With their North American Outer Spaces Tour starting off in their home state of Texas at the 2024 SXSW Music Festival; Alternative Rock/Indie band, Vortxz, has grown exponentially and reaching the ears of many in the past year, blending their Hispanic/Latino roots to the music they create as exemplified in their rock version cover of Grupo Frontera’s and Bad Bunny’s "un x100to." Following two sold out shows  in Los Angeles and one in San Francisco, I was excited to finally sit down and chat with the guys before their San Diego show at the Soda Bar.

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I remember hearing a snippet of  'You Know That' pop-up on my TikTok last Summer & immediately reaching out over instagram. So I'm happy to finally connect & see you guys live. How did the creation of Vortxz come together?

Rambo: Well these two [Noe and Jon] were in a different band and I had auditioned for them. I grew up with Luar learning how to play instruments and so I asked them if they wanted to be in a band and they did. We performed our first concert and I invited Luar. He came and he brought the energy. And everybody was like, “Who is this guy?” I was like, “Oh, it's my friend…actually,he [Luar]  plays the bass." And they were like, dude, invite him to the band. I asked Luar, “Are you going to be in the band?” And he said, “Yeah.”

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Where was your band's first concert? 

Rambo: At his [Noe] house, actually. 

Noe: It was in my living room. It was just the three of us at the time [Noe, Jon, and Rambo]. We had gone together to jam out and we decided, “Let's just throw a little show at my house and invite all our friends.” So we threw the show. We got the cops called on us in  like the first 20 minutes during sound check. Our friends still showed up and everything. Luar was there and I was like, “Yo, I think I've seen him on our other friends' instagram playing bass.” That's how he got Luar. A month later after that, after that little show, we had our first official show with all four of us. That was at a park in our hometown, Pasadena, Texas. The rest is history. Now we're here in San Diego. 

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It's funny. Because I remember telling you guys, I really hope to see you guys in San Diego soon because your music just fits the San Diego vibe. How would you say the journey of the band has changed since then?

Luar: Well, it's been kind of a rough journey because we've been having to figure out what our sound is. We all come from different backgrounds and we all have very very different tastes in music. In the beginning, it was very kind of difficult to find our sound. But as we hung out more and played more together, we've been able to create something; I guess you can call it “unique” or “heard before," but not “recently." It's been a good experimental journey. 

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Being an indie band with influences such as The Smiths, what other artists would you love to credit as your influences? 

Noe: Yeah! For us in the Spanish community, Indie scene or Spanish Rock scene, there's a band called Maná. They always compare us to Maná which is from the early 90’s,late 80’s. We draw a lot of influences from those things but to be quite honest with you I think not all of us are really well versed in the old,old influences; alot of them have newer influences. I heard an interview once that said, “If you… ," I think it was like Greta Van Fleet or somebody. "...don't try to sound like your heroes, take inspiration from your heroes.” Their heroes are probably from like the early 2000s, 2010’s Indie. But then the heroes of  Foster the People or Paramore are from the 80’s,  like The Talking Heads, The Smiths, things like that. People have asked us a lot if it's an accident or if it was planned to sound like our current sound. And it's kind of both. It's kind of like a happy accident that we have sounds and tones that sound like The Smiths or the 80’s. 

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With that said, what is the ultimate goal for Vortxz? Where can we expect from Vortxz in the years to come?

Rambo: Well, our goal is to get out in the world and travel and play music for everybody. You can expect us to be more on tours. We are on our West Coast tour right now. Hopefully in the summer we'll be on our  East Coast tour and  also releasing our album, which is already recorded. We just need to wait for our mixing and mastering to send us the rest of the stuff and we can push that out. Our first body of work is our next goal. I feel like that's like every artists’ dream to just  drop like a whole body of work and see  how everyone reacts to it.

Almost reaching the end of the tour, how has the experience been so far?

Noe: The bigger cities that we got to play like LA and San Francisco are beautiful. San Diego is beautiful. Oh my goodness. Like I'm falling in love, you know? I don't want to leave California. It’s so pretty over here. And so I think we feel right at home in the places we've been to. This is our very first tour outside of Texas. So we've been to like two hours and  four hours away shows like Dallas, Austin; somewhere in that greater Texas area. This our first time being far, far away in another state, in another city. So there have been challenges. There has been some things that we're not used to, like not getting enough sleep, having to drive or having to go a few hours without eating to the next stop. Then there's also been a lot of fun memories. We're already looking at this like we're never gonna forget this. It’s been an incredible journey so far. We still have like a few more shows left. I think like three or four more shows. Four more shows, counting this one. 

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Any stories? 

Any stories? Any stories? Oh man. Wait, can we tell?  We have this one. We went to Las Vegas and we decided to explore. We stayed in old Vegas. [Like, Circus Circus? What do you mean?] No, no, no - like  old, old Vegas. We were next to a wedding chapel like there were five wedding chapels right there. We almost attended one, actually. There was one going on. We were all just talking to each other one day  and we were like, dang, we're in Las Vegas. Like, we posted a tiktok and now we're in Las Vegas. Like, isn't that so crazy? So that's like our saying right now. We posted a TikTok.  We decided to go on a  walk on  the strip. Every single step we took,  there was at least  one drop of what we think is blood. We're not sure. It was like dark red. And the scariest part is that it led all the way back to the area where we were staying. So we were like, oh my God, this is like a mystery or something.  What are we doing? So that scared us a little bit. We're not used to seeing that. We're from Houston. Like, you know Houston has its things, like road rage and all that stuff,  but we had never ever experienced something where we're just walking and it’s still going like three, four blocks. I hope they're okay. Whoever that was. 

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As we conclude our interview, anything else you guys would like to add in? 

Noe: Very excited for San Diego. It's our last show in California. And sadly, we want to stay here forever, but we're very excited for San Diego. We’re going to head out back home right after this. We'll be in Phoenix, then El Paso, and then  finish off in Houston.

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Well, right on, guys! I'm really excited to see you perform tonight because like I said, I was really looking forward to catching you guys live. This is Vortexz. 

New single ‘For You’ dropping April 5th and debut album coming out very soon!

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