2021 has been one hell of a year, but the silver lining for me has been my finally having gotten myself back into something like a songwriting groove. It has been decades since I was last in a place like that. But now I got an itch — a fever, if you will. And cure is… something that has some mf’ing cowbell in it.
Following in the theme of remotely-recorded music with friends, and after some beers with the involved parties this summer, I got inspired to write a song with Uri Nieto for Los Pandejos. Pandejos are a “Pandora band” that I’ve been lucky enough to be part of for several years, peopled by some crazy MIR data scientists from Catalonia (Uri, and Oscar Celma) and Drexel University (Steve Essinger), plus a few other of our very talented mates at the office. I myself actually snuck into the band originally because Uri was held up in the EU during what was supposed to be the debut of the group at 2015 Pandora Performs, so I filled in for him (big goddamn shoes, those) and I guess I have been grandfathered in ever since.
Anyway, Pandejos historically has only played covers of various “shitty old man rock” (as Oscar likes to put it) e.g. ACDC, Zep, Iron Maiden, Foo Fighters, Kiss, etc.
It’s probably obvious that we’re a few beers in at this point, which is hard to avoid at these things. In any case we’ve had a ridiculous amount of fun at these Pandora gatherings, but never played outside of that context, and never wrote any original material. Now I’m the last remaining “original” member of the band still at the company, and now that work is virtual and we’re all scattered across the globe, it seems like it’ll be a while before there’s an opportunity to do something like this in person again. But beers with Uri and Oscar led to thinking and that it was time we made some shitty old man rock of our own.
Thus was born “How Hard.” I sketched it out and wrote the choruses, and in no time Uri filled in the verse lyrics and delivered a stack of terrifyingly awesome vocal tracks. Steve on bass, and Chris Horgan on drums. Oscar wasn’t able to contribute this time what with getting ramped up at his new job at Spotify, but he can contribute by maintaining widgets like this.
And at Bandcamp:
Steve Essinger – bass
Chris Horgan – drums
Oriol Nieto – vocals
Damon Wood – guitars and a teeny smattering of bg vox
Special credit:
Òscar Celma – air guitar
Sean Curry – air cowbell
Written by Oriol Nieto & Damon Wood