Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Alex Fraile. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Alright, Alex thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. When did you first know you wanted to pursue a creative/artistic path professionally?

As a child, I discovered that I could play musical instruments, the first instrument I learned to play was piano at only 6 years old. At 10 years old I discovered that I could sing in tune. Then at 15 years old I taught myself to play guitar and that is when I felt the desire to pursue a career as a professional artist.

Alex, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

Fraile is a solo artist project of Rock music incorporating English and Spanish lyrics, I call it “Spanglish Rock”. I started self-recording my music at my home studio and by April of 2019, I released my debut album called “Hitting the wall”. Then I put together a 4 piece band and started playing shows, however the covid pandemic hit and was forced to stop. Therefore, I went back to writing new music and released my second album called “Todo Romántico” in June of 2020. But the writing didn’t end there as the pandemic was still affecting businesses and places were still restricted to hold big crowds of people, so I went on and released my third album called “Rocanrol” in April of 2021.. By September of 2021, venues started to open up so I put my band back together and started touring in cities such as Austin, Houston, San Antonio, El Paso and Denver. I have also released 4 singles after my 3 albums and continue to play shows mainly in the central Texas area with the plan to tour internationally in 2023 in Mexico and Colombia as my next milestone.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

At 25 years old, I was living in Cd. Juarez, Mexico, my place of birth. I joined a band called Solara and achieved to release an EP in CD format. The band was becoming successful so we started to write a full album, however, a very unfortunate event on December of 2010 disrupted the band’s project, my mother Marisela Escobedo (Netflix documentary “The three deaths of Marisela Escobedo) was gunned down by a hitman in front of the Chihuahua State Capital building for protesting against the Mexican government for the murder of my younger sister Rubi, who was murdered by her boyfriend and he was released by the judges as not guilty for lack of evidence. At that point the family was threatened by the criminals and we had to flee and request political asylum in the United States, leaving everything behind. Thats when I had to endure and went from having to live in a shelter with my 2 sons and wife, then was able to find a job and save up money to rent a home in El Paso Tx, after a year I moved to San Antonio Tx and worked in a call center for 6 years, then I got a job opportunity in Austin Tx that paid well and finally was able to retake my career as an artist and started investing in recording gear to kickstart my musical projects.

How can we best help foster a strong, supportive environment for artists and creatives?

I think that musicians can create a community to support each other. As I have been playing shows, I have noticed that musicians don’t support each other by attending shows. It is understandable that there are other activities that can get in the way of supporting your colleagues shows sometimes, however we all as colleagues can make an effort to support each other in this musical journey.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://fraileofficialmusic.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/fraile_official/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Fraile777
• Youtube: https://youtube.com/channel/UCUpwhycqxqCLiCmKTDXHavw
• Other: Spotify https://open.spotify.com/artist/5AnbAiYLXeyHyIAFs45ZdB?si=inMdSLtHRwiPbEzlcHUB6g