Cruz Contreas Interview

Cruz Contreas Interview

With his First Solo Album, Cosmico, Cruz Contreras Breaks From the Past While Working His Way Towards the Future
By Lee Zimmerman
 
Despite a storied career that found him firmly at the helm of the highly acclaimed East Tennessee-based band The Black Lillies and, prior to that, the primary back-up for singer Robinella, Cruz Contreras, is, in effect, starting anew. His debut solo album, Cosmico, finds him stepping out on his own and taking his music into a decidedly new direction. Borne from a personal perspective that is, by turns, both ethereal and emphatic, music conveyed through tone, texture and melodies that immediately crawl under the skin and then linger there in a perpetual haze.
 
It’s a bold move to be sure, one that finds him not only taking the entire focus, but also making a marked step away from the absolute Americana that informed his music early on. The impetus for the project came about in 2019 after discussions with his friend and fellow songwriter Megan McCormic finally came to fruition after several years of preliminary discussion. He had also had a similar conversation with his friend Ethan Ballinger, whose parents had been in a band called the Cluster Pluckers, an East Tennessee old-time string band. Cruz and his brother Billy, who also became a successful musician, would attend picking parties where the Cluster Pluckers played.
 
The three reconnected at lakeside retreat in Bristol in 2019 and it was there that the idea gelled to finally pursue a project.
 
It was the latest in a series of steps taken throughout his life, since the age of 15, in which music has served as his calling card. He was given the opportunity to play fiddle tunes at the home of the father of Bluegrass, Bill Monroe, and took another turn when he began playing keyboards with the Barnum & Bailey Circus in Mexico. He achieved national acclaim when he co-founded Robinella and the CC Stringband with his then-wife, singer/songwriter Robinella. Collaborations with John Oates, Jim Lauderdale, Langhorne Slim, and The Turnpike Troubadours, brought his efforts to the Billboard and Americana radio charts, while also reaping several Independent Music Awards and a nomination for the Americana Music Association’s Emerging Artist of the Year award.
 
In the process, he also has had the distinction of performing at the Grand Ole Opry some 40 times.
 
At age 47, Contreras finds himself juggling multiple responsibilities, both personally and professionally. Newly married to wife Molly and living in Maryville Tennessee, he’s the father to a 19-year-old son and a seven-year-old that he’s very much involved in caring for.
 
‘It's a lot more nuanced and probably more complicated than that’ Contreras explains. ‘I tend to make this up as I go as far as what's next. I focus on whatever project I'm on. I’m producing an album with a Knoxville artist, Erick Baker, so tomorrow, I'll head over to Nashville. This weekend, I’ll be working on his upcoming record and we'll be working through March. So, I've got my producer hat on for that. Then I get in the van next week and I go to Texas, and I'm playing in Luckenbach. I'm also playing in Houston and then I'll be recording in Austin with Jonathan Tyler. I suppose that I do think of myself as a solo artist now, but that includes playing with a band. It’s kind of a nice breakthrough that I made here recently in that I'm booking my summer tour, and it's going to be billed as ‘Cruz Contreras in the Black Lillies’.”
 
Contreras had previously told this interviewer that at least one on the reasons why he decided to go solo was his dissatisfaction with the way The Black Lillies were headed. Now however it appears now that he’s still intent on keeping the ties I intact, albeit in a different firm.
 
‘Technically speaking, half of the band is the original Black Lillies’ he said. ‘And two of the guys that I’m playing with, I started playing with in 2020, and then again in 2023. For creative purposes, it’s awesome. If you have a group of people that have started together and are always on the same point in their journey, you everybody is on the same page. I'm the old timer, and I've been there for how many years, so I got a guy that started with me nine years ago, and I got a guy that started with me four years ago, and everyone's bringing something different to the table. And it allows the project and the music to keep evolving. It's kind of just the way it worked out, but it's been a really nice kind of blessing’.
 
Contreras admitted that he didn’t know where it would lead, but that he’s will to see where it will go. In fact, an unreleased Black Lillies album his set for release later this year. ‘I’m kind of just going to feel it out while touring out west, which is something I do every summer. There's still a lot of demand for the band out there. The Black Lillies are my band. So, this is the perfect way to do it. We did take the hiatus in 2019 when covid happened and everything hit the fan. So yeah, it's been a lot to reconsider. But I'm pretty excited to get that back out there. We'll certainly play some of the old material and then start looking at maybe recording some new music in the future’.
 
Indeed, Contreras seems to be keeping an open mind about what may actually evolve as the tour unfolds.
 
