Life on the road with Agustina Ruiz, Pt I: The secret life of a Los Bitchos tour
The origin story of a touring artist: The first time I remember wishing I was in a band, I was five.
Flavia, a girl in my class, had died of cancer. Another friend had escarlatina (scarlet fever); she was a twin, Karina and Talia. The death of Flavia had shocked me to the core, and I kept dreaming about a gothic underworld full of skulls and shadows beneath Plaza Varela. So to try and soothe myself, in my five-year-old mind, salvation looked like having a band with my friends where we all wear black swimsuits and dance to choreographies with fencing swords.
Every night, after taking the pills that kept my convulsions away, I would lie in bed and think about it until I fell asleep. The imaginary band was called ‘Las Escarlatas’ (The Scarlet Fevers), and it was pure Hollywood, injected with a Rioplatense kind of saudade.
As a child, I used to play Maria Elena Walsh cassettes; ‘La tortuga Manuelita’ was my favourite, it is a story about a turtle who travelled from Argentina to Paris in search of love and a fashion makeover. I used an umbrella and my hockey stick as a prop for my choreographies. I created a band when I was seven with Mari G and Nat. We had a song that went, “In Friday night we learn to be amigos,” which made no sense, but then again, we were seven, and I still find myself humming it sometimes, almost 30 years later.
I once told my father, with the conviction of a diva who knows her worth, that I wouldn’t sleep until the Spice Girls had seen me sing. My sister Paula and I used to put on weekend shows at siesta time. We would dance and sing Britney Spears (‘Oops I Did It Again’), Shakira (‘Ojos Asi’) and The Beatles (‘Twist and Shout’). We would charge our familia for tickets to see us perform, our first of many business ideas to come.
Every weekend morning, my grandparents played Uruguayan tango. I would sit there with my Barbie cup filled with hot chocolate, listen to Gardel’s voice and feel a weird sadness. A sadness that stretched beyond the house, all the way to the eternally frosted winter grass outside the window, in the vast countryside. That sadness and Gardel’s voice stayed with me forever, baptising me with nostalgia from my earliest years.
The beginnings of the band and a life on the road
In 2017, I found out Serra Petale was creating a new project. I asked her if I could join. I had experience as a punk singer, but with no more than a few bass lessons when I was 14, under my belt, I didn’t know how to play anything. I told her that I wanted to play keytar, so she taught me the songs and then, a few weeks later, we had our first gig supporting The Parrots at Oslo in May 2017.
The other musicians in Los Bitchos were friends who rotated every gig until a year later, when Josefine Jonsson and Nic Crawshaw joined the band.
Then, after Covid-19 had passed, non-stop touring life began.
Life on tour is strange because the days start to blur together. It feels like a long, never-ending day that extends across different cities and countries. You wake up early, get into a van or a plane, travel for hours, arrive at the venue, soundcheck, set up the merch table, find somewhere to have dinner, and play the show. Once in a while, we go to a party afterwards. Then it’s back to the hotel: shower, skincare, some random TV show or a good book, and sleep. The next day, it starts all over again somewhere else.
But it is still fun. Even more so if you are touring with your friends. Thankfully, I am.
Our green room is usually some version of the same spread: olives, hummus, cheese, crisps, cans of Coca-Cola, non alcoholic beers, yoghurt, water, cucumber, tea, bread and sometimes butter, if we are lucky. A bottle of wine, tequila or whiskey sitting somewhere on the table. Oh, and more Coca-Cola.
In the last few years, we’ve toured more countries than I can remember. Every place is fun and magical in its own way, and I always have the best of times in the US, Canada and Mexico. Long drives, big skies, fun stops along the way.
One day, we had a miracle day off. Technically, it was a travel day, so we hopped on the van and ended up at a water park somewhere in Oregon that our lovely tour manager at the time, AAAL, suggested.
The water park instantly reminded me of the Always Sunny in Philadelphia episode: sunburned families, towering slides, and the smell of chlorine everywhere.
Josefine and I went down a very nice, very safe, mildly fun water slide up and down, over and over again, until we noticed this massive, very unsafe, very fun slide. We decided to go, three girls and one inflatable. As soon as we slid down, we all felt intense regret and the strong feeling that this might actually be how we die. Pure adrenaline at its best and worst.
Then we saw Serra and Nic climbing up to try it. We started yelling from below, trying to warn them not to do it, and definitely not backwards, but they couldn’t hear us. The next thing we heard was a loud boom and the sight of Serra’s head hitting the infinite slide. She was alright in the end. But for a startling moment, pure panic arose.
That same day, when, after resting on plastic chairs and eating ice cream at the water park, we went for sushi in the corner of our hotel, we laughed so much we couldn’t breath and even sometimes when we tell the story, we can’t finish it. It is one of those ‘you have to be there to find it funny’ stories. Touring life is full of them.
And that’s what I think a tour is: not big, perfect moments, just a mix of chaotic and not-that-chaotic moments all rolling into one. Bad ideas you commit to, good ideas you commit to, new city, new day, something else happens, or nothing happens at all.
Not even in my wildest five-year-old escarlatina dreams I would have imagined such an amazing life. Tour life is crazy, but it’s good to know you always have your friends at the bottom of the slide.
To be continued…
