Ep 242 Holden Garcia

Coming to you from the studios at the Illinois Rock and Roll Museum on Route 66, it's the Rock and Roll Chicago Podcast. Hey everybody, it's Ray the Roadie. And this is humble Hollywood Mike.

Humble. Humble Hollywood Mike, and you guys will know exactly what I'm talking about as soon as we get into this interview right now. Yeah, what happened to British Mike? Well, that was last week.

Yeah, it was last week. Yeah, I drank all the tea. You're done with the tea.

Yeah, we're done with the British Mike. Yeah, you're into something else now. Yes, I am.

Like humble pie? Yeah, humble pie and being humble. And I'm going to tell you, we're about to be humbled. You and I are both about to be humbled.

Okay. There's going to be a lot of humble. Not hobbled.

Hobbled or humbled? It's the effects of the Buffalo Trace tea that I had last week. I gotcha. I think that's causing me to, you know, hubby, I sound like I'm on Zoom.

Remember Zoom? Yeah. Hubby, hubby, hubby, hubby, hubby, hubby, hubby. Yeah.

Now, we have a young man in the studio here with us tonight by the name of Holden Garcia. Say hi to everybody, Holden. Hello.

Pretty anticlimactic, but... Say hello, I said hello. Yeah. I mean, we've got the guitar playing, singing, performing phenom, Mr. Holden Garcia here in the studio tonight.

Why don't you start by telling everybody how old you are, Holden? Now, to a lot of people, this comes as a shock because I look younger for some reason, but I'm 11. Straight up. No, no, I think it's pretty spot on.

You are 11 years old. People have guessed me to be 8, 9, 10, 12, 13. Okay.

I wouldn't say 13, but definitely 11 years old is good enough for us. So, how long have you been playing guitar? I've been playing guitar for three, I want to say three and a half years. Yeah.

Since I started in December of 2021, like playing for real instead of just like dibble-dabbling on like the one guitar on the corner. So, I'd say that's about three and a half years. What was that guitar? Was it like a plastic thing from Toys R Us or was it a real guitar? It was a real guitar, but more like a toy guitar.

Like, Bradyace is like the equivalent of First Act. So, I had like a little red Stratocaster looking thing. Yep.

Insanely small fretboard. Yep. The electronics, they weren't the best, but hey, I learned on it.

See, I mean, 11-year-olds don't start talking about the electronics on the guitar. No, no. No, they don't do that.

No, I think he was reincarnated from something else at one point in time. Possibly, possibly. Possibly, possibly Edison.

Thomas Edison or something like that, maybe. Yeah, possibly. So, you were about eight, would you say? About eight years old, right? When you started? If I can do that math.

Well, if you're... Yes, yes. Yeah, you're only 11, man. You don't have to... Look, we could do it on one hand.

You can't do that with Ray, though. Quiet. Probably need a little more than one.

Yeah, just a little more than one. Just a little more. So, you are by far the youngest person we've ever had on the podcast.

So, why don't we start off and talk about what makes an eight-year-old just all of a sudden decide, I'm going to play the guitar? I'm surrounded by music. Like, my mom's in a barbershop chorus. My dad used to be in a barbershop chorus.

My mom plays woodwinds. My dad plays percussion. My uncle's a guitarist in a pretty good bar band, who I take a lot of inspiration from.

So, like all of that. And I have a guitar with videos of people playing guitar. Hey, if I zoom in and see where they put their fingers, I can figure this out.

So, all just all one day, I just decided to look up how to tune a guitar or electric guitar specifically, since I didn't know that they were the same tuning on YouTube. And then that's how it all started. So, with all of these musicians around you, you know, different types of, you know, people playing different types of instruments, different types of music, you decided, okay, the guitar is going to be the thing.

And was there a specific reason for that? Did you just like the sound of it? I don't know. I had like a little Lightning McQueen, like ukulele that my grandma bought me when I was like two or three or something like that. I'm loving this.

I'm absolutely loving this. I played drums, like, not professionally, but enough to say where I played it pretty decently. Yeah.

