who the musicians are and this what they represent, this is what they do. And the musicians are like, no, we're not that. We have our own story. And I think also, that ties into that cross-cultural level for me. I'm not New Mexican. And I think a lot of people -- you know, that's a really interesting element and experience of the band, because a lot of people, you know, will reject that at first. They'll say, well, you know, this guy's an outsider singing this music, then it must be bad, you know. But then there are people who actually listen and they say, oh, that's our music, that's it, you guys are doing it well. And I think working with musicians and coming from that experience where I've had a chance to work with people of lots of different cultural backgrounds, that maybe that brings it out even more. But people are always telling me, oh, this, you know -- there's always been this connection. Or, you know, these musicians from the Midwest came and they shared this, and you can hear that in the older recordings. And then, you know, working with Seta Feni [phonetic] and Mita Konda [phonetic], saying, oh, this musician came from here. And this Texan musician who we always listen to, he said, oh, he was actually from mitwakon [phonetic]. And there's been a lot of exchange always going on. But I think as things move forward and we -- I don't know, it seems like sometimes there's a tendency to reduce the diversity of the traditions and come up with a simpler and simpler idea. And that gets reduced out and people come up with one story, that this is the people who play this music, and this is -- and it just represents this, you know, a simpler form of identity. And I think that the example the older musicians and how they express something so much more complex helps me a lot in dealing with that and realizing, oh, actually being complex and being diverse and telling people, yeah, you might have an idea of how it's supposed to be, but here we are and we're obviously something different. It takes a little bit of a radical or rebellious attitude to I think to be able to believe in ourselves and say like, yeah, it is a little different than people might be expecting, but this is the best we can do to maintain the continuity and express that and renew the tradition in the context of our lives and be authentic. >> Leticia Gonzales: Yeah. I think that creative pursuits allow us to extrapolate from an individual to a larger idea. And so as Jordan is saying and as Noah has said, like we're kind of bridging I think a point between what [inaudible], who can put on one identity, which is New Mexican, and can put on another identity, which is American, and another identity which is like college educated, and, you know, all of these different forms of our identity, that I'm using each of these identities also to further complicate and sort of -- yeah, complicate what's coming to me from my background or from my history. And so in this way I believe that music and art are really radical pursuits, because all of our histories are similarly bridged by an individual. And so we have a story of our living together as different groups of people and as we identify differently, either based on -- you know, my mom being from the west side and my dad from the east side, though they're both Hispanic. Or, you know, we're from New Mexico and they're from Texas, though we both love ranchera. Or, I'm from New Mexico and you're from Mexico, but we're connected through this string band style which New Mexican musicians can play I guess, because we're doing that. But there's not really a hard or fast line about like, well, Jordan's from Missouri, so he can't possibly know how to play New Mexican music. Like Jordan knows how to play New Mexican music. Or Noah's from Albuquerque, so he can't possibly know how to play blues music. Like Jordan's from -- I mean, sorry, Noah is from Albuquerque and absolutely is a blues musician. And so it's easy when we're looking at a whole group of people to simplify these things, and it's much more difficult to look at a whole group of people and to see individuals. And that's the spirit that I think I find in this group, is that, you know, certainly we're very concerned about the tradition and we're very concerned about speaking with elders and we're very concerned with doing everything in the right way. But we're also members of our generation in 2018 in America, which also means we've been exposed to the Internet. We've had to use the Internet a lot for research. You know, I know what it's like to hear music from East Asia, which neither of my parents had ever known. And so even though we might be sort of consciously -- we have these conscious touchstones which are northern New Mexico fiddle tradition, you know, Texas fiddle tradition, and accordion tradition and conjunto tradition and muthican [phonetic]. Like I also play based like