Bosnian Rainbows: Omar Rodriguez-Lopez's Latest Alt-Rock Dream Team
Omar Rodriguez Lopez's latest creation is Bosnian Rainbows.
July 29, 2013— -- An hour before the clock struck Monday in Manhattan's Bowery recently, the members of Bosnian Rainbows filed onto the stage at the Bowery Ballroom. The venue was mostly filled that muggy mid-July night--about 3/4s of the way, maybe more--an impressive accomplishment for a less-than-year-old band touring on the strength of its debut album released just a month prior.
But upon closer scrutiny Bosnian Rainbows reveals itself to be an alt-rock Dream Team, in actuality. There's the experimental drummer-keyboardist Deantoni Parks of Kudu and The Mars Volta, at back. He was flanked by his Kudu and Dark Angels' band-mate, synthesizers/keyboardist Nicci Kasper. Lead singer Teresa Suarez aka Teri Gender Bender is most widely--and wildly--known as the bloodied apron-clad front-woman of Le Butcherettes, the Mexican garage punk act. And finally there's Omar Rodriguez-Lopez, the co-founder of cult bands At the Drive-In and The Mars Volta, and prolific guitarist-composer behind countless solo albums and endeavors.
Of course there would be crowds.
The quartet readied their instruments and took their places in a tight diamond shape at the center of the stage. Teri Gender Bender, barefoot, sheepishly smiled at the cheering audience, closed her eyes, and slowly breathed in the set's first notes.
Like a rainbow, Bosnian seemingly came together in an instant--but in reality, it required a chain of elemental events in order to emerge. In August 2012, Rodriguez-Lopez assembled longtime collaborators Kasper, Parks, and Teri to tour in support of his most recent album, Octopus Kool-Aid. He soon found he craved a new project altogether.
"I had had the desire to put together a collaborative group, a collective of artists whose focus would be on information and knowledge more than anything and togetherness, you know, convivencia," he explained over the phone a couple days after the Bowery show.
"This group would be comprised of bandleaders so that there would always be an equality. Four composers, four producers, four engineers, four leaders who have their own things going on and have to make a sacrifice in order to become part of the group--to become one," Rodriguez-Lopez continued.
After that tour, the band-members retreated to Germany, where they continued bonding and recorded their debut album. To hear Rodriguez-Lopez recount the process you'd almost think Bosnian Rainbows were managed by Deepak Chopra.
"The ethos of the group is that if you take care of nutrition, if you aspire to a certain quality of living, everything else is going to fall into place," he said. "If you take care of your body, mind, ideals, morals, and ethics—then everything else is just a by-product--like music."
"We had our equipment set up in a room in a studio there. It was also at the house we were living at. But we didn't touch the equipment. We spent six weeks talking, cooking for each other, sharing recipes, sharing nutritional information, talking about politics, arguing, watching movies, playing soccer. A lot of laughter. A lot of just time sitting around, going to walk in the park. Because we really stuck to that and took care of our quality of life, then the other thing happened. We were like 'oh, we have four days till we leave on tour, we should probably…okay.' And we ended up in the rehearsal room, and everything just came out," Rodriguez-Lopez concluded.
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