So, like, since I was, what, four or five, since we got the drum set in the basement. But what else? Oh, yeah. Pandemic caused a lot of boredom.

Yeah. And the times when I wasn't playing Animal Crossing or Minecraft, I was in the basement. I came across this video of a brass band, like playing like trombones and trumpets and stuff.

And I'm like, wow, I've never seen that stuff before in my life. So, I'm like, wow, new discovery. You can play an instrument just by moving your arm and holding something.

Yeah, the trombone. Yeah, we have a trombone player in Cadillac Groove. We call that the farting bedpost.

Oh, yeah. I don't remember his name, but yeah. Interesting.

Yeah, I kind of, like, since my uncle had an old trombone that he didn't do anything with, the same guitar uncle, he just kind of, like, gave it to me. It was like a student trombone, so it wasn't, like, top of the line, but it wasn't bottom of the line either. So, I just kind of, like, looked where they moved their arms, although I couldn't hit some of the notes because my arms were short and they're still short.

But let's go beyond that. So, technically, your first instrument was the trombone or was it the drums? The drums came before the trombone. Okay, all right.

So, we've got drums, we've got trombone, right? And then for my birthday, I don't remember which year. Was it 2020 or 2021? Yeah, they don't remember either. His parents are in the studio, everybody.

You guys can talk, feel free. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, they have no clue, but they bought me, like, a little blue plastic trumpet.

Okay. So, the valves, they always got stuck. So, it wasn't reliable, but I was able to, like, learn, like, I learned to the point where I would be slightly more advanced than a band student this year.

Okay, all on your own, all by yourself? All by myself. Okay. So, at such a young age, what kind of music were you listening to that said, okay, I'm going to play the drums to this, I'm going to play the trombone to this? I mean, I'm imagining you're sitting in front of your television watching, you know, I don't know what, I don't even know what somebody his age was watching when they were, you know, three years ago when they were eight years old.

It was fairly odd. Parents still a thing? I don't even know. That's what my kids watched.

Well, okay. So, let me see if I can remember, because up until, like, three or four years ago, I had, like, eras of music that I listened to. For, like, a while when I was four or five, I was a huge Queen fan.

Honestly, relatable. Then you could say four to five, you were a huge Queen fan. Four to five.

Like, literally, I was, like, since we had, like, a little CD player that we had an all Queen CD of that we, like, personally mixed. I would just sing there, like, we are the champions, my friend, like, in the middle of the front room. And then for, like, what, when I was six or seven, I had a Johnny Cash era.

So, very different. But I think what kind of influenced my music today is, like, my mom showed me some children shows, like, The Muppets and Sesame Street. You're like, yeah, that's not really taken, mom.

But here's the thing. Her friend is a huge fan of this band, OK Go. And that's how she heard about it.

And OK Go, if you, like, have you ever seen that, like, treadmill video of, like, the guys? Yeah, that's them. That's OK Go, yeah. They're from Chicago here.

But, yeah, they're known for famous music videos. They did one where they, like, filmed, like, a bunch of things happening in four seconds, then slowed it down and made an entire music video. Like, they do crazy stuff like that.

And honestly, to, like, what, four-year-old me, that was just mesmerizing. Like, to watch a bunch of people on Roblox with umbrellas making patterns and stuff, like, that was just satisfying. And their kind of music.

I still listen to that today. So, that's, you know, every musician has a little bit of ADHD. So, anything that's constantly moving keeps our attention.

Yeah, I mean, that totally works. And honestly, if I'm being honest, half the time I was watching the stream, because it keeps moving, like, from Road to Rock Radio on, like, a street pattern. Oh, this thing behind us.

Exactly. OK. Like, every single musician has a bit of undiagnosed ADHD and a little bit of undiagnosed OCD.

Oh, yeah, I would say that. Because, like, for example, I don't know how to, like, phrase this, but if something's slightly off with, like, our pedals or, like, where our pickup switch is, we're going to fix that. We're going to fix that.