I have extensive African percussion training. And that comes into play. You know, it's changed the way that I hear. And so I'm hearing as a person whose also learned to hear differently based on what I've been exposed to. And as, you know, members of this world, which is tending toward that way, tending toward like blurring of lines, it's important for me too to say like, that's part of the radicalism. That I can be a person who has studied West African music and knows a very tiny, tiny, tiny bit about what that's like. And can say that I'm both, and I'm also playing this New Mexican tradition. And so that's some of what people are hearing too. Though, as Jordan says, maybe, you know, like at first glance, it's easy to think, oh, it's just this. >> And I think it's -- from experiencing with the elders too, I think they were always like that. And they just had different lives. And, you know, in 1920 in rural New Mexico, you're exposed to a much different palette of things. And the musicians in Missouri who, you know, they were exposed to swing music and bluegrass music and country music and jazz and classical music. And the best examples, the masters of that tradition, took from everything. And we can look back and say, oh, they're this one thing, but they actually were -- their process was very creative all along and very diverse. >> Noah Martinez: Yeah. And I think we can continue that now I think with like thinking of like touching back on what Jordan and Leticia were saying, yeah, we're not your conventional New Mexican band. And like I look at me, like this is where I love to be musically, with these guys. And it's always new and we're moving forward constantly and there's always the look down the road is so invigorating, I want to go really far. Where I haven't had that in the past. And so when people look at us, especially before Leticia joined -- we had another guy who was an Anglo guy. And people in my community would kind of judge us and be like, oh, you're playing with those gringos over there, huh. Well, that's not real music. And you're like, well, it kind of is, because if I was waiting around for a bunch of Chicanos to play in a band with, I'd be at home right now, you know, waiting to get off my shitty job so we could go play at the VFW. And that's as far as it would go. And we'd practice once a week and that's it. But because you have to take those things away from it and be like, well, because I am a musician and I've always -- I just see the musician as the musician. I don't care about race, age, color, sexuality, anything. It's just you're a musician, you're awesome. You have this. You study music. You love it. So we have that with each other. So it really doesn't matter. Even if we decided tomorrow, like we don't want to play this music anymore, let's, you know, let's do a different traditional style that we're going to get into, I think we'd still have the same result as a passion for the music, because we love music. At the end of the day, musicianship doesn't know any of those prejudices, it's just who you are and what you love. And I think this group's a perfect example where it's like Jordan's -- you know, we all three as individuals have very different lives and come from different places. And we don't always come together in the easiest way because of that like, you know. Because like Leticia, she grew up one way, I grew up one way, Jordan grew up one way. But at the end of the day, it's those differences that we're forced to settle that help us grow. I know it helps me grow and all of us, and we're all in this thing together. And if that's not more of an example of just what growth is and unity and -- like being here in the nation's capital is like, wow, this is the -- and hearing all the different languages. And it's like we're doing exactly what we should be doing and not thinking small-mindedly and drawing circles around what our picture should be. You know, it's totally free and open, and I think that helps us. >> Leticia Gonzales: Yeah. I think having the external goal, you know -- and it's tangible, you know. You pick up your instrument and like we have to find some way to be on the same page enough to play this at the same tempo, at the same rate, in the same key, you know, hitting the verse and then the chorus at the same time. Like that -- I don't think that it's possible to ask that we always grow or we always like understand another person. I mean, I think in the best case scenario that happens. But, you know, like to be able to be with each other in our differences. I think having music in a creative pursuit in a way, you know, like it's a flexible thing. You can say like, okay, well, this is not working. It's not working for us to play this section two times here. Because it's creative, literally we can decide, well, we're only going to do it once. And that feels better for us. Like we've been