‘Don't get me wrong’ he cautioned. ‘I definitely have kind of let it sit dormant for a while so I don't really know. We'll see. But, yeah, by the time the idea occurs to you, it's pretty much time to do it. Again, it builds on the brand that’s already there. The songs are there. The songs are mine, and I'm singing them like anyways’.
 
He also seems to hint at a bit of nostalgia as far as those early days of being in the band are concerned. ‘The Black Lillies were definitely a hard touring band’ he reflects. ‘And when I started the band, part of the reason was that I wanted to see the country and get away. You know, it's funny. You can simultaneously run towards something and run away from something. And I think I was definitely doing that. We always toured in a van and we spent a lot of time out west’.
 
Nevertheless, being that Cosmico is in fact his first official solo album, one might wonder if The Black Lillies’ sound still retained any sort of hold over his psyche.
 
‘I recorded this album in 2019, which is now a long time ago’ he reflects. “So, this was a completely unique situation for me. I recorded it the last year that we were touring as The Black Lillies. I thought that I could do both. What's the big deal about making a solo record, I asked myself. We’ve got the band. But as I was beginning the process to record that solo record, the wheels kind of fell off the operation and the writing was on the wall. So we agreed to fulfill our obligations and play to the end of the year and go out on the best terms possible, which we did’.
 
Still, the arrival of the pandemic upset the plans as they progressed. ‘Everything changed really fast’ Contreras continues. ‘So, then I had to deal with coming to terms with the business side of things with the band as well. And I got married in 2020 and we moved back to Maryville, where I’m living now. So, it's taken a while to figure out how to release the record. We self-released it, but it just took a lot of time. There were a lot of a lot of behind-the-scenes challenges’.
 
Fortunately, the alum emerged as he had envisioned it and looking back on it, he’s pleased with what he and his collaborators created and conceived.
 
‘There's a lot of brain in this record, as well as a lot of heart’ he insists. ‘And they're both working together. It's a smart record. I love that when I listen to it, I'm not thinking ‘oh, that was a great guitar solo, or that was a great pedal steel break.’ It’s more like a wall of sound. There are so many layers to it. And when I, when I have the opportunity to listen to it, I always hear something new’.
 
That’s an interesting comment considering the fact that it’s often hard to be objective when it comes to judging one’s own work.
 
‘Sometimes when you write, you might write in reaction to something new’ Contreras reflects. ‘This was my chance to make a solo record and figure out what do I want to say? There are a lot of reoccurring themes on the record, and a lot of it has to do with change. I was at a point in my life where I was starting to be on this treadmill and I was going through these motions and not getting the results that were gratifying or satisfying, or that I was happy with. Honestly, I didn't know how to get out of that rut. I didn't really even know what I had wanted, but I knew I didn't want to be doing it anymore. So it was like, okay, just stop what you're doing. And that is the thing that was definitely one of the reasons for making the album’.
 
As the title itself suggests, Cosmico came to symbolize a breakthrough in a sort of psychic sense. ‘Cosmico is the Spanish word for ‘cosmic’ Contreras explains. ’The way the project came together was very cosmic. It’s like the stars lined up in everybody's lives…I drink very little these days, but I definitely used to drink in excess in order to cope and deal and process or not process and simply numb out. But if you’ve got a guitar, and you can write songs, and you've got friends and good drinking buddies, it’s like being in therapy all the time. I'm not advocating that and I don't want to glamorize that. But that was my approach. And I at least I was going to have something to show for it. So now I’m in a different space now as far as creating, trying to create from a healthy, much healthier foundation’.
 
Indeed, the past had a very definite effecting he present, and one that clearly remains top of mind.
 
‘It's funny, I suddenly realized when covid happened and the shutdown that I could no longer go to work, and I could no longer make a paycheck, I no longer had connection with people’ he reflects. ‘You know, there's so much connection in music, especially when you're playing festivals, and you are part of the circuit and a community, and it’s often a very spiritual experience, especially if you're on stage, and you're kind of communing with the fans. You feel like you're very connected to the universe.  So, when that disappeared, there definitely was a moment where I was thinking, maybe I need to go to church’.
 
In a sense then, the new album offered a kind of spiritual rebirth. ‘I hope it's a solid foundation’ he says. ‘I'm proud of it. I feel it’s just a quality level of craftsmanship and with the attention that was given to it and the talent that was shared in that record, it’s all the more reason why I'm proud of it, I don't want to say I don't care if anybody ever hears it, but the thing that I really needed out of it was to just know that I can do it. And I could be part of a team that can create that and just give myself that confidence to move forward’.
 
 
Listen and buy the music of Cruz Contreras from AMAZON
 
For more information head over to the Cruz Contreras website