You know what my pet peeve is? When we set up the stage and then there's always one or two people that just don't care what their area looks like. And there's cords everywhere. That just drives me insane.

When I see people standing on guitar cables or just any kind of cable whatsoever, like, what are you doing? Do you realize you're stepping on, like, a thousand dollars right there if we had to replace all those cables? Clean that up. It looks like garbage. That's my pet peeve on the stage.

At my basement setup, that kind of happens, but at gigs, it doesn't happen at all. Okay, good. So, it really depends where I am.

So, did you ever have any formal music lessons in your life or are you completely self-taught? I had a couple music lessons at this one local place for, like, two months, but it ended up not working out. Because you undoubtedly decided that there was nothing they could teach you and we're just going to go off on our own. This was back in, like, 2022 when I was barely anything.

Long time ago. Yeah, long, long time ago. Like, a fourth of a lifetime ago.

I did a season of School of Rock just to try it. It seemed fun. They were really nice people.

They did good songs. I was in the New Wave thing and, like, when those songs come on, I still sing along. But I was doing more.

I was, like, learning at a faster pace by myself. So, I just turned independent from there. And the only thing I've ever done with lessons is if, like, there's this really hard part in Ants Marching where, like, I see this dude on guitar, like, if I were to do it without knowing what I was doing, I'd give myself arthritis, just to say the least.

So, I tried and figured it out. I didn't figure it out. So, I went on YouTube, did the unthinkable, and looked up how to play Ants Marching by Dave Matthews Band just for that one part.

Well, it's not the unthinkable. People do that all the time. For me, it is.

Okay. All right. Okay.

Do you remember where we were the first time we met? I think it was either a Cadillac group show, like, years and years ago, or at Sable Creek Winery. It was at Sable Creek Winery. The original location.

Well, the original in Romeoville here. I'm old enough to say that I was at the original location for the first ever open mic. Yeah, you probably were back when Jesse was hosting that over.

He still is. Yeah, he is. But I mean, his biggest move, the location.

Their original location is actually out west someplace around DeKalb. So, that's where they actually met. They make the wine in the whole bit.

Oh, really? Oh, yeah. Yeah, they've got that out there. I thought it was that giant room in the back with all the barrels and stuff.

Have you been to the new location? Let's try that again. Have you been to the new location in Romeoville? I've been there, I think, around 10 times. So, I'm familiar with it.

Okay. The downstairs area is really chill. They're going to turn the old bank vault, since it used to be a bank, into a library place.

Right. So, I think it's really cool. They have a chill area downstairs.

Then upstairs, they have... I don't know how to describe it. It was like a separate room. It's now the performance room.

They used to have a green room, which I really loved, but they took down the wall for that. Yeah. That made me a little sad, but... No, it's a nice place.

The new location is really cool. I can walk there from my house. I live in the houses right across the street from that place.

So, I can walk there quite often. We were listening... I don't remember who. I think it might have been Joe's podcast, and he said that.

Yeah, that's right. You've got something coming up where you're going to be playing with Joe. Joe Aja has actually done an interview on the podcast.

Yeah, on July 19th. I don't know the time. One o'clock? Are you guys playing together, or is he playing first? We're mostly doing it separate, but he's going to do his turn.

Then we're going to do a couple songs together. Then I'm going to do my turn. Nice, nice.

That's the format. Excellent. That'll be pretty cool.

That'll be good to see that. Okay. What kind of stuff are you listening to now? What's your favorite band? I have my primary favorite band, Vampire Weekend.

Nice. In my opinion, underrated. Very underrated.

Very good band. Yep, yep. I like them.

So, would you say that the basic rock and roll is your preferred genre, or is there something else? I listen to my own genre. I have this giant playlist consisting of what? I think now it's almost 360 songs of things that I like. Some of them, I only know the first three seconds of, and that's enough to put it in.

If I put it on shuffle mode, I could hear a punk song from My Chemical Romance. Then I hear Mumford & Sons following into some alternative hit. It can really vary, but it's mostly punk.

