We were lucky to catch up with Chris Del Camino recently and have shared our conversation below.
Chris, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. We’d love to hear about when you first realized that you wanted to pursue a creative path professionally.
Although my musical inklings really begin on saxophone when I was around 10 years old, the first time I started to envision a professional music career was in high school when I began composing instrumentals on the computer. I used to link up with other musicians in an awesomely nerdy way–the text based internet chat protocol, IRC. I was part of the PC demoscene which would hold competitions on IRC where you’d have 30 to 120 minutes to compose a tune from scratch based on a “pack” of samples (drum sounds, basses, leads, chordal instruments, etc). We’d leave our names off our work, and the participants works (except our own) and a winner would be announced based on these votes. Fun times. From my reputation partly thanks to these competitions, I made connections which helped me land a few budget PC game soundtrack contracts in high school, later leading up to some higher profile GameBoy & GameBoy Color games.
Alongside my love of composing on the PC, I also began playing in bands in high school–starting with a traditional ska band named The Legends of Brass, lol. I would compose tunes for the band, score charts for all the horn players and we had some pretty memorable shows in San Diego, Orange & LA county back in the day. Onward to college where I kept playing in bands and I really came to appreciate performing in front of an audience, playing raging keg parties in my college town, and being a part of a team making music together. These two lanes of composition & performing have fully joined forces now that I’ve been co-writing, producing & nationally touring with the reggae/pop act I helped found, HIRIE. So I continue to collaborate, compose, perform, and have now been releasing songs of my own as a singer-songwriter as well, which is super exciting for me.
Chris, 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?
For sure! I am mostly known in the American reggae-rock scene as touring member of reggae-pop act, HIRIE. We’ve recently toured with Stephen Marley, last summer with Dirty Heads & Sublime with Rome, and tons of other tours in support of some awesome acts like Rebelution, Slightly Stoopid, Michael Franti, Matisyahu. It’s been a pretty epic 2010’s for us, having started in 2013 and powering through the pandemic and all, with our 4th full length album coming out this fall. We’re based in San Diego, where we just about all initially met.
I’ve been a primary collaborator of Trish, the lead singer. since a year before inception and it’s been a super rewarding journey from our first tour with San Diego heavy hitters Tribal Seeds which helped kick off our national exposure. I love collaborating on songs for our albums as well as crafting super memorable moments for our live sets. We’re all about breaking free from the recordings when we play live and love mashing up our music kinda like a DJ or EDM music do. So one minute we’ll be playing a tune of ours everyone loves and morph it into a Skrillex trap remix of a Kendrick Lamar song, or building up a song into 20 seconds of Korn inspired nu metal, haha. We have a lot of fun on stage!
As a songwriter, over the last few years I’ve been branching out and co-writing with individuals and groups near and far, from my buddy Ozan in Istanbul to friends in Canada, Colombia and beyond. I’m looking to grow my career as a musician into the songwriting arena, writing songs for myself as an artist, as well as other bands and artists, and for film & tv. My first performance as a solo act was just about a month ago at the California Roots Festival in Monterey and I’m looking forward to releasing more songs in 2022 and playing some more solo shows.
One other side hustle that has helped keep me afloat during the pandemic when shows came to an end is voiceover work. I’ve been doing voiceovers for YouTube channels as well as corporate related material. It was a pretty good fit since I have been producing and recording music for over 10 years, I’ve got all the sound equipment, I just had to kick my voice into high gear a bit for the work, which also kinda aided my singing voice. Voiceover, alongside session work as a saxophonist and touring with HIRIE are what sustain me as a creative.
One of the things that sets me apart from other music professionals is the breadth and diversity of my musical skills and experiences. I’ve done live shows, live set production & MD’ing, then studio and production work. I’ve studied world music (specifically Latin, Balkan, Middle East) along with all the reggae, rock and pop, I’m a multi-instrumentalist (saxophone, guitar, flute, piano, accordion) and vocalist with theory chops, a well honed ear, with songwriting lyrics and melody, collaborating, arranging, engineering & producing experience. So I can really step in and help with a client, band or artist at any step of the process, or help them fill just about any gap they might be needing some extra help in. So yeah, I’m looking forward to the roaring 20’s (haha) to see what kind of new challenges and opportunities lay in store!
What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?
I used to think it was super cool to be self-taught. Probably because I didn’t receive saxophone lessons for most of my school years, because my family couldn’t really afford them. Luckily I was fortunate to receive some saxophone lessons just before graduating high school, as well as a handful of guitar lessons. From those experiences and the growth I saw, I’ve always taken a pro-active approach to my growth as a musician. You can really learn just about anything if you’re patient with yourself, but if you can take even one or two lessons initially, it sets you up so much more than learning on your own. If you wait to take lessons, you likely have to unlearn bad form and technique, so it’s like having to take steps back just to move forward again. So I always recommend someone at least take a handful of initial lessons, even if they can’t afford ongoing lessons in the beginning. And as a professional, it’s always motivating to be working with others with a similar growth-oriented mindset. You’ve gotta be willing to recognize the areas you lack or need growth in, so then go out and find ways to get better at it–seeking lessons, mentors, courses, alongside the practice and the passion.
Can you share your view on NFTs? (Note: this is for education/entertainment purposes only, readers should not construe this as advice)
I’m super intrigued by NFT’s but I’m definitely a bit leery of going “all in.” I know there will be some super awesome use cases coming up in the future, and I’ve of course been trying to keep tuned into what’s in store with NFT’s musically. I heard of a project where a song’s components (the drum track, the bass track, the vocals, etc) were “parted out” into NFT’s and the owners can change or modify these parts and the “blockchain song” (or whatever I suppose you’d call it) would be also modified. So, like a constantly morphing song composed of these separate NFT’s the owners can mess with.
I’ve also been excited to be helping out on an NFT game called Monsterbuds, doing sound design & music for it. So yeah, I’m definitely down to get involved and see where the journey leads on that front.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.chrisdelcamino.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chrisdelcamino/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/chrisdelcamino
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chris-del-camino-33223310/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/CHRISdelCAMINO
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5H6tAlCSWKh4Tl8dDyFoWA
Image Credits
Image of Chris with hand drum by Laurel del Camino Images with flute, sax by Chance Rajkowski Image of guitar singing by Daniel Hansen / Impressions Studio Image of HIRIE band in circle by Carly Cristello / Snappin Necks Photography Image of Trish of HIRIE with Chris del Camino by Jamey Jetton Image of Chris at Sonic Ranch Studio by Jamey Jetton Image of Chris black and white with guitar by Laurel del Camino