Hilera’s chopsuey philosophy

By Neil Ray Ramos
Contributor

Released through Polyeast, EMI’s local arm, Nuthouse comes across as both naïve and astute—childlike yet wise.

There’s raw energy and excitement—loads of it actually—typical of a young band, but it’s that sort of liveliness that isn’t bound in senselessness.

The songs in Nuthouse are deceptively simple yet they are witty as they are incisive—judicious and quite sharp at the same time.

The best thing about it is that Hilera didn’t allow itself to get trapped in rockabilly mode. This even if they are today’s acknowledged leader of the genre.

“I’m your typical ‘Chopsuey’ kind of musician,” says singer/guitarist chief songwriter and band leader Chris Padilla. “I am all about variety. I like to mix things up.”

Padilla doesn’t think maturity has got anything to do with it. “I’m not sure about that,” he says.

What he’s sure of, he said, is that, having been left to his own devices during the last two years, he just “soaked in everything” he could.

Padilla and the rest of the group (younger brother Bobby Padilla on drums and longtime co-hort Ivan Garcia on bass) were stuck in limbo when “things got shaky” with parent company EMI.

“There were lots of talks about closing shop and such and I just thought this is crazy, I don’t want to be part of this… I’m going to get outta here,” he says.

At that time, they thought of going ‘indie.’ “I thought my friends are doing alright so…” Padilla drifts.

The band concentrated on building their own recording studio instead and got down to writing songs. “Having our own workplace made it easy for us… ideas just flowed freely… there was no pressure at all… and we’re happy,” Padilla shares.

Proud with the songs he created with his mates, he quickly made a demo CD and shared it with some friends. Among them were executives from Polyeast.

“They liked the album… simple as that. The greatest thing about it is that they didn’t ask us to change anything, so, here we are, back in the firing line,” Padilla says with a laugh.

Not that he cares much about what critics think. “As long as I’m happy with my work, they can just go about saying what they want to say.”

Just like most of the songs in the album, promotional track number one, “Radical,” Padilla says, was inspired by a movie. “I took it from a scene in that film Across the Universe. It’s all about life and living.”

The Beatles reference doesn’t stop there even as Padilla admits Nuthouse is a take on John Lennon’s infamous comment about the Philippines. “It was after that disastrous concert they had here… having been kicked out of the country, he was so mad I guess that he deemed our country a ‘nuthouse,’ and as a fan that’s sad and painful.”

Nevertheless, some of the songs on Nuthouse bear more than a striking resemblance to Lennon’s songwriting style specifically, “So Be It” and “Floating in a Freefall.”

“Hey, I’m a fan, what can I say?” he says.

Then again it isn’t as if Hilera “borrowed” solely from the Beatles even as hints of the Clash, The Stray Cats, Bob Dylan and more could be gleamed in some of the other tunes.

“As I said… I was like a musical sponge in the past two years… honestly, I was getting so prolific writing songs that I had forty-plus something tunes in the can originally!” Padilla exclaims.

Aside from the ever prominent rockabilly, Nuthouse also sees Hilera experimenting with other styles like sixties pop, do woop, pyschedelic swing, folk, and bare acoustic that one is left to wonder: is Hilera abandoning their rockabilly roots?

“Not exactly… It will always be there… but just like any other musician or artist for that matter I don’t want to get stuck in that loop… I want a variety in flavor… as I said, chopsuey,” Padilla concluded.