Oct. 17 - My musician pals

Friday afternoon I visited a friend, Andres, whom I met in Nosara and is living temporarily with his mother in the San Jose suburb of La Uruca. He’s a musician friend of Juan, an Argentine guitarist and performer who has become a close friend and whom I have been spending a lot of time with in Nosara.

I’ll digress here. I first met Juan last April, when Tigre invited me come with him to an open mike at Marlin Bill’s restaurant, where Juan was playing. We brought djembes to play along and there I also met a fellow, Darrin, who I later placed as the current principal singer with the Medicine Show, the local band rooted by Bill Macpherson on bass. The three of us played djembes as Juan played electric guitar and sang in his distinctive, throaty voice. With little experience playing percussion, and none in public, I sat a little further back and did my best to follow the rhythms and patterns of the other two. There were no more than three or four diners, so it was pretty low key but nevertheless a great time and one of those experiences that made me think, ‘this is what I came to Nosara for, part of my dream.’ This is a very exciting feeling, to feel a dream is being verified.

I was with Juan and Tigre the night of Tigre’s death, and received the phone call from Juan at 7 am the next day, May 15, and we became close friends during that period and after. The immediate days after Tigre’s death were emotionally charged, as my house became the central meeting place for friends and acquaintances to meet and share their grief.

Juan said that my faith in him and appreciation of his music gave him confidence, or something like that, and whatever it was made him especially appreciative of our friendship. I helped him do some recordings of his music using his equipment and mixer and my Apple Mac and its Garage Band program, which is surprisingly sophisticated with its features. I also set up a free website for him at MySpace, which has a section for musicians and bands that want to show off their work. It’s a work in progress, but you can see it at www.myspace.com/juanperegrino

Juan met Andres in San Jose, but Andres was working as a tour guide in Guanacaste when he came down to Nosara, via bus and hitchhiking, to join Juan for some gigs in the area. Andres played bass and they were joined by a local drummer, Jon Jon, who normally played with the Medicine Show. With not much practice, the three of them sounded pretty good together and were capable of doing some great jamming.

Their initial gig was at La Banana, the bar where Ryan and I had been serving our barbecue one or two nights a week. One of the things I like about Juan is that he is a great promoter, and he’ll pass out our homemade handbills on the beach and to anyone he sees around Guiones, and in our small community it’s not that hard to get the word out about what’s happening. While there haven’t been that many people around during our low season, he’s managed to draw some respectful audiences and my barbecue sales have benefited on the occasions that we have both worked the same venue.

Andres is a young Tico, 24 I believe, whose manic behavior ensured that evenings with him around were likely to be animated.

The new trio had Friday and Saturday night gigs in the neighboring beach town of Samara, significantly larger than Nosara and which still had a modest but fair-sized crowd available in early September. I accompanied them on their Friday night gig at Coco’s restaurant, riding along in Juan’s old GM van, which he slowly negotiated through about 12 miles of really bad dirt road with broken power steering.

After the show we sat around having some beers with Coco, and as Andres was intensely flirting with Juan’s sister-in-law Sylvia, he offended Coco with his lack of deference to him.

A few days later I learned from Juan that after there gig Saturday night, at another club in Carillo just past Samara, Andres had some sort of mental breakup and literally went crazy. Sylvia was there and it wasn’t pretty. Wow, I thought, life in the jungle can be strange.

So when I got an email from Andres, I was a bit wary. I let him know that I was in San Pedro at language school and he said he was staying at his mother’s house following some treatment related to his behavior. He sounded lonely and bit remorseful so we chatted on the phone and I agreed to visit him. I got instructions for a couple of bus connections and we had a nice reunion. He talked openly about his condition, which he said was a type 1 bipolar disorder, along with some other condition that is shared by some artists and can contribute to their creative process. He said he spent some time in a psychiatric hospital, under physical restraints at one point that coincided with his birthday, and takes medication to keep his condition under control. He told me he had been seeing a therapist who was using some alternative approaches to drugs, and has been advised that he will be walking a ‘tightrope’ and can’t drink alcohol, smoke pot, or even fall in love with a girl for fear of setting off another episode. His attraction to Sylvia, along with fatigue from little sleep and the aforementioned stimulants were all factors leading up to his breakdown.

Andres picked up his acoustic guitar and played a few of his original songs, one about love and another about the rejection of love, and his old dog shook his hindquarters, as if dancing to the music.

His dream is to be a working musician, and to pursued his ambitions in other countries where he believes there is more support for it than in Costa Rica.