Boris Garcia doesn’t really exist or, at least, that’s what songwriter Bob Stirner would have you believe. “Boris Garcia is this outlaw figure we created,” Stirner says with a grin. “He is our persona, our Panama Red. He skirts the law and gets in trouble, but not serious trouble. He’s just bad enough to make it interesting.”
Though the character Boris Garcia is a fictional creation, the band Boris Garcia is a real entity, which has spent the past two years sculpting a distinct persona of its own on the Northeast club circuit. After hooking up in Philadelphia, the quintet—Stirner (vocals, guitar, bass), Jeff Otto (vocals, bass, guitar), Gene Smith (vocals, harmonica, recorder, guitar), Bud Burroughs (mandolin, bouzouki, button accordion, Hammond organ) and Stephe Ferraro (drums, percussion)—quickly entered the studio, turning out its debut album, Family Reunion, before playing its first gig. Drawing from such Americana styles as folk, country-rock and bluegrass, Boris Garcia quickly stumbled upon a sound not unlike American Beauty-era Grateful Dead.
While Boris Garcia flirts with the jamband scene, and its members have clocked in time with the Dead’s extended circle, Stirner insists that the name Garcia is just a coincidence: “I am a proverbial tour rat and have seen hundreds of shows, so our name is a bit ironic. But he is truly a mythical creation.”
In fact, the group nabbed its name from Otto’s civilian life: “Jeff has been an animator for years and years and thinks in those terms. He created the Boris Garcia character and we factor him into our songs from time to time. Sometimes we even use Jeff’s animation as a backdrop at our shows.”
After releasing Family Reunion, which has since gone through two pressings, the group shifted its attention from studio work to its live show, hosting a residency at Philadelphia’s Mermaid Inn. Stretching Family Reunion’s Americana sounds into new directions, Boris Garcia began the jam/rock balancing act. “We were warned early on that we should have a more defined sound, but our styles are all over the map. We’ll play the Philadelphia Folk Festival, one of the oldest festivals in the country, and play these more extended jams and then play at jam festival Dancing Wu Li Festival and offer more concise songs. It’s great that bands like us or Yonder Mountain can be accepted by both camps.”
Part of the reason behind Boris Garcia’s dual identity is its multiple songwriters. “Sometimes you are lucky to get even two songwriters in a room, but we are very fortunate to have three distinct songwriting individuals. Eugene’s songs tend to be a little more political and mine tend to be a bit more melancholy. Jeff is somewhere in between, so we have this almost strange synergy.” Boris Garcia’s dual touring approach has placed the group on stage with such varied acts as Jackson Browne, Hot Tuna, David Bromberg, Amos Lee, The Duhks, James Hunter, Blues Traveler, Railroad Earth, Steve Kimock, Karl Denson and Keller Williams, among others. Another feather in the group’s cap: the quintet sold out the upstairs room at Philadelphia’s prestigious World Café Live.
From its outlaw mystic to its Americana sound, Boris Garcia prides itself on being a decidedly American band. So it also makes sense that many of the group’s more recent compositions tackle the country’s current affairs. “We are all concerned with the environment—everything seems like it is unraveling at the same time, both socially and politically. But chaos seems to create great art and we have a lot of situations to write about on songs like ‘Red, White, and Blue.’”
A number of Otto’s most politically-charged songs found their way onto the group’s second album, Mother’s Finest, which was released in November on Porchwerk Records. Boiling the group’s improvisations down to more manageable radio-friendly chestnuts, the group affectionately describes its current sound as “acoustic jam music.”
“We want to hear our songs on the radio and they don’t play a lot of 12-minute cuts on the radio,” Stirner jokes. “So we try to keep everything below the five-minute mark on the radio. But, on the live stage, all bets are still off.”
