Music Craft: Leo Aguilar

At just 18 years old, Leo Aguilar has already made a name for himself in the Valley. He started making songs on his phone his sophomore year of high school before deciding to start a band with fellow friend and bandmate, Carlos Zamora. The song that kicked off Leo’s musical career was ‘Wake Up, Eat’, currently with 84K plays on Soundcloud. 

TV Flesh consists of Oliver Gonzalez on bass, Isaiah Solis on drums, Carlos on guitar and Leo on vocals and guitar.

One of the hardships Leo faced during the early stages of TV Flesh was the constant change in band members. 

“So at first it was a different member called Ryan and he used to play bass for us. We would play shows really late,” said Aguilar. “We were still like in high school, by the way. So his mom stopped letting him play with us and that’s when Oliver joined.”

Not only was this a struggle, but Leo also couldn’t find gigs to play, which led him to start booking shows on his own. And within a few months, Leo became a local promoter. 

“One day I was just like, let’s keep throwing shows because it’s the only shows we get. It’s like throwing your own personalized show for yourself. All I do is pretty much just hit up bands, you know, make connections,” said Aguilar. “Like, a lot of the bands that we booked on here are people that I’ve met while playing shows.”

Leo and Carlos, for fun, started booking shows at Carlos’ residence, now known as Sauce House. Soon, they started Sauce House Booking in 2018, where he would contact bands to play at the residence and at local venues. 

“It’s crazy how much it’s grown, like, we were just doing these [shows] for fun and then it became a whole ass venue,” said Aguilar. “People just liked it, I guess.”

Leo had planned a show at Yerberia Cultura this March where local, regional, and out-of-state bands would be able to perform. However, bands started bailing out until eventually, the McAllen venue had to shut down due to the pandemic. 

“We didn’t really have a name for the event and we wanted it to be a showcase because SXSW cancelled, so we wanted to do our own thing,” said Aguilar. “It’s called the SXSW Fallout Showcase. It was just kind of like a joke name.”

Flashback to last year in August, TV Flesh had the opportunity to play in Monterrey at a show called ‘Flora’. 

“That was the best show of my life so far. I got to meet some of my favorite bands,” said Aguilar. “It was really fun like it was the highlight of my life.”

Now that Leo is limited to the things he can do *now*, he says the only things he *can* do is livestream bands on the Sauce House Instagram page and work on the upcoming album for TV Flesh. 

“We have everything done, we just need to record it,” said Aguilar. “But it’s become impossible for us pretty much to get all of us together and do all that.”

Leo wishes to continue writing, recording and producing songs in the future, not only for TV Flesh but for a personal project he is currently working on. He mentions starting another band, called ‘God Sits in Munich’.

You can find TV Flesh’s music on Soundcloud, Bandcamp, Apple Music and Spotify.

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