Pepe J. Gómez

Perhaps having been born in the cradle of the fandango might have set him on the path of flamenco, but he ended up travelling the path of the blues, which crossed his way in the form of a cassette tape that included Stevie Ray Vaughan’s “Tin Pan Alley”: “At that moment my life changed. I sold the old Gibson 175 archtop guitar and bought myself a Fender and a wah wah, and then came Jimi Hendrix… and all the rest”. At twenty-four he put together his first blues band alongside Lluís Coloma, and began treading the stages of blues festivals, where he met the first international stars. After decades of the road, bands, nights and concerts, he decided to ease his foot off the accelerator after the birth of his son Rai, to whom he has passed on his passion for the blues, something that for him is much more than music: “The blues is my life and music keeps me awake twenty-four hours a day”. With Rai now a musician himself, this lover of the old Chicago classics opens a new stage in his musical career, combining it with his teaching work at the Rock School de Barcelona.