struggling with gusteaus [phonetic] recently. And for months and months, it was like, why is this gusteaus not coming together? Why is this not working, you know? Like we're listening to the source recording, we're doing what they're doing. Are we going too fast? Are we going too slow? We tried it a million different ways and then we finally decided, for whatever reason, it just needed to be a little bit shorter. And so, like, there's that freedom and there's that flexibility in order to, like, to spend the time asking, well, what's not working, you know? So whatever our backgrounds are, you know, like, I had one idea about why it wasn't working and I'm sure these guys had other ideas about why it wasn't working. That it matters but it's secondary to, like, we want to play this tune. We love this tune and we love this tradition and we just have to kind of keep going long enough and to take enough pressures away to understand that, like, actually what the music wants is this. >> And if we can just find a way to communicate with each other that's healthy for everyone, we don't lose this beautiful thing that we want -- all of us want so badly. So that's been great. That's really a lot of -- good. >> Michelle Stefano: I must say, you've touched upon so many questions I wanted to ask, thank you. >> We're good at just going. >> Michelle Stefano: Yeah, it's a breeze. But I'm going to back up a little bit, if I may. But you remind me of what you, Leticia, said on stage about polka -- I the think the song was The Woman Through Warsaw. >> Leticia Gonzales: Oh yeah. >> Michelle Stefano: And how, you know, the grabbing of these traditions and also the migration of cultural knowledge, people. Could you talk a little bit about why polka is in New Mexico? >> Leticia Gonzales: Yeah. So that tune actually is a varsoviana, which is not quite a polka, so polka -- they're similar though, right? So they're -- they're both coming from Western Europe. And so the polka tradition overlays another tradition, a lot of which we've lost. So we have some dances that are still danced in New Mexico that are kind of more directly from Spain, one being the inditas, which came over to Mexico and then up the trail to New Mexico. And so, inside of that, because these are community dances and because you can dance them within certain rules and regulations with people -- other people -- so like, women and men dance together, women dance with, you know, their father or their husband or their brothers or just changing. Then when the American colonies started moving west and when soldiers were coming -- before the soldiers, there were other Americans coming. And those Americans brought trumpets and they brought a lot of different instruments and they brought the polka. And the New Mexicans, for some reason, probably because they were used to community dances, loved the polka. So they grabbed onto the polka and with the polka came the varsovienne, which is a dance, like, I don't know what it's like in Warsaw. It's probably not even danced in Warsaw anymore. Maybe it's not from Warsaw, it's just about a woman from Warsaw. That traveled all the way from, you know, central Europe through western Europe across the ocean to the eastern part of the United States, and then over the trails, you know, to New Mexico. And New Mexicans loved it. They were, like, we get this. This makes sense to us, the varsovienne, let's do it. I don't listen to a lot of pop music so I can't find a pop, like, parallel but. >> Michelle Stefano: The Macarena? >> Leticia Gonzales: Yeah, like the Macarena. It's like the Macarena of, like, the 1800s. And it survived, probably because it's so specific and then also because of the adaptations that Jordan was mentioning earlier, right? Like we went from fiddles to accordions and then fiddle and accordion. And then, you know, as you could amplify things, as dances were getting bigger, as there were more people, as our community spaces were changing, we started amplifying things. And that turned into what it's turned into now. So like the polka, I see a big, like, I don't know that it is necessarily related but the polka and in the ranchera, which is generally played amplified and with guitars and stuff, which is what my parents grew up dancing, like, well, you can dance the same dance to a polka and to a ranchera. I don't know if that answers your question, I think it does. >> Michelle Stefano: Absolutely! That's very true. >> Noah Martinez: Also, when Jordan was doing research in Mexico this past December, he found out from Don Serafinivara [phonetic] that a lot of those tunes are related to other songs because he sent me a version of a varsovienne that Serafin [phonetic] does and that they come from [inaudible] and it's even deeper than that. So somewhere when that -- along that line when it stopped in Mexico it grew there and a seed was planted and then it came up -- zip. But that tree's still been growing so. >> Jordan Wax: And that was interesting to see too, like, a lot of the style in New Mexico, the waltzes, like a waltz we played today at the concert that comes from [inaudible], and he learned it from his uncle, [inaudible]. But in muchican [phonetic], I heard some musicians playing ritual funeral music, and it was that exact tune, with an extra third section thrown in. So I was like -- it was amazing. And I was asking some of the musicians, and they said, yeah, I think that a lot of the really old repertoire from Europe that came over, these waltzes, then were adopted. And they're called minuetes [phonetic], and muchican use for funerals and religious observances. But then in New Mexico, they were adapted into social music. And that could be part of why, or who knows why. But that's one -- you definitely hear it and it's the same tune, you know. >> I was thinking of another one, but I lost my train of thought. >> Michelle Stefano: Well, since we're here at the American Folklife Center, which houses one of the largest cultural archives in the world, would you talk a little bit more about your archival research or the work you do with archives? You mentioned the University of New Mexico. >> Yeah. GD, John Rob [phonetic] -- which is crazy for me because as a kid growing up, we were -- my grandpa's a farmer. And we -- where I live on the Rio Grande Valley and North Valley of Albuquerque, at one time there was just fields and fields and fields. We grew alfalfa and lots of hay, different types of hay. And now they're all mansions mostly. But as a child, we grew up in those fields working and working. So I always remember talking about, we're going to do the John Rob field. Well, this was this John Donald Rob, his home, his estate. We farmed that -- I've been farming that field my entire life. And so when Jordan introduced me to the collection, I was like, John Donald Rob, this is -- something is ringing a bell, I don't know why, but I didn't -- they weren't together. And then I was talking with his daughter, who now runs his estate at his house, and she was talking about her father and being an archiver of musicians, and it all clicked. And you're like, wow, what a crazy connection that is that you're so close in the realm of, yeah, you're literally working -- you're doing fieldwork and now here I am studying the field recordings of this guy that he made. So it's a good connection for me. And then the Juan B Ryell [phonetic] stuff. And a lot of -- Ken and Jeanie did a lot of -- from Bayou Seco did a lot of cataloging. We found a recording recently on a trip down there that blew our minds. And it's New Mexican musicians playing pasodovas [phonetic], which we haven't heard ever in this region. >> Yeah, we thought that it didn't exist. >> So yeah. I mean, the other -- what are some of the other? >> Yeah, those two, the one [inaudible] and the John Donald Rob were both available online. So we've had a chance to get a lot from that. But then a lot has also been from just personal relationships of people who have had, oh, this tape that they put on CD. Our friend Thomas really helped with that. And he had a lot of recordings of his uncle Antonio Reverra [phonetic] and the bands that he played with in Santa Fe and some musicians around peko [phonetic]. So kind of other musicians have really -- older musicians have helped a lot and saying, oh, here's this. And just like last -- I guess in the spring, that Jason and Cordelia -- are some older musicians and dancers. And I had gone by their house or something. And they said, oh, look, and they had this CD -- record, LP, of [inaudible] from peko that I'd never heard. And that's where we got some of the tunes we did today as well. >> So another one was we did posobolo [phonetic] off the CD. Our friend David Garcia up in Espanola, he gave us a CD that just said San Antonio Trio, and it was bajo, violin, and electric bass. And we had no information other than that, but we just studied that record forever. And we made some contacts with some people in Texas who provided us with information eventually. We now know what that is. But a lot of it's like that, just stuff by chance. And [inaudible], another guy in New Mexico, who'd done -- he wrote a book and put a CD collection of music out of tunes and the people who played them back in those days. But YouTube a lot. You know, I mean. >> For Mexican stuff. >> For Mexican stuff. Oh, yeah, mostly musicians I guess has been our main inspiration of sources of music. >> Michelle Stefano: You also sing in different languages. Can you talk about the many different languages, your repertoires that you represent? >> Yeah. We have a couple songs in nywat [phonetic], which is the language from the Wastaka [phonetic]. So a lot of the ritual music there which a lot of it is kanarios [phonetic] style. And a lot of them have