Music in the Tavern: Walter Salas-Humara
// ABOUT WALTER SALAS-HUMARA //
A Cuban-American whose parents fled Castro’s Havana with him still in the womb, Walter Salas-Humara was raised bilingual across the Florida Straits in Fort Lauderdale. College at the University of Florida in Gainesville and a residency with the Vulgar Boatmen left him with a lifelong habit of Mudcrutch/Tom Petty-style crunchy guitar riffs. Chasing the punk prairie fire to New York just in time to sift through the ashes, he formed The Silos in 1985 with guitarist Bob Rupe and violinist Mary Rowell, plugging the main cable of American rock idiom into the jerry-rigged soundboard of Velvets-era feral experimentalism. The unlikely result, as evidenced by About Her Steps (1986), seminal Cuba (1987), and their RCA debut The Silos (i.e., The One with the Bird on the Cover, 1990), was a loose-limbed conceptual country-rock that, in turn influenced (if not outright inspired) the alt-country No Depression movement just around the corner. The band was voted Best New American Band in Rolling Stone Magazine's Critics' Poll of 1987 and appeared on Late Night with David Letterman in 1990.
// ABOUT THE MUSIC IN THE TAVERN SERIES //
Stanley-Whitman House's Music in the Tavern Series presents artists and shows differently than a club show- instead, our house concert is more up close and personal. All of the artifice is stripped away. There is no stage, no dressing rooms, and no barrier between the performer and the audience. The SWH Music in the Tavern series is more like being one step closer to how music was intended- an artist traveling from town to town, telling stories, and making friends. Come check this out!