Alternative, and a little bit of folk here and there. Have you started writing any of your own music yet? Yes. Fun fact, I am working on my album.

Nice. And what's the date of us recording this? Well, it's going to be like the first. Yeah.

At the time of recording this, it's May 21st. On the 23rd, I'm going back in to record the vocals for the album. So, yeah.

Um, ETA for it being out, I want to say fall. Okay. Like, if we can get everything recorded and mixed and mastered.

It's a really long process, but. Yeah, of course. If we can get everything done.

Probably a tenth of your life. Probably, probably. But what I have two and a fourth albums of music.

But only four songs out on streaming services. So, we're trying to change that and add it up to 18. But now that I think about it, there's only one song that isn't on the album from that sampler.

So, then it just goes up to 15. Okay. So, it's exciting news.

Exciting news. Yeah. Well, I think we've, uh, look at this.

I forgot about my watch. I can't, I can't mute my watch. See, um, so, um, I think we've made it to the point in time where, um, we need to have young Holden put his money where his mouth is.

I think so. Yeah. And we're going to take a break and we can get y'all set up when we come back.

Wasn't that like five minutes? You want to play, uh, you want to play a little bit in the studio for us? Sure. All right. All right.

We'll be right back. You're listening to the Rock and Roll Chicago podcast. Hey, everybody.

It's Ray the roadie. And this is Hollywood Mike of the Rock and Roll Chicago podcast. If you've been joining our weekly program, we have great news for you.

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And we're back here. We have holding Garcia, everybody. Them all.

If I'm correct. No. I can get by.

I can get a job. I can go for them all. I can get ahead.

I can get the light. I can get a job. I go.

Well, everyone says that I won't get ahead, or is it that I'm, that I'm not enough? If I can get a life, if I can get a job, if I can go through them all, well, everyone says that I won't get ahead, or is it that I'm, that I'm not enough? Very nice. Very nice. Very nice.

Very nice. So did you write all the lyrics yourself? Yes. You can grab a chair again if you want.

What, do I take this on? If you want to. I mean, you don't have to, but if you want to. You can take it off and put it back on, whatever.

That's right. In case riffing calls for it. Guitar players, yeah.

If anyone says anything intimidating, like. So did you write those lyrics yourself? You did all of that yourself? Yes. No help with the music, no help with the lyrics, nothing? I did use like AI for a line like once or twice.

Okay. For like songs that aren't out yet, but yeah, that's really it. Okay.

I write all my lyrics myself. When did you write that? I wrote that about what, a year ago, I want to say. Okay.

It's when I started writing my second album of songs. That was pretty deep. So what was going through your mind at the time when you decided to write that song? I don't know.

Like, I was just kind of noodling. And I'm like, hey, I haven't wrote a song in C yet. So let's try that.

God, are you kidding me? And then I just like, and then like. And I'm like, hey, that's fire. Let's roll with it, I guess.

Yeah. Yeah. And so, and so where did the lyrics come from? You had to, you had to be someplace.

I mean, something was going through your mind when you decided to come up with the lyrics. I mean, all of my songs are like deep and like sad, but it's way easier to write depressing songs than it is positive songs. I'm just going to say that.

I'm just going to say that. It is. It really is because, you know, sadness and anger, those are like primal emotions.

I mean, yeah. It's really easy to. And it's like outletting.

Yeah. Because the last thing anybody's willing to do is say something positive about themselves, you know, but you know what, you know, nobody's going to toot your own, toot your own horn for you. So you better toot your own horn.

I guess it's the best way to do it. The best way to say it. Yeah.

What are the lyrics in it? Tell me what those were again. In the chorus? Yeah. You can get a life.

You can, what was it? I can get a life. I can get a job. I can go through them all.

Like, like, I don't, I forgot what I meant by them all, but it's kind of like, I can go through this and that and that, like all the struggles in life ish, but that doesn't go with the song because the song's sad, but it just kind of is there. And one line that I really like is I can say, I, I can say E, I can say O. And that was a tribute to Rosa Parks who spoke up on the bus boycott in the civil rights act. And I'm like, Hey, that'd be good to tribute in a song.

