El Sportivo

The Pacific Surfliner traverses the train tracks along the edge of the California coast between Los Angeles and San Diego eleven times a day, back and forth and rarely delayed. Lauded Black Iris Producer and musician Lewis Pesacov found himself on the Surfliner not too long ago, following a mysterious series of phone calls and cryptic postcards.

These communiqués were from a gentleman man calling himself only “El Sportivo.,” He directed Lewis to take the first train out of Union Station on any Thursday he saw fit assured assuring him that no matter which day Thursday he chose there would be someone waiting to greet him. Lewis closed his eyes and pointed at a week on the calendar, and when that week came, he went.

He was met on the train not only by the enigmatic “El Sportivo”—-,” a bearded gentleman sporting the Dogtown uniform, replete with tattered plimsolls and dimestore sunglasses—-, but also by a motley crew of his cohorts, who he came to know as The Blooz. After making polite introductions, this bedraggled band of musicians invited Lewis to join them in their car, where the seats were littered with half-empty bottles of homebrewed wine.

Due to the strange nature of the experience at hand, Lewis didn’t notice that when they arrived in San Diego the train turned right around and headed back to Los Angeles. In the morning, he awoke splayed out on a bench in Union Station with nothing but a screeching hangover, a reel of tape and a note of thanks, signed El Sportivo. They had taken his guitar, wherever they had gone.

Lewis returned to Black Iris to uncover what had happened over the past hours. After a pot of Ethiopian brew, he began listening to the tape he had been given. What he heard was a voice he recognized from many hazy midnight phone messages-El Sportivo-over the mournful din of those marauding grifters and unmistakable hum of his own guitar.

That hazy train ride would not be the last meeting between Lewis and El Sportivo & the Blooz. There were others-sometimes at our Echo Park studio and sometimes after hours at El Chavo, a Mexican restaurant on the corner of Sunset and Hillhurst. It was from these meetings that Lewis created an EP, beginning with the single, “All My Alibis,” a smoky, slow-burning, guitar driven blues number about regret and self-destruction. Featuring dusky vocals-soulful with a hint of a whisper-the track speaks to those moments best relished in the dark, and warm. The EP’s other tracks follow this lead, blending atmospheric and confessional lyrics with refined, toned down instrumentals, for four tracks to stay up all night to, to drown your sorrows to, and to welcome the winter with.