Embracing our Asian-ness

There is nothing Mexican about T. Rexico...and they don’t sound anything like T. Rex.

“Yeah, I know who they are,” says guitarist Thomas Souvannaraph. “They’re that glam band. It’s just a name our bassist Bryce [Doria] came up with. When people hear our name they are expecting older guys with dinosaur masks.”

Souvannaraph says his Chula Vista–based high school band, including one sophomore and three juniors, first met in middle school.

“We grew up influenced by the surf pop of the Beach Boys. It’s always been a part of us. It started with the Beach Boys and it diverged from that. I wanted to find out more about surf music and I found out the Beach Boys wasn’t really surf music. I went to swap meets and found [surf-guitar] records like ‘Pipeline’ by the Chantays and records by the Astronauts. We’ve been doing reverb-drenched Fender guitar ever since.”

He says their “big break” came a year and a half ago when they were invited to play a Ché Café show with Bad Kids, Fake Tides, and the Groms. “They were more surf punk and we were more traditional surf music. It went well. We were asked to play a lot more shows after that.”

He says a Chula Vista house-party show last weekend was the record-release for a cassette EP. One side has three songs by Fake Tides. The other has three by T. Rexico.

“It’s in the Burger Records/DIY spirit. You’d be surprised how many people have cassette players. You can usually find a tape player at Goodwill for five bucks.”

The T. Rexicans have been known to participate in inter-school academic competitions. I wonder if this project is like something from Revenge of the Nerds...

“Many people have this stigma that if you are into academics you only have one path. We want to have fun, too.”

Souvannaraph says playing in a band and doing the college thing are not mutually exclusive.

“If there was a parallel, I guess it would be with Weezer. Rivers Cuomo used the money he made from his band to go to Harvard. Anything is possible.”

Two T. Rexicans are of Filipino decent and two are Laotian-American. “Lately we’ve been embracing our Asian-ness,” says Souvannaraph. “We had our band picture taken with our instruments and boba tea. It’s a tea-based drink with tapioca balls. Boba is a new craze, especially in all the Thai and barbecue places in Clairemont. We try to revive the spirit of suburban California in the ’60s and ride our Stingrays and get boba tea. We do it almost every weekend.”

T. Rexico, which also includes drummer Tristin Souvannaraph (Thomas’s brother) and organ player Kiara Pornan, appears Sunday at the Che Café with Diners, Kan Kan, First Move, and Oatmeal.