The three members of Rivera Destino do not regret having to wait almost ten long years to be able to record their first album as a band.
“ When we started working on the album, it was when we realized that we were in the best financial and also emotional moment”, said Carlos Figueroa, who along with his colleagues spoke from San Juan, Puerto Rico, about “Besitos y besitas”, the debut album of these Puerto Ricans.
Before, these three boys had done almost everything: work as waiters, messengers and even in construction.
“We were young students without money,” said Antonio Sánchez. “It was needed to subsist and to be able to do this”.
Antonio and Carlos met during high school, and Fernando Tarrazo joined the group when they met him at university. The three studied different careers, but they were united by a passion for making music and for telling stories with their own flavor, as they explained.
“We are fans of comedy,” said Carlos . “When we were in college we watched the duet Flight of the Conchords, from New Zealand […] and we also liked Les Luthiers, from Argentina, and that was how we began to play and understand that comedy could not only be regional, but universal. ”.
The history of this band began in 2012, when the group was officially formed. In 2013 the trio decided that they would start using the platforms to make their songs known, one by one, because the budget was not enough to hire a band of musicians and record a complete album.
“With the budget we had, the only thing we could do was record a song as homemade as possible, in a cheap studio”, said Fernando.
But the videos of the songs were also important, and that implied more money and more time. And when it seemed that all the stars had aligned and the time had come to record a complete album, Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico, and in addition to having destroyed a large part of the island, it also destroyed Rivera Destino’s plans to make an album As God commands.
Then the pandemic came, which also delayed the premiere of “Kisses and little kisses” . In the end, the trio was able to record during the health crisis with the participation of figures such as ile, Ñengo Flow, Guaynaa, Paula Cendejas and Pedro Capó, among others.
The award for their tenacity was not only an album with fourteen songs –with fusions of rap, trap, pop rock and bolero–, but also their performance at the coveted NPR Tiny Desk (Home) Concert, where they premiered the hilarious song “Pancakes”.
What follows now for Rivera Destino is a tour that continues in the process of materializing, and that the planet on this occasion does not make them wait long.