GILROY
– It’s hard to tell what kind of music drives Jerry Navarro Jr.
just by what he listens to.
Visit his Gilroy home and his office built in his garage and you
might hear anything from blues to rock to the oldies, a far cry
from some of the Latin salsa music he creates in his band,
Suave.
GILROY – It’s hard to tell what kind of music drives Jerry Navarro Jr. just by what he listens to.
Visit his Gilroy home and his office built in his garage and you might hear anything from blues to rock to the oldies, a far cry from some of the Latin salsa music he creates in his band, Suave.
“I like classical to the Beatles, salsa to blues, Jimmy Hendrix to Nat King Cole,” he said. “White, black, blue, green. … It’s all about the music.”
And ever since Navarro began writing and performing his own music, people have started to take notice of the musician and his band.
“Our music is a mixture of the Latin rock sound. You have this funk clashing with salsa rythyms,” he said.
The group will play a CD single release concert at 9 p.m. Saturday at the Krazy Koyote on Church Street in Gilroy.
The new song, “Do U Remember Me?,” has earned the nods of critics ever since Navarro placed the track on www.broadjam.com, a Web site listing thousands of songs for review by people in the music industry.
The song earned so much attention that it found its way to the top of the R&B/Soul charts and stayed at number one for more than a week.
“For nine days in a row it was the number one song on the planet,” said Ladd, who said he had no idea the song would do so well.
Navarro had written 12 songs over a half-year period with a friend and musician who goes by the name Zack, and “Do U Remember Me?” came out of those sessions.
“It was the easiest song to do live together,” Navarro said of choosing to release the song. “Out of one to 12, it was the number seven song of the group as far as the songs that we thought were good.”
Even though crowds at Suave’s shows had taken well to song, Navarro said the acclaim from other musicians meant a lot.
“With this reaction come from people that are not family and friends, you know you have something,” he said.
David Ladd, a musician from Morgan Hill, helped the band produce the single and played flute in the background of the song, which Navarro said is about a love you just can’t get out of your head.
“It’s about that one person, everybody has it,” he said.
The song has done so well that Navarro has put his efforts into the music full-time to see where it goes.
“The wife is giving me this one shot,” he said. “She heard the songs and she was jazzed about them. She said I should go after them.”
Navarro, who has lived in Gilroy since he was 4 years old, started playing guitar when he was in eighth grade.
He took four weeks of lessons from John Garcia and picked up so much that he never took another lesson, and never had to.
He played in several bands, but his music career picked up when he moved to Sacramento for a two-year stint in 1994.
“The first day I went there, I looked at the music store for work, and they were looking for a studio musician to back up singing groups,” he said.
Soon Navarro was touring in California and Nevada with such acts as the Coasters and the Fabulous Drifters.
“People start taking you a little more serious when you walk through the door,” he said.
Navarro playing guitar for the Bay Area band Mystique for nearly five years after returning to Gilroy, but he grew tired of playing cover songs.
“It’s all about playing your stuff,” he said. “If you got people who can write, at that point you have to go for it.”
So Navarro built a band out of the many contacts that he had built in the Bay Area.
“I had a big group to choose from. In the other band they were guest artists,” said Navarro, who said it is important to build a good reputation with other musicians. “That’s the way it works. When you call them, they’ll answer. You just keep filling dates with them.
“I can call a drummer that just got off tour with Mariah Carey. Whoever can’t make it, I’ve got two or three of every musician, and they’re all just super.”
Now he hopes the band’s release party for its single is just a start. He will play two more new songs at the release party.
“Everybody can get into it,” he said. “You’re going to dance a lot.”
The Suave release party begins at 9 p.m. at the Krazy Koyote. There is no cover charge to get in.
