The Visit El Paso Podcast is a monthly podcast discussing the City of El Paso, it's attractions, events & culture. The show is hosted by Crysti Couture, Social & Multimedia Coordinator for Destination El Paso. 


Now its 20something, and Rafa Pistola writes and plays all of these tunes…sings them all….and adds a few other instruments and things here and there, some irreplaceable humans too. Hello kind friends. oh, “as far as music goes, I remember starting to jam in early 1997 with Steve-O and Jericho in my childhood home, upstairs. My brother Tito plucking out of nowhere and that sounded real full that was also a push...Then writing a bunch of songs from the start and bouncing around Sunset Heights from my Mom and my Dad's and Our house to apartments to a couch from band spot to jam spot. Andy was the way to go with the tunes and jamming with my #1 Young Pius in the desert, late at night. In 1999 I started jamming with P-Nut, from a score with Serge, (and meeting my beautiful girl!) then add Ray-Ray then Danny and we jammed as Mashin in 1999-2000,  a bunch of rowdy/kind people on stage at the shows and at the parties and places after it all, it started like a movie. All our first real band, with the whole skool crew in the place...then off to Tucson, AZ to join the good fer’ nutin’ vermin Fewel Project...Young Willis, Steve-O, Jericho, Marko and Andy...very permitted and undefended (but silly) times sleeping in the cold/hot jam the spaces, showering at the Ott Family YMCA...living at the jam studio jamming then celebration daily, late night Mt. Lemon drives loud and happy, jamming and writing at all hours with nothing but the future ahead...we imploded and returned to El Paso, TX (most of us) and it was six years of smoke-filled and vacant shows, but the jam was always on, so much of this life is just waiting...trying, doing, growth and chaos/order and some very late night song dance jumbo parties at the Abdou Bldg in Downtown Chuck City times with Nimitz, JesusCris, Frank Fragile, Maus Trap, Mick City, Rocka, Jenna Machete adding life and times. Breaking down in Blythe Cali...sleeping in the 110 heat, sharing our Steel Reserve and leaving the truck properly trashed there...then to pawn shop city. In 2006, we stopped and in 2007 I was jamming at Chuck' E.s with The Tape Incident and Izzy V. on Rio Grande street, puro Chucoton!...some of my favorite things have been what I did with the Tapers, like early smooth honey gold radicalist live Reggeaton/Chucoton haaaaziness….and early morning cafe and strums at Izzy and Lisa's...then like lighting, during a Tape Incident smoke break, Rocka and I started playing almost instantly and Mexicans at Night (+ eventually Mig Mattox, Chuck E., Rich Rap, Brian here and there) was born...from Grant St.... and we took it far, far out, for about 5 years and toured and all...and again  bunch of boisterous/gentle people on stage at the shows and at the parties and places after it all…sleeping in happy random places, like right on the side of the highway, I mean on the highway, in a little bag, next to ants…thank you to everyone in the US-MEX who helped feed, transport and house us, you are genuinely warmly remembered often!...but we burned up and stopped, who knows, then I sat up and jammed with The Immigrant Noise in electro-prettiness and style...glamour and Shango Oscar is the truth and he’s out there!, then...Get the Honey...from 2012 to today its Get the Honey time! 3D with Aldous, Chris and Mickey. So content in this tent...years of creation and great talks and late night drives, and lifting loaves of bread, and sneaking beer into gigs, and hanging out the the car in the preshow hotbox, and singing out the parts and drinking cheap drinks in the cars/vans outside the gigs before the show, beautiful words from beautiful people coming at us, scary words from the scaries too...then, I became a square and put on a Clark Kent costume, for the truest of love, and after, like 140+ songs, I stopped writing…think I forget how to…that guy even real?”
Rafa Pistola is living in the desert, in the summertime, and looking out the widow just thinking about people, and stuff and rent and things, writing, playing music (almost all one takes, for good and bad) and finally trying at distributing, (even if only demo rough version) copies of his acoustic recordings which have been roughly compiled throughout the last 25 years that he has been happy, bummed, angry, calm, aware, dumb, moving, staying, strong, weak, nervous, thankful, confused, devoted, jaded, focused…creating, and performing music. Sound cloud, what a good thing. “I’m just thankful and happy to be alive, in this world, And we just have to repeat these things from way long ago.” (Rafa Pistola, 2012)

GRVSRS is the time traveling/b-ballin/coffee loving/nunchuking/debonair android Percussionist from planet Kepler-452b of constallation Cygnus.


The Reasonable Guns is following