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THE RAGGED ACOUSTIC PURITAN

Julio Rey cites watching the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan show as the moment he got hooked on rock and roll. “I wasn’t four years old yet,” he says. “I remember playing a toy ‘Beatles’ guitar to family members in our apartment in New York City. I raked the toy guitar and sang along to my two Beatles records.” At 14, he took up the guitar and wrote his first song; at 16, he became a Christian; at 18, he got an electric guitar and amp and proceeded to blow the amp’s speaker within eight months; at 19, he discovered Christian rock in the forms of Larry Norman and Resurrection Band and wrote his first Christian song; at 20, he was ready to join a group.

With Genesis 1:1 at a backyard party, Spring 1982.

Rey joined a church band in 1980 and made his live debut in October of that year. Soon the band was playing rock sets on the side featuring several Rey originals. Two years later, Rey released Unrehearsed Walk and formed the prototypical Christian pop-punk band the Visitors.
It was the beginning of a 14-year run as a member of a band. After the Visitors broke up in 1984, Julio co-founded the pioneering Christian punk/thrash band the Lead with Nina Llopis and Robbie Christie. After the Lead broke up in 1991, he teamed with Marc Golob and Alex A to form the envelope-pushing grindcore/hardcore trio Frank’s Enemy.

By 1998, it was time to move on. “My wife and I had been married five years and we wanted children. I couldn’t have a day job, plus a marriage, plus children, plus a band all at once.” So during the next six years, Rey recorded at home as time permitted, releasing the results on his website.

The results included a new solo EP named after his daughter Astrid in 2003. Astrid, with its accessible melodies, alternative-pop arrangements and mature lyrical outlook, was a turning point in Rey’s recording career. “I’d always written songs in different styles, but I never pushed them as much as the extreme stuff until then.”

In early 2004, Rey decided to return to live performance. That August, he began attending open mics throughout South Florida, playing sets that combined new material with selections from his back catalog as well as unconventional versions of other people’s songs. He found the past hard to leave behind. “I was trying to create a full-band atmosphere by myself, actually playing solo sets on distorted electric guitar sometimes, and it honestly didn’t work.”

Rey spent the latter half of 2005 reassessing his music, playing only to his home church congregation on Sunday mornings. He took up the harmonica, placing himself in a rich tradition of singer-songwriters. A simpler, more direct style emerged. “I’m just letting the songs speak for themselves now,” he says. He also marked the end of his first solo phase that November with the low-key release his first full-length solo CD. Named after his youngest daughter, Corinne, the CD contains all of Rey’s alternative rock home recordings up to 2005, as well as some of the more memorable live performances recorded on open mic night at the Main Street Café in Homestead.

At home (church), November 2007.

Late 2007 finally saw the release of Understand The Words. 20 songs and 68 minutes long, it runs the gamut of musical styles. Despite its strict acoustic arrangements, elements of punk, R&B, blues, reggae, rockabilly and country gospel break through into the alt-folk/country/pop continuum.