FRESH WIND SESSION No. 1
Robert Quijano
Recording Dates: 26 July 2021 & 26 June 2024
KNCE 93.5 FM Premiere: 30 June 2024
Substack Premiere: 5 July 2024
In July of 2021, Robert Quijano was the first musician in Taos that I recorded for a Fresh Wind Session. At the time, I was still figuring out the format for the sessions, and we only ended up recording three songs and a short interview. As I’ve been going through the process of releasing the Fresh Wind sessions on Substack, I invited Robert back into the studio to flesh out the session with 5 more songs, and a more in-depth interview. Here’s a polaroid from that session in 2021:
Robert Quijano is undoubtedly one of the hardest working musicians in Taos. With his traditional group, The Arcane Ramblers (Fresh Wind Session No. 12), he often performs 3 to 4 shows a week - including a weekly set as the house band at the Taos Farmer’s Market, where they perform every Saturday from 8 to 10 AM. That group’s debut album, available here on Bandcamp, is actually an excerpted version of the Fresh Wind Session I recorded with them in 2022. He also recently joined the progressive rock group The Second Wind Endeavor (fronted by Michael Virga, Fresh Wind Session No. 22). But, this session focuses on a different side of Robert’s musical world: that of his work as a singer-songwriter.
Growing up in Los Angeles, Robert was inspired to pick up the guitar in his late teens when he fell thrall to the rise of the freak folk scene, especially the compositions and guitar stylings of Devendra Banhart. Throughout his twenties, Robert played in a number of groups in the underground scenes that came and went throughout the 2010s in LA, many with Dakota Hall Scott (Fresh Wind Session No. 29). Before he left California for Taos, he recorded some of his compositions for the first time on a debut album called Greatest Hits, which can be found on Bandcamp. The album was recorded at the Zorthian Ranch, where Tara Zorthian (Fresh Wind Session No. 24) first broached the idea of Robert and his partner Megan Wood (Fresh Wind Session No. 26) moving to Taos.
As you’ve likely gathered, Robert has been the person through whom I’ve met a number of the artists that I’ve recorded Fresh Wind Sessions with, a gateway or central hub of the matrix system of the Taos music scene. And yet, one of the curious aspects of knowing Robert has been seeing how often he puts his energy toward serving things other than his own songwriting. Despite being one of the driving forces behind the short-lived but influential Taos Songwriters’ Guild, it wasn’t until the group had been meeting for a few months that Robert began to write new compositions to be workshopped within the context of the group. Of the eight compositions that now make up his Fresh Wind Session, only two date from after the lockdown era of the pandemic.
Which is not to say that Robert hasn’t been busy with other kinds of composing. Off mic, he told me about the plan to record an album of 24 original compositions in the experimental bluegrass genre that he’d recently written. And, in addition to his composition work, there’s a lot to be said for the intense study Robert is currently engaged in within a variety of folk traditions.
I hope this session will take the listener on a panoramic journey through Robert’s song world, capturing an artist in the midst of birthing a new artistic self.
12: Fresh Wind Session No. 1 Redux: Robert Quijano