Where the heck did you come up with that? I don't know. I like history. So what struggles have you had in your life so far? Um, I have anger issues.

Like, okay. Just like, I'm going to try and keep this as positive as I can. But if my gaming chair was a person I'd probably be in jail.

I rage at stuff. Okay. I rage.

I'm a rager. Any one of my friends is like, bro, this dude rages all the time. Okay.

But like, um, I can usually contain it, but like, I just think a lot. I'm like, yo, if Pinocchio says his nose is about to grow, would it grow? Like that type of stuff. Like rethinking the laws of life type of stuff.

All right. I think we found the next song. If I tell the truth about a lie, is it a lie? That's right.

There you go. Wow. No kidding.

That's pretty impressive. So do me a favor. I mean, you're holding the guitar in your hand right there.

Noodle around for us. Do another song? No, just play your guitar. Whatever you feel like doing.

Just like, play. That was the strumming pattern to the newest song I just wrote called After Hours. It's not gonna be on the album though.

It's still in mostly development. Just like trying to figure out like nitpicky and stuff. Yeah.

Trying to find a struggle. Yeah. Yeah.

You're trying to something you're trying to, you gotta find something to rage about so you can write about it. Cause the process is, um, I mean the After Hours is more of a positive song, but the process, like people always ask me, do you find the melody or the vocals first? It really depends for After Hours. Like I'm just sitting there like in the night, the lights are going down and going down with the sound.

Hey, write this down. Like, and for Not Enough, I came up with that melody first. So it really depends.

So what are you working on right now? Is there something that you're, that you're trying to finish or put together? My goal is to write an album of material per year. I've done it twice already. I'm sure I can do it this year.

Um, and it's really, um, a thing to keep me like going and getting motivated and stuff. Since like, Hey, like, I mean, I choose how many songs I want in the album, like to kind of have a goal setter, like for Tainted Tapes, I just kind of stopped it for a while. And I'm like, Hey, that's an album move on.

And for Glory, that was a set amount. And I think 12. Um, for this, I'm gonna go 11.

So it's kind of like a goal for like how much I want to write per year. And since this year is busier, I'm going with the lower level of stuff. But yeah, I get ideas all the time.

Um, some of them I like put on hold, since I came up with this one riff, it goes like this. And I like kind of like held it for a while since I didn't know where to put it. But now like, like the first song on on the second album is like a rock song more of and that riff fit perfectly with the vibe.

So I kind of just put it on hold and then like, insert it in later. So I do that with some of my ideas, but other ideas, I just use it right away. Like that.

And it also helps that I have a good vocabulary. Sure. And I'm like, some of the time I look up like, what worms rhyme with party or something, since I have no clue that would actually make sense.

And like, my dad's mad at me for coming up with my own word and I'll write called spreel, spreel definition, pointless, literally pointless. You made, you made up the words spreel. Yeah, I couldn't find anything else to spell it.

Um, S P R I E L. Okay. Well, at least he threw in the I E. It wasn't S P R E E L. Well, you heard it here first, everybody. You should, you should probably coin that.

Copyright that word. Yeah. I'll put it on my website.

Do you ever go outside to play? Yes. Yeah. So, okay.

So that was, that's kind of the next question I was going to say. So, yeah. So you're a student, you go to school, right.

And you get out of school at what time? Three o'clock ish. 255. 255.

Okay. That's three o'clock ish, I think. Yeah, that works.

Right. And then you get home, do you play any sports in school or anything? Um, I don't do any sports. I mean, music kind of is my sport.

Okay. I play some basketball, depending on the weather, like outside my house, since we have like a basketball hoop there. Sure.

Um, like there, like, um, I live in a 10 neighborhood subdivision. The neighborhoods are like, what, half a mile big. Yeah.

So like, um, I can go in the neighborhoods to my friend's house and like go outside. And like, since I'm like a lot of the neighborhoods have parks, we go to the parks and like play manhunt and stuff. Um, we sometimes like play football in my big backyard because my backyard is probably the biggest out of all my friends.

