Gabe Soriano: HOME

Yesterday was a great day. A day that I am proud of. Yesterday, I digitally released my first full-length album as a solo artist. Throughout my life, I have recorded with many bands in many places: sweaty hardcore in a living room, spicy funk in a garage, poppy ballads in a soundproofed room in Hollywood. And with each new recording, I learn something more about the process. Music is a beautiful art, and when you play music live, you are serving it raw, upfront, un-edited. It is a once in a lifetime performance every time you perform because you never go back to it, you can never replicate it. When you create music in a studio, you are taking every aspect of the song and analyzing it over and over and over because it will last your entire lifetime, and (hopefully) then some. The studio is where music merges with permanence. Most people that buy a CD never see the band live, and if they do it is usually only a handful of times in their entire life. What people go back to is the recorded material… the records. That is why records are so important: they create a bookmark for the life of any musician. Look at Bob Dylan. That dude has so many fucking albums, it’s crazy. And in each album you can hear his progression… his descent into music and into himself. Many bands have been able to showcase this progression in their albums: Led Zeppelin, The Beatles, Thrice, Incubus, Pink Floyd, Radiohead, etc… Most of the time, bands and singers are revealed for who they truly are in the studio.

“The Sailor & The Siren” was born in December 2009. I had come back from tour a couple of months prior, and I received some very sad news: my grandmother was dead. Her name was Bobbie Grinstead and she was a wonderful woman. She lived a modest life and took joy out of little things like her Chihuahuas and the color pink. She was a strong believer in the Christian faith and she died peacefully. My grandmother left me $5,000 when she died. I couldn’t believe it. Here I was, in debt from tour and freaking out about having to pay rent in a week when all of a sudden, a check arrives at my house for five grand. I thought a lot about what I wanted to do with the money, what my grandma would have wanted me to do with the money. I realized that the best thing I could do would be to do what I love: create music. All in all, I spent around $3,000 to record this album. I spent about 20 days in the studio over the course of 7 months. There were times that I was so frustrated and impatient with the album. But then I realized that I have all the time in the world to make it right, and it’s not done until it feels done. The album is finally complete over half a year after I began recording it.

All of the songs from the new album are available for free download in MP3 form in the music section of this website. If you downloaded the old versions of the 3 songs I put up a couple of months ago, you should delete those and download the updated versions. Thank you all for your support over the years. This is definitely my best work so far and I hope that I can say that next time around too. Please feel free to email me at gabesoriano@hotmail.com with any comments, criticisms, checks for $100,000... Whatever you want!!!! Be on the lookout for the next tour and… no… could it be??? Yes… The first Gabriel Soriano DVD. Effing ay cotton… effing ay. Xoxo Guuuuaaabbo

FIRST AND FOREMOST, to anyone who cares, I apologize for the lack of updates since December. It's been about 5 months since my last blog and a lot has happened since then and I fully intend on boring you all to death with the details reaally soon but for now........

NEW MUSIC!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
As the ridiculous title of this mini-blog exclaims, I have some brand spankin' new music to share with all of you. Now I know I was supposed to be done with the album like 2 months ago but this is my first full-length album and I want to make sure it is as perfect as I can make it. I am seriously only $350 (two-studio days) away from finishing the album. I plan on officially finishing the album by the end of this month, then getting the physical pressing of the CD completed by the end of summer. But for now, head on over to the MUSIC section of this website and check out the 3 new songs I posted. Even those ones aren't finished, but they are the closest to being done. Thanks for your time, stay tuned for a real update. xoxoxo Guabbo

I’ll start this off by saying I should have written this a month ago. I had every intention to come home from tour and write an epic blog about my journey and summarize my experience into some over thought metaphor but the truth is I just haven’t had the time. Actually, that’s a lie. I haven’t had the desire. No. Wait. That’s a lie too. The honest to god tall-and-skinny of it is that I’ve been afraid to write this. I’ve been afraid that I’ll fail to do justice to what I’ve been through. I fear that somehow, the very essence of what I’ve seen will be lost in translation. It’s funny. I’ve been home for a month and now, for some reason, I have begun writing this and far be it from me to stop. So, here goes….

