Will Salazar of Fenix TX visits Valley

By Thomas O’Brien

Will Salazar, vocalist/ guitarist for pop punk band Fenix TX and Denver Harbor, dropped into the Valley from Houston for a special acoustic performance March 15 at Pub Rock Live. This set was Salazar’s first solo acoustic performance.

 “I’m actually really scared . . . I’ve never done anything like this before,” Salazar says about his solo set.  “Usually you can kind of hide behind the other instruments, but when it’s just you with an acoustic guitar there’s not a whole lot of hiding.”

Salazar has played an impromptu acoustic set was in Europe with Fenix TX. The venue they were playing had no power so he and the other guitarist strummed out half their set acoustically for the crowd.

Salazar originally was supposed to come out a few weeks back and play with Kris Roe (of The Ataris) and Jason Devore (of Authority Zero), but scheduling conflicts didn’t allow him to make it out here for that gig, he says. To make up for the missed performance, he worked with the venue’s owner Nancy Stevens to make plans for Friday’s show.

The acoustic show was scheduled to help promote the upcoming Fenix TX performance at “That Damn Show” music festival at Mesa Amphitheatre on Saturday, April 20.

“I think ‘That Damn Show’ was the last festival show that we had played as Fenix TX,” Salazar says. “Nancy said she was reviving the show . . . It sounded like it was going to be fun and it turned out that everyone was able to do it.”

Fenix TX broke up in 2002 and reunited in 2005. Over the years the band has performed off and on when members had time available to dedicate to shows, but all the while Salazar has continued writing and creating music through multiple outlets.

“Anything I write I just kind of send out onto Sound Cloud or Facebook, just to see what kind of reaction I get,” Salazar said. In 2012 he released a song called “Nothing Seems Bigger Than This,” which has yet to be placed on an album, and has recently released a new Fenix TX song that they recorded a couple years ago called “Spooky Actions at a Distance,” which is featured on the videogame “MLB the Show 2013.”

Salazar said that Fenix TX has been in the process of recording their third album set to be released sometime within this year. With one track completed, the rest has been slowly put together piece by piece.

“At this moment we’ve got drums tracked, guitars, bass, some leads and all that’s missing is vocals,” Salazar says.

Once the album is finished and released, Salazar said that Fenix TX will most likely set up a tour outside the states. The list of possible tour destinations he mentioned were Europe, Australia, South America or Japan because those tours can be completed in one to two weeks as opposed to a U.S. tour which generally takes about three months, Salazar says.

The singer/songwriter has spent over a decade in the music industry doing work in front of, and behind the microphone. When Salazar isn’t busy working on the new Fenix TX album, he keeps himself occupied producing and engineering music for other bands, as well as continually writing and creating songs.

 “Whenever I pick up an instrument, I just end up singing along to it,” Salazar says. “It’s impossible to put an instrument in my hands and for me not try to make something.”

Will Salazar and Fenix TX will be at “That Damn Show” April 20 at Mesa Amphitheatre.