Pachy Garcia, aka Pachyman, grew up in Puerto Rico, where he was influenced by the Caribbean’s reggae and dub sounds. He moved to LA in 2012 and set up a basement studio in Echo Park using the kind of vintage recording gear you might see in a 1970s Kingston music studio. He’s a one-man band, playing drums, percussion, bass, guitar, and keyboard. Now he’s out with his fifth dub-infused record, Another Place.
Garcia explains that dub evolved out of reggae when producers started removing vocals to leave just the instrumentals. “When the creation of multi-track happened … the studios in Jamaica … figured out a way to just keep a band playing and take away the vocals. And that was what they started calling ‘dub.’ … They got into using effects and technology … and adding reverb hits and delays, and that term of dub got in people's psyche.”
He adds, “I guess I could call myself a dub artist, but I'm an artist, I'm a musician, writer, and producer. I'm myself.”
Garcia says that he grew up playing guitar and studied piano in college. He got into playing bass as a third instrument. He learned drums after moving to LA and spent six years as a touring drummer and singer for the synth-punk band Prettiest Eyes. Now he uses all four foundation instruments as Pachyman.
He says that being a solo artist has been a different experience for him. “I've worked in bands that it's always been like this democratic process. … Everyone just feeds the writing sessions and the machine. … It's really fun to do that, and you get way more ideas than you could do solo. But being solo in the studio, to me at that moment, after 15 years of being in different bands, it was just a therapeutic way to just continue working on music, and not have any pressures about playing shows or gelling with your band mates, or getting the right ideas together.”
How did Garcia come up with the name Pachyman? He says a high school friend gave him the nickname of Pachy, so he stuck with it. His real first name is Francisco, which is typically shortened to Paco.
In the music video for “Hard to Part,” Garcia runs past iconic places in Los Angeles. He says he was supposed to submit the video around the same time the Palisades and Eaton Fires broke out, so he and collaborators — Juliana and Nicola, the Giraffe Sisters — decided to produce something minimal and easy.
“We wanted to showcase Los Angeles because it was just a moment of a lot of vulnerability for everyone. So we wanted to just make a love letter to Los Angeles. … We decided to change the idea of the music video…[and] just … showcase all these spots that have been important to us or to me personally.”
Garcia says that he lives in LA now and loves it, but his home is in Puerto Rico, where he’s going to end up eventually.