Central American based The Saint Cecilia made their ACL debut on the first weekend of the festival, marking their second festival spot and first performance in Texas. Amidst the chaos and celebration of music, the Costa Rican rock band took a moment to sit down with us and discuss their excitement, musical influences and journey as a group.
Although most modern rock bands have shifted away from the classic sounds inspired by the 60s and 70s, one band is carrying the torch for the classic rock sound, and that’s Costa Rican born The Saint Cecilia. The group consisting of French descending Romain Garriot (lead guitar) and Guillaume Devigne (bass), and Costa Rican natives Stewart Heigold (lead vocals/guitar) and Daniel Solorzano (drums), came together over their passion for rock and driven energy to create great music. The Saint Cecilia chopped it up with us and talked about what makes the band tick.
ORB: Describe the influences of The Saint Cecilia’s sound. Who and what influences your music?
RG: Influences would be mostly 60s music. Rolling Stones, Beatles, Creedence Clearwater Revival, and 90s music. That would be the main influence from my point of view.
DS: My main influences have always been rock from the 60s and 70s. I was raised as a metalhead and then my rebellion was to listen to punk music, but my biggest thing was Rush, for sure. All Rush, all the time.
SH: I love soul. I love James Brown. I love Mick Jagger. I love Robert Plant. I love The Beatles. I love John Lennon. I love Jim Morrison. I love all these bands and I don’t know, we’re trying to make our own sound. We’re trying to be original, as much as we can and we just try to be honest with our sound, but all of those bands are very big influences for us, for sure.
GD: They’ve already told every kind of influence that we have from 60s, 70s, 90s, to 2000s indie revival rock.
SH: There’s always something good from every decade, you know.
GD: Except the 80s, in rock.
SH: Well I love Rod Stewart and Micheal Jackson.
DS: And Frank Ocean!
ORB: I noticed that you guys named a lot of US and UK based artists. Do you have artists that you draw from your regional countries as well, or do your regional countries draw most of their influences from American and British music?
DS: We have this guy named Walter Ferguson from the Caribbean part of the country. It’s called Calypso, he invented the genre actually. But what I take inspiration from is the essence of doing whatever you want to do, like Stweart said, honesty, and yeah, he’s a role model.
Stewart: Yeah, the Caribbean side of our country, Costa Rica, is very rich in culture, and they love rock n roll over there also, besides reggae. Costa Rica is a very rock n roll inspired country. People love rock n roll. People have always been inspired by rock n roll in general and all the biggest artists in the world, when they do a world tour they come there, they play there, and that’s basically how we’ve always been inspired. I mean they’re French (Guillame and Roman). But we love rock n roll, that’s what we do.
ORB: Yeah I hear that! How do you implement your Costa Rican and French influences into your sound? Or are there any regional musical styles that you draw from, or are you mostly taking inspiration from the artists that you listen to directly?
RG: Mostly, I was raised in Normandy and I was only raised on British music, later in my life American music, but mostly British music. Mostly 60s, like I said, like Creedence and Neil Young. So no influence from French music.
GD: Maybe the French side would be the way to work, the way to learn the songs and music. I’ve learned the Latin American groove from living in Central America for 20 years, so maybe I include it in that kind of sound, that kind of rhythm. You have to feel it, and I practice capoeira, which comes from Brazil, and it’s not as straight as karate, its latanier.
DS: I’d say yeah like discipline. Costa Ricans are like… we live in paradise. We’re always on vacation, so when we get discipline from the French empire… just kidding… it helps a lot.
SH: What he said is true (Daniel). In Costa Rica, there’s this whole culture to chill out. We have this saying called “pura vida” which means pure life so everyone’s late to meetings, everyone’s all laid back but Frenchies, they’re very straight up. They’re squarers but they made this band with the hardest Costa Ricans they could find, the hardest working. We’ve worked very hard to be here. Actually for us, coming from Costa Rica, such a small country, and being able to be apart of such a big festival in the US, just coming to the US and being able to do a tour here, pay ourselves a ticket and being able to play a show, that’s already something that is huge for us. Also, being a part of such a huge festival, the people of Costa Rica are very proud of what we’ve been doing. They feel represented and we’re very happy to be representing Costa Ricans in one of the biggest festivals in the world.
GD: We hope they’re going to know there’s rock n roll, there’s good music in Central America and Costa Rica, because there’s a lot of rock bands in Costa Rica and we would love to have them here too someday. If we can open some doors or make some bridges, that would be so cool to be a part of the music history of the country.
RG: I heard, I don’t know if it’s true but San Jose, which is the capital, has the most bands per capita in the world. There are so many bands for such a small city.
ORB: The Saint Cecilia’s music varies lyrically and instrumentally. How do you determine what elements drive each song?
RG: I don’t know…we work on it until we’re not bored anymore, until it’s fun.
SH: Yeah, a lot of the songs we play, I grab a guitar, try to write a song with just me singing with my voice, and then the band drops in and does their own thing or whatever. But each song, lyrically, has a lot to do with what I’m going through with my life, girls, love, and hardship. Being in a band and deciding this is what you want to do with your life, it’s actually very hard to do this and have such a big dream. We’re here but it’s not like we’re already millionaires or something. My parents probably already think I’m already making a lot of money but I’m not, and it is hard. We just dream and keep dreaming that at some point we can actually have an amazing career with our music, that’s all.
RG: Yeah basically when we do a song, it needs to be like something when you get into it and see through it all the way to the end, you need to have fun. If at some point you’re like I can’t work, we work on it until we feel like we’re having fun, and make it interesting all the way to the end.
ORB: This is your second US festival. How does it feel to be playing at one of Texas’ largest music festivals and what’s the difference between playing international festivals and ACL?
DS: It’s a big deal for sure, like we’ve been talking about. Being from Costa Rica and being here to ACL, which is a press siege festival, it’s the capital of music, it’s a great accomplishment just to be here, just to be listened to, and we’re very happy. We worked really hard for this for sure.
SH: Just the fact that there’s millions of bands in the world, I’m sure that each one of those bands would love to be here right now and be apart of this and be selected to be in this festival playing, that has so many other iconic and huge artists, we’re just so grateful to be here. And the difference between here and there, there’s no difference. This is probably one of the biggest things we’ve done in our lives and we’re just very happy.
ORB: Okay, last question, how do you like Austin so far? Do you guys have any hotspot recommendations or any places that you’ve enjoyed visiting?
RG: We just landed yesterday, so basically we saw the house that we’re staying at and here. Well, yesterday we went to a nice Italian restaurant, North Italia, so that’s the only thing we saw so far, but we have plans to put the city on fire (laughs).
SH: Yeah, people are cool as f*ck and we haven’t checked out downtown as much. We were there yesterday for the first time. We saw it at night for a little bit and then we went to the restaurant and had dinner and that’s it. We’re going to be here for another four or five days.
DS: Austin and Texas are really hot. My respect to everybody that’s living here right now because it’s really f*cking hot. Costa Rica’s really hot too but it’s not 100 to 105. But people that live here are beautiful and amazing people.
SH: Yes, beautiful girls, beautiful everything.
You can find The Saint Cecilia’s music on all streaming platforms now. If you find yourself south of the border, you can catch The Saint Cecilia opening for The Smashing Pumpkins at Parque VIVA on November 16th!
I’m a photographer currently based in Austin after recently relocating from Denver, CO. I graduated from the University of Colorado, Denver in 2019 with a degree in Business Management. I love music of all genres and have been going to live shows since I was 5 years old. Some of my favorite artist currently include Freddie Gibbs, Lola Young, Ivy Lab and Knocked Loose, but that is always subject to change.
