Today we’d like to introduce you to Beto Martinez.
Hi Beto, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
I’m originally from Laredo, Texas, born and raised on the border. I started playing guitar at 13 years old. Not coming from a musical family, other than a cousin and a family friend who gave me some basic lessons on getting started, I am self-taught. My initial motivations were to play Heavy Metal, primarily Metallica, which was my favorite band and first musical obsession, this was the late 80’s after all.
In 8th grade I met Greg Gonzalez. He had just started playing the bass and we were both into Metallica, so we decided to jam. His parents had an air conditioned garage and worked a lot so we had free and nearly constant access to be able to jam and experiment in there. We quickly moved on from trying to play Metallica covers and started writing our own weird songs. By our freshman year of high school in 1990/91, we had met other like-minded folks and formed a band. We spent the rest of high school writing songs, playing parties and honing our skills as musicians. By the time we graduated High School in 1995, we had solidified a plan to move to Austin with our band and try to make a living playing music.
I moved to Austin in Summer 1996 with my drummer and lived in a 1 Bedroom apartment with 3 other people. After finding a job and enrolling at ACC, I was able to rent a house with some band mates and we began to meet people and eventually pick up where we left off, playing parties. We eventually hooked up with fellow Laredoan Adrian Quesada and both of our bands began playing shows locally and sometimes collaboratively.
We did this for the next 4 years or so, throughout the late 90’s, with varying success. Adrian’s band, The Blue Noise Band, was able to put together small tours and started branching out. My band, The Blimp, remained mostly local but eventually we made our way into small clubs and coffeehouses and began to branch out musically, including incorporating cumbia into our otherwise funky rock set. It was our love of cumbia which led us to decide to put on a show at the Empanada Parlour on 6th St, Nov. 2, 2000. This would be a new project dedicated to playing cumbia and Latin Music and we decided to call it Grupo Fantasma.
Grupo Fantasma would quickly exceed our expectations and any prior success we encountered with our other bands. We brought a raw and rowdy energy, focused on cumbia, that was not happening anywhere in Austin at that time and the crowds ate it up. As I finished with my college career in 2001, now attending UT, Grupo Fantasma’s relative success allowed myself and the rest of the band to make the decision to jump into it full time and prioritize the band. We began booking DIY tours around the country and selling out shows along the way.
Fantasma allowed me to finally live out my dream of being a professional musician and the remainder of the first decade of the 2000’s was filled with experiences and accolades I had only imagined previously. From Austin Music Awards to Grammy Awards and collaborations with major artists such as Prince. Along the way, for creative outlets and to remain busy, I co-founded the bands Brownout and Money Chicha. I remained a touring and performing musician primarily until the pandemic in 2020.
In 2013 I moved to Buda with my wife and 2 daughters. We were able to find a house with a small building which I eventually turned into my studio, Lechehouse Music. While I initially started recording my own projects exclusively. the pandemic would force a shift in my career where I now spend a majority of my time recording and producing for other bands. These include many local artists, both up and coming and established. I still perform with all of my bands, including some new ones like Caramelo Haze and The Los Sundowns, but I have not returned to touring as I had been pre-pandemic.
This is where I find myself currently, recording, producing, working with and in some cases mentoring younger bands and musicians and performing with my own projects.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
It has not been an entirely smooth road. Though we found relatively quick success with Grupo Fantasma, I had been working, going to school and playing local gigs, many times to no one, for the five years I had been living in Austin prior to that.
And while Fantasma did experience tremendous growth for a little over a decade initially, things did slow down around 2013 and I found myself looking for ways to supplement my income and help support the family I now had. I delivered groceries for awhile and worked to drum up opportunities with my other bands. It was also around this time when I realized I had to diversify my skill set if I wanted to remain working in music and I then began the effort to establish my studio and hone my recording and production skills.
Later on, as most of us can attest to, the pandemic decimated what was my primary source of income at the time, live performance. It was shocking but eye opening and allowed me to re-evaluate certain aspects of my career and reemerge with a different and more diversified career than I had previously.
Of course, the simple act of choosing art and performance as a career presents it’s own inherent challenges as you struggle to maintain confidence and drive while constantly trying to communicate the value of your work to sometimes fickle audiences. The current state of the music industry with oversaturation and undervaluation creates an environment of immense pressure for any artist.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
I am a musician, guitarist, performer, producer and recording engineer. I am probably primarily known as the guitarist and co-founder of bands like Grupo Fantasma, Brownout, Money Chicha, Caramelo Haze and The Los Sundowns. These bands perform a variety of music but primarily fall under the umbrella of Latin Music. I am proud to be considered, through my work with these bands, as an influential figure in Latin Music in Austin for the work we’ve done here over the last 25 years. I have garnered 2 Grammy Nominations and one win, many Austin Music Awards and Induction into the Austin Texas Music Hall of Fame through my work with these bands.
More recently, I have begun to establish myself as a producer and recording engineer through my studio Lechehouse Music, again with a focus on Latin leaning music, but a diverse discography nonetheless. I have been nominated 4 consecutive years for Best Producer in the Austin Music Awards.
Do you any memories from childhood that you can share with us?
My fondest childhood memory is not a singular one, but more the collection of experiences growing up in what was then a fairly small place, Laredo Texas and having access to woods and creeks and just spending countless hours on my bike with few worries enjoying friends and nature.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://lechehousemusic.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/elbigtoe/?hl=en
- Other: https://linktr.ee/Lechehousemusic
Image Credits
Ismael Quintanilla
Beatriz Lopez
Isak Kotecki
Mauro Lopez
