We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Monty Cime a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Monty, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today One of the toughest things about progressing in your creative career is that there are almost always unexpected problems that come up – problems that you often can’t read about in advance, can’t prepare for, etc. Have you had such and experience and if so, can you tell us the story of one of those unexpected problems you’ve encountered?

Unexpected problems come up all the time. From last-minute band dropouts to band members having conflicting plans, being a musician will quickly teach you to not only expect, but plan around the unexpected. Ultimately, though, what will make the difference is how you handle both yourself and the situation. There are many times where you’d probably be morally in the right to have a meltdown over something not going right and complaining that you had no fault in it, but if your goal is to work with people more than once then this is something that should be proactively avoided. A lot is going to not go your way, but in the pursuit of playing shows, being an agreeable person is going to get you a lot further than being a good band. This is to say, you can be incredible as a band, but if you’re all mean and hard to work with, it’s just not going to be easy getting a show.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

A year ago now, in July 2022, I released my debut album, The Independence of Central America Remains an Unfinished Experiment, which you can listen to on any streaming platform, but for posterity, the Spotify link is here — https://open.spotify.com/album/2Cg0Wh6Eyhzd7pEeXMhGjl?si=9P0hdAFvSYCg-8QjpXBrAg

Since then, I’ve played numerous shows all throughout Southern California and even Las Vegas, put out a split titled Trans Folk: A Four-Way Split which features, as the title would suggest, a selection of widely differing folk music, each track coming from trans musicians, which can also be listened to on streaming —

This summer, I am releasing a follow-up EP of sorts to my debut album titled Laurels of the End of History. It’s a little anachronistic to the debut in some ways, kind of made as a response to certain criticisms I heard popping up more often than others. Not as an admission of defeat, moreso as a deconstruction and recuperation of them, such as the “messy instrumentation” or “boring intermissions” or something of the sort, right? It’s a little under 20 minutes, so ten minutes less than my debut, and to compensate for this, I made sure that no second goes to waste. Again, on my own terms. It’s got all sorts of instrumentation, from western classical to traditional Andean and Afro-Indigenous, and I researched so much about western classical arrangement as well as the rhythmic soul of Afro-Peruvian jazz, candombe, and Caribbean folk–just to name a few–to create something that is both a fusion of and acceleration past genre. Just one song features tenable influence from milonga, a Rioplatense folk style and rhythm, calypso, candombe, psych rock, and post-punk, seamlessly, all at once.

The end result is a suite-like experience, where individual tracks surrender themselves wholly to a grander order which constantly reveals more of itself to the listener up until and even including the very end of the project. Equal parts art project and science experiment.

Looking back, are there any resources you wish you knew about earlier in your creative journey?

I think one of the most universal constants regarding music nowadays is the networking capabilities of a local DIY show. When you start out as an artist, you can spend as much time in the world as you’d like in marketing and promotion–you can send 200 emails to college radio stations and blogs and all sorts of publications, and sure! It will probably get you somewhere, but 1. It will probably not get your band on lineups in local venues
2. The time you spend planning all this, likely by yourself if you’re an independent musician, is not worth the results, especially in comparison to, as I said before, just going to local shows and meeting people.
Post-Internet, and especially post-pandemic, a lot of the industry has transitioned to a model based around growth being a prerequisite to landing gigs. And for those scenes, it’s brutal! But with this in mind, it becomes all-the-more important to remember the power of a local community.

For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?

Being an artist, to me, is distinguished from being a musician with the criteria of intent. Musicians can play, but artists can create. Which is to say, being an artist requires a much more proactive approach to music. For me, I think a lot about what I’m doing musically, how it fits in to the movements and individuals which came before me, and both what the people before me did well and why it worked to create a basis for transgression.

“How can I change this? How can I adapt this to the present? If there are any glaring flaws in an otherwise great concept, how can I fix this? Or, vice-versa, if there are great concepts within a project that is perhaps poorly realized, how can we adapt the good and leave out the bad?”

It’s a very rigorous approach to creation, and one that results in a lot of time being poured into each musical concept as it slowly forms itself into what is recognizably a “song.” By far, for me, that initial feeling of “oh my God, finally, it finally works as I envisioned it” is the single most rewarding aspect of being an artist. It’s like spaceship launch day for a rocket scientist. The satisfaction is unparalleled.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.montycime.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/montycime
• Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/cimebarrilete
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@montycime
• Blog: https://www.cime.casa

Image Credits
Main image: Anisa Salazar Images 1-2, 4 – Joe Joseph K (@joe_joseph_k_photography) Image 3 – Nevaeh Blanco (@nevaehsincere)