Okay. Not trying to brag. It's just.

That's okay. Yeah. My house is a football house.

It's just the truth. I'm speaking truth. Yeah.

So, so then you, you, you go home from school, you do your homework and everything. Uh, you know, when do you find time to write? Do you, do you find time to do that every single day or is just whenever you can fit it in? Um, cause I wrote after hours at a Sable Creek open mic. Like I wrote the chorus at an open mic when there was literally one song before my turn.

And I'm like, Hey, this is good idea. I have notes at let's write it down. And then, um, I ended up writing the rest of it.

Um, it was before an event might've been another open mic. Oh yeah. It was black dog.

It was before black dog two days later. So it really depends. Like, um, like if I have time or like, like, um, if I can like bang out the writing, like just like that.

So it took me like 30 minutes to write one song and two months to write another. Sure. That happens all the time.

It's like, um. But you don't have a designated time every single day where it says, okay, from six o'clock, you know, like, like right after dinner or whatever, from six, six 30, I'm going to sit down and I'm going to write a song or anything like that. I just go with the flow of the day.

And when you, when you sit down and start to write, you have an idea like what you want to write about or you just, it just comes to you at the moment. It just comes to me. Yeah.

You're just completely in the moment. Any of your friends play instruments? Um, a lot of my friends are in band. Um, my friend, Charlie, he plays drums.

Um, my friend Aiden and Ben play guitar. Um, I don't think they're like performing yet, but they're trying to form a band. I joined the band.

I just don't have time. Yeah. Because.

Are they, are they playing like at school of rock or something? Um, no, they're doing it by themselves. Okay. My friend Grant also plays guitar.

Like, yeah, there, um, there are some guitar people, a lot of singers, um, ranging from like different things, but. Yeah. Everybody's a singer.

I mean, everyone can be a singer. They can be, they just don't know. They just don't realize it.

So you need to find a bass player. Any aspirations of putting together a band? Um, probably when I'm older. Um, I'm trying to think of a good example, like Jimi Hendrix, for example, like, like he put together a band for his songs.

Yeah. Well, you know, um, you've probably seen the band don't matter to me, right. They're they've, they've been on our podcast and they're a group of young, young people that put together a band in high school and they started coming to the open jam at, uh, at Uptown tap and playing field.

And now that they've, they're all graduated, most of them are in college right now. They play absolutely everywhere, all over the place. You can go and see, don't matter to me.

They kind of got their start right there in that downtown area. I mean, cause um, school sometimes gets in the way, but usually I remember it like, um, like I finished an open. Yeah.

You don't need school. I'm smart enough with like 50, 60 IQ max. Hey, you're a musician.

You only need to be able to count to four. I mean, or, or unless I'm like doing six, eight or something, something like that. Listen to this kid, you know, you kidding me? Wow.

Okay. But, um, what? Um, pretty impressive. You know what I, you know what I think? I think it's time to hear another song from you.

I mean, yeah. Yeah. We're just going to do it on the fly.

We're just, I mean, we've got everything set. We know how it is. We're just going to do it.

Yeah. You know how it is. You're listening to the rock and roll Chicago podcast.

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Tell us a little bit about the song you're about to play. So this song is going to be on the album. The album's called Tainted Tapes.

The cover, I have a cover, came up with, my dad doesn't like it as much. I mean, I'm not a graphic designer. I mean, my friend is a good drawer though.

Since, I mean, yeah, we'll get into that after the song. Okay. All right.

Um, this song is kind of about how like a man just having like a midday, like the day isn't good, but it isn't bad. It's just kind of average, like nothing stunning, nothing stellar or anything. And yeah, it's just kind of like that.

Okay. They like, um, like he gets his hopes up that something's going to happen. Then it goes down, like slow back up and then slow for the rest of the day.

So that's kind of how the song is. I think, I think most of us can identify with that. Yeah.

