Kiko Loureiro comes to Brazil for a series of shows: ‘I’m super excited’

One of the biggest names in Rock, nationally and internationally, Kiko Loureiro comes to Brazil to perform at the Best Of Blues And Rock. The artist performs on June 21st in Rio de Janeiro. In an interview with Rolling Stone Brazilthe artist was excited to come to Brazil, where he will play at the festival and continue in the country to perform on his solo tour.

“I went to Brazil briefly last year, in November. But, before that, the last time was in 2019, before the pandemic,” said the artist. “I’m super excited for the show, for this responsibility of doing a complete show, playing my songs, but also going through the songs I composed from Angra It’s from Megadeth also.”

The guitarist is performing for the first time at this festival, and says that this type of event is different from doing a show exclusively for him. “There are a lot of people who aren’t there to see me.” This, however, is not a problem for him. Laurel jokes that there is a challenge to win over the audience until the second song.

At the Best Of Blues And Rock, as he explains, “there is a convergence” between the audiences of the artists in the line-up, which makes things easier. “I think because it’s a guitar thing, it gives me freedom. It’s cool that I get to play a lot of things like it will be on tour later.”

The musician confesses that playing in Brazil has a different taste. “And in Rio it’s more special. I’m a fake Carioca, I grew up in São Paulo and I don’t have an accent,” jokes the Rio musician. “But ask me to go to Rio, and I will.

In the last nine years, with the Megadeth, I went to Brazil twice. Compared to before, when I did all the cities in Brazil… When you move away, you start doing a lot of cities in the United States, it’s cool. But you have no connection to Oklahoma, St. Paul, Minnesota.

His most recent solo work Kiko it’s the disk Open Source (2020). The first performances of the album are taking place now, as the work was released during the period marked by the COVID-19 pandemic.

“I had made the album in 2019 Megadeththen the Dave [Mustaine] He had throat cancer and had to stop. Then he comes back and the first thing we do is tour Europe. After the tour, the plan was to record an album. The pandemic came and ruined all the plans,” recalls the artist. The band waited for the shows to resume before they could actually release the album.

The guitarist says that when he saw art and music being used as a relief during the period of confinement, he decided to release his album. The launch actually took place in July. AND Kiko understands that this was a positive attitude, as people were “thirsty for music.”

“It wasn’t possible to go out and do a show, but it was possible to stay on the internet and receive the attention of people from all over the world,” he reflects. The artist has a habit of establishing a relationship with fans through social media, especially Instagram and YouTube – where he has maintained a channel since 2008.

This year, The Guitarist released “Out Of The Void,” single that can be considered a kind of spoiler for what’s to come. “This was a song I made with Pliniwho is a younger guitarist than me, we were challenged to do everything in one afternoon – compose, record, make the video,” he recalls.

The duo took around five hours to develop the sound, which well portrays a characteristic of the Brazilian guitarist: he combines modernity with references from the past. “I have the album ready, recorded. I’m just seeing when I’m going to release it, if I wait for the tour.”

Two decades

Next year, his first solo album Kiko, No Gravity (2005), completes two decades. When we ask if the artist intends to do any project to celebrate the date, he responds: “Good idea! I have to do something.”

He says that after some time he stopped counting, “but 20 years is a good mark and it was my first instrumental album. It was a paradigm shift, I thought ‘I can do this thing’,” he recalls. At the time of recording, the internet seemed like a threat to the music industry to some people, Kiko He was even asked if he really wanted to release a CD. The musician decided to insist on the idea, we thank him.