lyrics -- not many, but there are several that have lyrics in nywat. And so when I was down there, I had some lessons and was working on learning that. And then also some of the music we played today I learned from [inaudible]. And he's from Eutupia [phonetic] Michoacan. And their family speaks porepicha [phonetic]. And so he helped me with some of that. And that's a beautiful repertoire of porepicha music that includes sonjos alajenos [phonetic], which are dance tunes that are instrumental, and them piedecuas [phonetic], which are love songs that are sung in porepicha and sometimes Spanish. And sometimes they're adapted into fast-paced sones [phonetic], so you can sing with those as well. >> Leticia Gonzales: We're lucky to have lyrics in nywat and porepicha. Because a lot of those songs have been adapted to Spanish, right. So it's more common to find -- I don't know. I can't say that's true for the porepicha music. But huapangos, it's much more common to hear a huapango in Spanish. So when we do have nywat lyrics, it's pretty. And I mean, there are certainly bands that are doing that. But at least in the United States, until I started diving deeper into this music, I didn't hear very many. >> And it's cool they do it in New Mexico because they actually were a lot of -- the [inaudible] people who came up and like built a lot of Santa Fe. And I don't know how many generations that lasted. But I mean, there's no continuity of that now. But it's cool to get to sing in that language in a place where it was once spoken. >> We've also met some people who are native language speakers in Albuquerque that -- you know, we would've never been able to make those connections without the repertoire. And we met a family, the Garcia family. Remember those guys? >> Yeah. >> And they invited us back to a party at their house and played. It was a birthday party. It was amazing. Remember that? >> Yeah. >> It was so incredible. >> The kinsonero [phonetic]. >> The kinsonero, yeah, it was a kinsonero. And yeah, just language -- having that language and the fact that Jordan's been able to research that, opened us -- it invites you into more people's lives and just gives a more connections with those folks there. Really cool. >> And it's cool too I think because -- like we were talking about, the radicalism of representing a more complex cultural picture when people are expecting something. I think in New Mexico, we're guilty of having like an oversimplified picture a lot of times. Like the cowboys and Indians and the Mexicans. Which is not a very useful model anymore. But it still kind of persists in the psyche or the culture. And I think when people see this band that is playing, you know, Spanish music and they bring all these associations with it, and then they hear another, an indigenous language, that obviously is very intimately connected with the music. It's fun to do that because I think it instantly switches the way people are watching us and their expectations and what they were thinking. >> Leticia Gonzales: Yeah, it definitely complicates things. And I wanted to say a little bit -- I've used archives especially -- I grew up hearing a lot of religious songs. So a lot of my musical background with elders was in church. So Catholicism is very predominant in Hispanic communities in New Mexico. And I grew up very Catholic. And I started using -- like my favorite way to look at archives is not only to hear these recordings but to see the different like variations in lyrical content, depending on where that's being sung or where it's being practiced. And so in addition to music being a social thing, it also -- I think one of the most beautiful traditions in New Mexican music is the elobo [phonetic], which is the song prayer. And so everybody has a different way of singing the same elobo. And these lyrics are really an amazing way to key into different symbolic or like psychological aspects of the New Mexican -- greater New Mexican -- you know, the Catholic culture in New Mexico, which survives to this day, you know, in sort of a different way. And so I think, as Jordan is saying, you know, I think our cultures, they kind of -- they get very like very firm and fixed. And then sometimes if you're lucky, you're in a project that gets to go back in there and kind of excise different things. And we're like, wait, this is what ended up being fixed this way, and this is what ended up being fixed this way, but they each come from different places. And the archives are a really amazing way to kind of find those different pieces. It's like doing cultural surgery kind of I think. >> Yeah, that's a great way to put it. >> Yeah. And they kind of preserve diversity that didn't survive to our day for us to get to experience. You can look back and say like, wow, look at this broad spectrum of how this one tune was being played. And so I don't have to -- you know, I can