The song is called. All right. It's just a real knowing the times.

It's all real. Things go by like a bang of lades. Everybody knows it's a lie.

And when the next day comes, I'll try it again. Thinking that I am the leader of my men. By the time I try, you never look again.

I'm just all right. It's come to an end. And this has my friend.

We've achieved the middle of our dream. The next day comes, I'll try it again. Thinking that I am just all right.

By the time, thank you all for watching and I'll see you next time. Wow. Nice.

Very nice. So, so, uh, how much do you like Dave Matthews? Um, I know some of his stuff. I mean, Ant Marching was the one part like, um, here, let me see if I can remember it.

Like, they can see my fingers in the studio. It's like they're doing acrobats and stuff, but it sounds simple. It's not unless you know how to do it.

OK, but I mean, would you say that Dave Matthews is kind of like an influence of yours? Um, in a way, yes. Yeah, I was going to say, because you look like him when you play. Do you realize that you look like Dave Matthews when you play? He's a Dave Matthews is a very active strummer, very active player when he sings and plays at the same time.

And so are you. I mean, you're very animated shopping. Like my vocal teacher, who also like tells you that a new word we learned to was that when it's hard when you go, what a man to pick shopping.

OK, like pick shopping, pick shopping. OK, yeah, it's hard pick shopping like I'm like my old vocal teacher. He used to give me guitar tips, too, since he's a guitarist.

He said that I should go to medium picks, broke every single medium pick I owned. So then I decided, hey, let's go to lights, broke every single light I own. Yeah.

Now I'm just like praying on a 70 millimeter. Um, yeah, 73 millimeter. Oh, it's not that thick about it's not that thick.

Yeah, it's not that thick because you're you're pretty you're slapping the heck out of that under that guitar. I mean, you really are actually very good. Very good.

So tell us what you have coming up. Tell us what you have coming up. Like in July, where can people go and see you? At August 2nd, I am playing the music in martinis.

I'm not sure where yet. I don't know where it is. Yes, you heard that right.

An 11 year old is playing music and martinis. That's right. Yeah, that's no liquor laws.

Don't worry about it. Don't worry. My times are changing.

I'm only going to like get a Mountain Dew or something. OK. I bet your parents aren't.

Get like a strawberry margarita or something. And then you got something coming up with Joe Aja. Yeah, on the 19th.

On the 19th of July. At Sable Creek Winery. OK, you're going to be playing at Sable Creek.

Nice. OK, that'd be pretty good. I mean, by the time this comes, like June's a busy month for me.

Yeah, like there's so much going on in June for me to plug. But this won't be out until July. Yeah.

So it's going to be tougher for that on July. I'm I'm not sure if I am. I might be doing something near the end of the month.

OK. With like a festival or a camp or something like. Oh, yeah.

Wait, what? In August, I'm doing that. I'm doing that again. Oh, you can you can talk.

It's OK. You can talk. It's this time.

Yeah. So last week, I think it was a week ago or tomorrow, it'll be a week ago. I did the Slammers thing for like an hour outside.

Nice. Am I doing the national anthem? Depends if you record it and send it in so they can approve it. You might be doing the national anthem.

Nice. Wait, wait, I'm doing the outside, too. We'll figure it out.

Oh, wait, wait, wait. OK, OK, hold on. This is the first time I'm hearing it.

We are in a we are in a special club. We're in a special club because what my band's doing that to this. Yeah.

Yeah. We're playing a concert in the outfield after the game one night and stuff. But yeah, but wait, what date is it? We'll figure it out later.

Yeah, we'll figure it out later. Sometime in August at the Joliet Slammers. But that's that's like a bucket list thing, though.

That's pretty cool to be able to do the Nash. I've always wanted to do the national anthem at a ballgame. And that's where I did.

I've done it over there at the Slammers game. That's a lot of fun. Yeah, it's fun.

I haven't done the national anthem. I played outside. And are you going to sing it or play it on guitar? Probably play it on guitar like I'm Joe Satriani style.

Oh, OK. If they'll let me, though. Yeah.