Doing two tours in a row was definitely a massive endeavor. A lot of people have the misconception that touring is all booze and women and rock n’ roll. Well maybe it’s that if you’re Kings of Leon or Aerosmith but when you’re Gabriel Soriano it goes a bit different. Many, many nights are spent cold, hungry, broke, tired, uncomfortable, and alone. The part of it that is actually enjoyable is playing music and traveling. The small commodities that we take for granted seem like decadent luxuries on tour. But the lack of those things is not even close to being the focus of this undertaking. In fact, their lacking is much like a fasting. When you fast, you allow yourself to purify. You allow your mind to step away from survival mechanisms and step into a world of new awareness, new priority. You give yourself the chance to see past your next meal and to not be controlled by your hunger. And that is what touring is, the chance to look past money or comfort or even basic hygiene. It’s the chance to really absorb your surroundings. A soft sunset over the Oregon coast. A windy afternoon atop a hill in San Francisco. A gloomy rain falling on Seattle. All of these things are sharper, clearer, when they become your nourishment, when they become your reason to wake up. And there is no familiar bed in between. Hell there isn’t even a bed at all. More like a fold-out backseat bench that’s been in use since 1995. There is no comfort, no souvenirs, no appetizers. There is no separation between days and nights other than music. There is no separation between places other than a road passing by your windshield. And all of these things are basically moments; a sequence of events chopped up into what’s important. They are the moments that act as bookmarks in your life. The moments that divide the flood of images and sounds you experience everyday. They are the moments that remind you that you are capable of appreciating such beauty and contrast. I’ve been blessed to see this small stretch of Earth. I know there are places considered to be more majestic and romantic than the Pacific Northwest but nevertheless, I have felt grace in her arms.

I know I have a tendency to speak in broad terms, trying to encompass the entirety of whatever I’m trying to convey in a simile, a sentence, a written image. I know when I speak in specific detail, I tend to overstate the sentiment, over-describe the description. But trying my best to balance my words in between these two extremes, I can honestly say that every day of the tour was a blessing, a prayer to the soul, an unpaved road. When I close my eyes, a series of images flickers before me. I see a hot chai tea latte set against the backdrop of a flooded sky. I see a crowded bar serving as a halfway station for lovers and fighters. I see a thousand year old tree, standing as an anchor for the sky. I see Seattle, steaming at the cracks like a kettle. But all of these things are fading too. They are cooked down and reduced, condensed, evaporated into a flutter of words that I’ll tell my friends to convince them I was there. Jesus Christ is that the best we can hope for? A fucking story? A show-and-tell? But then I remember that these things actually happened. I remember that my friends and family were the last thing on my mind when I was booking the tour. I remember that I am chasing my own dream for my own life. Any details that become faded by passing days are mere shadows, silhouettes, remnants of a memory. But the most important detail remains: I took an abstract concept out of my head and thrust it into this world, turning it into a reality that I lived and breathed. Something I could touch and taste and smell. And even though the feeling of the steering wheel is gone from my hands, the taste of Oregon rain is gone from my tongue, and the sound of a San Francisco morning has faded from my ears, I can still FEEL these things. I can still FEEL what I felt when I was out there, carving my way through the thick earth.

The drive home was insane. Trevor and I played a show on Friday, October 16th in Seattle, WA. We finished up around 10:00p.m. and decided it would be best to make the 1200 mile drive back to Santa Barbara, CA immediately. Why?! Why not? I got some coffee, Starburst, and beef jerky and proceeded to drive south on I-5 throughout the night. I listened to about a dozen albums in entirety as I drove through Washington and Oregon, ending with the album “Vheissu” by Thrice. If you haven’t heard that album then you’re a fucking moron, but for those of you that haven’t, the album ends with a song called “Red Sky” which talks about a blooming dawn that brings redemption to the enduring struggle brought on by darkness. And wouldn’t you know it? Right as the song comes on, I see a sign that says “Welcome to California”. I keep driving, curving with the road, the song slowly builds, louder, my van is hugging the edge of a small mountain, the chorus begins… “Can you see the sky turn red? As morning’s light breaks over me”… my eyes see a tiny sliver of light slipping into the sky, followed by another, and another, until the entire sky is just a dream. You know that time of morning that comes right before you actually see the sun? The moment where it could easily be sunrise or sunset, the moment when the sky really shows you her palette? That’s the moment I was drowning in, 5:50 a.m. at the top of California watching a new day unfold before me. The first day where I could look back and say “I did it.” And I guess, in the end that’s what touring is. Something to do. Something that I do. Something that will always make me feel fulfilled and accomplished and redeemed. I had already driven 8 hours; 13 hours later, I was home.

All in all, the tours were a success. I sold some CD’s, made some videos (more of which will be posted soon), met some people, saw some sights, wrote some songs, couldn’t ask for more. There were so many people who helped me along the way it would be almost impossible to list them all and I won’t even attempt to right now because it’s late and I’m tired. As for future plans, I am very excited to say that I will be heading back into the studio in two days to record my debut full-length. It’s going to be about love, life, loss, and everything in between. I am very excited to be getting some new music out there. The songs will be posted before Christmas. Until then, I will be playing a few shows in Southern California before the end of the year. Next tour is scheduled for June and should go all summer. I hope to see you all again next year, and now, to leave you with a little Longfellow:

Tell me not, in mournful numbers,
Life is but an empty dream!
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.
Life is real! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal;
Dust though art; to dust returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul.