Zaragoza (EFE).- The musician Javier Almazán celebrates fifteen years at the head of the musical project Copiloto, and 35 making music, with an “excursion to the past” that he sees “not as an act of nostalgia, but as a celebration, to gain momentum and continue”.
This is how he tells it in an interview with Efe in Zaragoza, where he plays this Saturday, June 17, at La Lata de Bombillas, before his last commemorative concert, which will be on July 29 at the Aragón Sonoro Festival in Alcañiz (Teruel).
Question: How were the beginnings that give rise to this celebration?
Answer: I think it was the summer of my twelfth birthday that I decided that making songs was what I wanted to do, if possible, all my life and every day. I started writing songs but without knowing how to play any instrument, like many people do, humming and recording. The following year I was able to attend some classes that were given at school and, at the age of thirteen and three chords, I put together my first band. Since then, I’ve made songs, I’ve given concerts and I’ve always been recording with different formations.
Q: And 20 years after the beginnings, Copilot arrived…
A: With Copilot I debuted maybe a little older. They were past 30, like Leonard Cohen. But with the skin of Copilot he started in 2008.
Stop to get stronger
Q: In 2021 you returned to the stage after five years of “musical silence”. ‘Abrazos salvavidas’ had very good reviews, do you think it emerged strengthened from that hiatus?
A: Yes, certainly. There are many times in life when it’s okay to stop, look around a bit and figure out what you want to do from now on. At that moment what I needed was a long break and come back doing something very traditional, being responsible for each instrument. I think it was very good for me to rediscover myself as an author and as a musician.
Now, looking forward to new work to come, I found that I had been fifteen years old and I said: it’s good to take a little excursion to the past, not as an act of nostalgia, but as a celebration, to gain momentum and continue.
Q: The next stop will be Alcañiz, at the Aragón Sonoro festival. Do you feel comfortable in those settings or do you prefer rooms?
A: Everything has its charm. Everything has its good points and few bad points. I like them both. Festivals offer you the opportunity to reach an audience that you don’t reach if they don’t know you and don’t come expressly to the venue. It also gives you the option of being with more musicians and sharing experiences. I go with the same band, although there are more square meters of stage. Perhaps the repertoire is what changes: when you play in a room you can allow yourself certain drops in intensity and work on dynamics. Depending on the time they give you at the festivals, you have to go like a guerrilla attack: go all out in no time. In addition, the public has a different temper: they are there to see what you tell them and you have to win them over.
You have to swallow, but the ideal is to be true to yourself from the beginning
Q: Your latest release is ‘Cosas que no’, where would you not go through hoops in the world of music?
A: There are many things that are not. There are many that were clear to you from the beginning, almost all of them, what happens is that many times you don’t dare because you think it’s going to work if you don’t say no: they can offer you to play in a place where you think it’s going to come out. bad but you go, due to a bad conception of the promotion and, indeed, it is horrible. At the beginning you have to swallow more things to be able to establish the foundations of a career, but it is not mandatory either: you can be true to yourself from the beginning, which is ideal.
Q: Are you working on new songs?
R: Yes, as a Copilot, I am now beginning to work on things, and also on projects of a different nature that is not pop rock: I am very interested in film music, documentary music, in new textures and more electronic sounds; I’m working with a more specific and circumstantial music that I feel like more and more.
Q: How do you like these 15 years under the pseudonym Copilot?
A: Fifteen good years. Generally good; I have enjoyed very good moments, I have met very interesting people who are very worth knowing. Very hard working people, very talented people; I’ve known a lot of idiots too -that also helps you detect them from a distance and avoid them-, but, of course, I’ll take the good things: with the experiences I’ve had and learning from the bad. So very good, for another fifteen or twenty years, for now.