learn it from this one -- this version that one particular fiddler played. But my understanding doesn't have to be limited to that because I can hear all these different ways, incorporate different elements. And I think that helps create a lot of space and breathing and new life in it. Because yeah, I think with just the pieces of continuity that we have -- I mean, it works together. And I think we didn't know living musicians who we could work with personally, the archives wouldn't be worth very much to us, or wouldn't be very useful. But having those two things together to understand the musicians and their examples and how they play, and then these different examples of, you know, just recordings in moments in time, I think those things can work together. >> Noah Martinez: Yeah, and I think, like Jordan was saying, you have such a spectrum to learn from. It helps us because there's -- not anymore I don't feel like we have it just because we stopped caring about it. But in the beginning there was such a pressure to do it right, because we're these young, nontypical-looking people doing this traditional music who aren't exactly from the tradition. Like I'm from New Mexico, hard-core New Mexican, but I'm from Albuquerque. So when you go anywhere north of there, they're like, oh, he's a city boy. This guy doesn't know anything. Go back over there. And the same with all of us. We're not -- we're not from small, northern New Mexican towns where we know everybody and we walk in and everyone knows us. >> Leticia Gonzales: It wasn't directly transmitted to us too, like I didn't have a dad who was like, here's the whole New Mexican fiddle tradition -- go. >> And it gives us that space to say, here are all these different people who've done this who are to us bona fide musicians. It's like, well we're in there too, you know? We bring all of what we do too. One of our favorite guitar players, Augustine Chavez, he does all this amazing licks and kind of swingy runs because he was probably an elite guitar player at his time, learning from everything that he could. So that helps -- it helps give us a breadth of not just -- here's this one recording. If you don't play this polka with a boom-chick, boom-chick and do this run exactly and do an upstroke, you're wrong. It's kind of like, well, it gives us space and helps us have our own spot to stand and be who we are. >> And also in like all the different styles we play, it's cool to be able to look back at these -- you know, a lot of the archives come from -- like they start around 1950. And it's cool to say like, we're exposed to all this because of YouTube and because we can travel. You know, you can buy a ticket for 200 bucks to Mexico City. And then you look back in the 1950s, these musicians, they also were doing some huapangos and they were also doing woletos [phonetic] and [inaudible] and the same things. And realizing, oh, the different strands of cultures that are intersecting and interweaving in our lives today that it feels so novel and it feels like it's happening in a novel way, but those same things have been combining for a long, long time and just a different style and different timescale and different, you know, level of technology and stuff. But a lot of the same things. I know that feels good to -- I don't know, reinforces that. I think maybe something that disempowers continuity and traditions is people feeling like, oh, I'm not that anymore. I'm too different, so I can't really participate or be involved in that. >> Modernism. >> Yeah. It's like I'm modern and that's not. Those people are all kind of other to me now. But I think being able to see that and really relate to that and realize like, oh, no, actually we are the same as them, we're just our generation of the same people that keep, you know. >> Yeah. And for us on that end now, we are a hard-core folk band. Like we -- today for us doing sound check with the microphones was like the most anxiety I've ever had in a gig. Because we don't use microphones -- we use one microphone, you stand in front of it. Here you go. Here's your ham and cheese sandwich, move along down the line. And today was like gourmet. We're like all these things and positioning. And that's pretty difficult for us. But we just got booked recently to play a festival up in Talce [phonetic], New Mexico. And every group are electric music computers, all this -- and we're on the same bill as them. So we're so extreme of being a traditional folk band, that we're now cool with the electronic kids. It's crazy. When I saw that flyer, I was like, wow, that is so unique. So maybe there's more of that turn is coming. >> Michelle Stefano: Well, you're on your way to Brooklyn soon. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. We're excited. So yeah, it's just kind of those -- it's those moments where you go, whoa. And then, you know, you think we're going to be doing that electronic music festival, it's going to be totally different for us. And then we just had this great week of music with Bayou Seco, who learned from all the elders and are just -- those two worlds are so far apart. And Lone Pinon's right in the middle, you know. So we're pretty lucky, man. It's kind of cool. It's pretty nice. >> As far as just on the other side of that, how people -- our generation don't necessarily want to associate themselves with the old ways. Because everything is growing so rapidly and we're all trying to keep up and move forward. So it's nice when you move forward by just standing still. It's pretty good. >> Michelle Stefano: So do you feel like you're a bit of a counterpoint these days? >> Maybe. >> Michelle Stefano: Pushing back against. >> I don't think maybe people view us that way. I don't feel like that's like an objective for us. Or maybe it's just something that sort of happens naturally and we don't recognize it. >> Michelle Stefano: Right, like the radicalism you were talking about just by the nature of playing what you play? >> Yeah. >> Yeah. I think that's kind of. >> Yeah. Go ahead. >> No. >> I was thinking -- hearing you say that made me think, a lot of the reason why the tradition in New Mexico started being silenced, you know, it wasn't anybody's mistake, it wasn't people didn't care. But it was like the whole structure of how we live together and the economy and our society changed, and the way people were doing music and this music no longer fit. And so it just. >> Went away. >> It juts went away. And so for us to say, no, we're going to do that now, it is like against the stream. >> Like the pants are too small but we're going to make them fit. >> Yeah. [inaudible]. >> Yeah, we got to stretch them out. >> Michelle Stefano: Just going back a little bit. You know, you've ben meeting with so many master musicians, become friends, this community that you're also helping to reconnect or strengthen. Do you record anyone at all? Are you secret folklorists? >> I do, yeah. >> I have a digital recorder. And yeah, when I was visiting saraphine [phonetic], I would -- every time he just loved [inaudible]. And he was an Encyclopedia of many generations of stories. And I would always just put that on. And I'd send them back. And I've got hours and hours of him just talking and telling stories. And that was amazing. Because, you know, like one thing that really impressed me was we were talking about this fiddler [inaudible] from San Antonio. And he was -- [inaudible] re-released some of his recordings. And like on the description on the back of it, they said, oh, he's this rural fiddler from south Texas and people liked his music because it was so rustic. And then I was talking to -- and that he lived in San Antonio and they lost track of him or something. And this fiddler [inaudible] was like, [inaudible]. Yeah, we hung out all the time in Mexico City when he was an old man. Yeah, he moved back to Mexico City. And I was working as a musician there and I would always go to his house and hang out. And it was this whole piece of the history that wasn't known in America. And he was actually, no, he wasn't a rural Texas fiddler at all, he was from Quiwila [phonetic], and he played in the symphony down here. And yeah, he played a really sophisticated style of music. And it's cool, like that really made an impression. He was like, whoa, what was printed on the back of the CD. >> Michelle Stefano: Was wrong. >> Was wrong. And like the musician told me. >> I love Jordan's -- hearing Jordan. He was gone and I was at home. I had a little newborn at home that I was taking care of. And so when those messages would come in, they were like a saving grace to me of musical knowledge. And for us, you know, we've done gigs and sat and been on the ride home and like just talked about, well, how do you think that this happened? And why did this -- why is there a [inaudible] in south Texas? And I remember one of the interviews was -- or one of the clips Jordan sent me was him asking Saraphine. He's like, oh, I knew the guy that took the first one over there, in San Antonio. Yeah, [inaudible] all the time. I knew him. We're like, oh my goodness. To have that source of all the knowledge and everything. And now, well, we have it a little so we can share the stories about. Yeah, that's pretty nice to have. >> Yeah. And I think it's inspired me. Just like now that -- I started doing that with musicians and the older musicians. And as time's gone on, now I've lost those people and they've passed on, and having those recordings is so amazing. And so now I record not just musicians, I record all kinds of people. >> Yeah. I better watch what I say in the tour card because I've always. >> Yeah. >> Michelle Stefano: There are codes of ethics. >> Yeah. I don't have to follow any of them in my life. It's just like at family gatherings and stuff, I'll just put it on. >> You never know. >> It's like -- yeah, music's just like anything, that moment will never repeat of having those people together and that they were all in that phase of their life. And I have recordings of my grandma singing in a way that -- she'll still thing but not like she used to. And so I have those recordings. And that it means a lot to me. So yeah, I'm a secret folklorist. Probably unethical. >> Leticia Gonzales: It's not secret anymore. >> Michelle Stefano: Welcome to YouTube. >> Yeah. >> Michelle Stefano: This has been wonderful. Thank you so much. I guess my last question would be, what's next for Lone Pinon? >> Lunch. I'm just kidding. >> Leticia Gonzales: We already had lunch. >> Oh yeah. Second lunch. I don't know, just try -- I guess for me it's like just try and keep it -- try and keep all the wheels turning, you know. Life catches up with us outside of music, and it makes it hard. You know, just to be honest, it's difficult to keep going with everything. So for us, it's just -- for me, it's like just keeping it alive is the next thing. And then after everything will come, we'll follow from there. >> Leticia Gonzales: We do have a couple projects that we're working on. So we've recorded an album called [inaudible], which should be released -- I don't know if we decided it was going to be this fall or in the spring. But upcoming. And then we're working -- we've gotten a grant from the John Donald Rob Foundation to record specifically New Mexican tunes. So we're also going to hopefully get into the studio and record with some of the elders. Those as well. Because the other albums have, you know, been kind of a collection of all of the traditions, and we don't have anything that's just the New Mexican style. So that's some more archival work that'll be upcoming. > Yeah, that'll be a lot of fun. >> Yeah. It's going to be great to have the opportunity to do that. >> Yeah. And just trying to -- like we got that little that grant, which will partially help. We don't have enough for the rest, so if anyone's watching this and would like to [inaudible]. But yeah, I mean, that is kind of the situation a lot. Like Noah said, it's tricky to keep it going. And we've been doing it full-time, which is a real challenge. And, you know, trying to figure out -- a lot of what we've been doing is trying to figure out what's the -- like what's the economic role for a band doing this kind of traditional music in New Mexico. And also, thinking that if we can create that space, then it creates space not just for us but for other musicians to be involved in the tradition. Because if no one can -- you know, if no one can afford to play this kind of music, no one will. And I think the hard work we do hopefully will -- I know that's one thought I've had, is that it could, you know, create a space. You know, like part of the way the music went away was because the economic aspect of it was cut off. >> Didn't allow it. >> Yeah, didn't allow it. And the way it fit before didn't and trying to find new ways to make it fit. And so that is a tricky element of what we do. I'm not like militantly attached to, you know, all being full-time and making that work. But we do have to find a way to make it work in our lives. And it can be challenging in our region. Because, you know, there's some good playing opportunities and then we have to play in a lot of bars and cantinos. That, you know, after years and years of doing that, starting to say, well, maybe we really don't want to do that. And if we don't do that, how do we keep up the band, you know? >> And even just logistically, we all three of us live in different towns, you know, within an hour of each other. So it's like, you know, it would be great to be, you know, chummy 21-year-olds and we all share a house for $10 a month wherever we can live. But it's difficult, you know, having a life, trying to build a life that is able to support music and try and build music that's able to support your life as well. I think finding the balance in there is kind of a priority for us. But we've done a pretty good. I mean, even like I think from the first days, it was like we still kind of have that taste of like, this is awesome and let's just as long as this lasts, we're going to give it our all and enjoy it and get as far as we can. And I still feel that. Kind of like I still feel those butterflies like when we played today that I felt when we first met, you know, and like when Leticia first came on with us, and just the power that we all have together. And it's like, okay, we can make this work I think, just keep it going, you know. That's the hard part, keeping it going. >> Michelle Stefano: All right. Is there anything else you'd like to add? [inaudible]. All right, thank you so much. [ Applause ] >> This has been a presentation of the Library of Congress. Visit us at LOC.GOV.