The Red Pears Bring Turn-of-the-Century Rock Energy to Gramps

Putting on the Red Pears' new high-energy rock album, Better Late Than Never, one band immediately comes to mind: the Strokes. Drummer Jose Corona takes that as a compliment: "We have a shared passion for that whole era: the Strokes, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Interpol. The music seems timeless to us even if it was a little pocket of time."

Corona and singer/guitarist Henry Vargas bonded over the post-9/11 indie-rock movement, even though they were barely in elementary school when Is This It came out.

"There was a simplicity. It was almost punk how straightforward and catchy the music was. There was a rawness you don't hear in rock anymore, that New York level of attitude," Corona explains. "What rock music was from 2001 to 2007, catchy and still radio-friendly, that's the time of music we keep going back to."

To be clear, the Red Pears fourth album stands on its own. It doesn't feel like a Strokes rip-off, but you can hear the New York City band's influence ooze throughout in the way some of Taylor Swift's The Tortured Poets Department was reminiscent of Kate Bush.

Corona and Vargas first met in high school in the town of El Monte, California, located on the outskirts of Los Angeles.

"Henry was a senior, and I was a junior. I saw him play in a school battle of the bands. I was like, I want to do music with this guy," he remembers.

After Corona's stint at San Francisco State University, the pair tried to make a go as a duo, which is how the band got its name. "We liked the Black Keys and the White Stripes, and they were duos like us. Then we were a pair of two people," Corona adds.

Pair became pear, and the Red Pears were officially born in 2014. By 2016, they settled on their current three-person lineup with the addition of bassist Patrick Juarez.
Released in April, Better Late Than Never features songs that Vargas wrote while still in high school. "We had all these songs from high school. As adults, we still related to the messages. We should work them out and not throw them away," Corona explains. "The album title is about bringing back old things and doing things we meant to do for a while."

The band recorded the album in a home studio they had recently built.

"'The Way You Talk' was the first song we recorded and the hardest. We had to figure out the room," Corona shares. "We got that difficulty out of the way, and then we had a system to record the rest of the album."

The West Coast rockers are now on the road in support of the album, stopping at Gramps on Wednesday, September 25, for the trio's second-ever Miami show.

"Last year was our first ever time in Miami. It was very beautiful and lively," Corona remembers. "The Latino culture has so many blends that we're not used to in El Monte. We went to the beach at night. The ocean seemed so vast."

But beyond the sightseeing, the Red Pears are keen to put on a show audiences won't soon forget, just like their heroes, the Strokes, did for them.

"We came up doing house shows in a very tight, rowdy environment," Corona says. "Whether we play in Florida or New York, we never lose that L.A. energy when we play at someone's house. Wherever we're at, we give it our all and are always ourselves."

The Red Pears. With Ultra Q and the High Curbs. 8 p.m. Wednesday, September 25, at Gramps, 176 NW 24th St., Miami; gramps.com. Tickets cost $20 via ticketweb.com.