And they'll let me. I'll try and do that. Yeah, he's got he's got a got a pretty good opinion of us.

I'm going to do a Joe Satriani style. Yeah, that's pretty good. He could, by the way.

Or two things. I don't want to say we're bad, but two things that could have been better about the performance was there was a train station right behind me. For those of you who really know me, I like trains.

Oh, boy. So it was like something shiny. And you were all about the trains.

Literally like a two way track. Yeah. And like what? Every 10 minutes or so, a train would show up and like, no way.

Custom painted bud car. And then a caboose apparently showed up behind me. I haven't seen one of those ever.

But and the other thing that could have been better is the way I was facing the wind was blowing in my face and there were like little projectiles like getting in my eyes. And I couldn't do anything about it because both of my hands were already working. So my eyes were itchy afterwards.

But that's not the games. Well, that's just like me and mother nature. So yeah.

So before we start nerding out on trains or in stuff like that, why don't you tell us how can people find you? Do you have a website? Yes, I have a website holding Garcia dot com on Facebook, YouTube and Instagram. Same username, just holding Garcia music. And you can go there and find any dates that you have scheduled downloads of any music that that people might want to get a hold of.

Most of the stuff is on Facebook because my parents manage that. OK, we have some stuff on YouTube. OK, like YouTube's our second Instagram.

We don't have much. You're going to get like some posts with like festivals and stuff. But Instagram, there isn't much there.

But you can also find me on Spotify and like other services like other big services like here. Let me see if I'm if I can remember all of them from the promo video. Amazon Music, Spotify, iTunes, YouTube Music, Pandora.

What else is there? That's all I can remember. That's the majors. That's the big boys.

Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, hold on.

I'll tell you what. You and I have never had a chance to sit down and talk like this before. We've just been, you know, acquaintances and talking and bashing.

You know, I wish you the best. You are just you're just fantastic. You really are.

I mean, to be 11 years old, you have. I mean, anybody listening to this is going to say there's no way he's 11 years old. This is a 30.

This is a 30 year old with a with like a pitch shifter or something on his voice. Right, right, right. Yeah.

You know, you're carrying the torch, especially for this area and local live music in the whole bit. So thank you for doing that. And thank you for coming in and talking to us.

And it's been a pleasure giving a part of your evening. This is fantastic. Me and you have done stuff together.

We have. And we've never talked like this because what you guys did, like a Halloween thing in Juliet with Cadillac Groove. Yeah.

And I was dressed up as Slash because I remember that. And people were saying like, oh, sick costume. And then I'm like, Mike was deciding to be nice and like, bring me up to shred on a song.

Yeah. So and then people like as soon as I got off that stage, the same dude who said nice costume just looked at me. What did I just watch? Slash, really your dad? No, like, like, like, like, like, did he like, did he like switch, but like with Slash or something? Yeah.

Like, like, like when I dress this, people like I'm not as good as Slash. I'm not saying I am. But like people didn't actually think that I could play guitar.

Yeah. No, that's that's true. Well, most people, most people don't because you are talented beyond your years.

And you really are. Yeah. And that's a challenge for me is a lot of the places don't want like like look over me because like, oh, he's like a kid and stuff.

Of course. And like when I go to an open mic, like a new one, a lot of the time, like people that I know are there. So I'm acting like I belong there because I because I do.

Yeah, absolutely. Like I'm a performer in the scene. And people are looking at me like, oh, he's this kid trying to fit in.

And then I actually play my set and then they look at me differently. Yeah. So, yeah, people like don't judge a book by its cover.

That's right. Like, like, that's the biggest struggle I have. That's your next song.

Yeah. Next song. That's your next song.

Well, I was going to name the song cover, but then I realized that wouldn't work. Like cover of cover. Yeah.

Like, like, no, that wouldn't work. Why not? Well, hey, Holden, thanks for coming in tonight. Yeah, thanks a lot.

Do appreciate. Great story. And we'll see you out there.

We'll see you out there. See you. to promote the guests that are featured.