bill carrasco

Bill was born in East L.A. with his twin sister Roxane and raised in L.A., Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Florida, and Arizona. Bill has worked as waiter, bus boy, ticket seller, product promoter, ice cream server, stadium hawker, movie theater guy, olive harvester, caterer, teaching assistant, camera operator, production technician, editor, translator, census worker, mail carrier, high school teacher, college professor, science internship coordinator, special event coordinator, and musician. He has a B.A. in Languages, an M.A in Latin American Literature, a PhD. in Semiotics. He also taught college Spanish, French, and World Literature for 7 years. Bill has lived in California, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Florida, Tennessee, France, Spain, and Mexico. He loves to travel whenever possible. In 2001, he began the Agua Trip project with Lindsey Boise and moved to New York in 2002. He is currently preparing to go surfing for the rest of his life. He is also very happy to be sharing his life with Tanya Barach, and to be a father for the first time.

“I first started making music with a saxophone at age 10. When I was 14, I quit the sax and started messing around with an old, out-of-tune piano. I came up with tons of melodies, most of which I forgot. I also learned the lyrics of every single Beatles song and would sing them to myself everywhere I went. A year later, I got my first guitar in Paracho, Mexico and began learning Mexican corridos. Since no one was there to show me the difference, I taught myself to play guitar upside-down and left-handed by looking at the chord diagrams in Mexican songbooks. For years, I wrote melodies in my head until I decided to actually tape record them. It wasn’t until I was 27 that I began to practice playing the guitar seriously. I was living in Toulouse, France, hanging out with my Tahitian neighbors who were part of a reggae band. I would show them some Mexican songs and they would teach me to play Bob Marley. Suddenly, I realized that I COULD write and play music. From that point on, I started generating a new song almost everyday. Eventually, I accumulated over a hundred cassette tapes full of song ideas! Most of Agua Trip’s repertoire was born in these tapes. Today, instead of cassette tapes, I have a million computer files. I hope I can get all this stuff out some day...”

Birthyear: the Summer of Love, when humans first walk on the moon and Abbey Road is released; when Sesame Street debuts on TV and 250,000 protestors march against the Viet Nam war in Washington, D.C.; when the ACLU claims that marijuana is harmless to both the user and society in general; the year of the cock and Woodstock.

Influences: John Lennon, The Beatles, Bill Withers, Bob Marley, The Smiths, The Bee Gees, Eddie Palmieri, Paul Simon, Rafael del Estad, Louis Armstrong, Mercedes Sosa, Stevie Wonder, Midnight Star, Queen, Sublime, Michael Jackson, XTC, Elton John, Georges Brassens, The Cure, Caetano Veloso, Lionel Ritchie, Gilberto Gil, U2, Digable Planets, Lole y Manuel, Depeche Mode, Tribe Called Quest, Elis Regina, The Police, Sting, José Alfredo Jimenez, Snoop Dog, Manu Chao, Violeta Parra, Echo and the Bunnymen, Mexican Folk Music, George Gershwin, Hector Lavoe, Tears for Fears, Joao Gilberto, Prince, Cindy Lauper, Nirvana, Billy Joel, Billie Holiday, James Brown, Carol King, Wham!, New Order, Los Manolos, Camarón, Dr. Dre, and Broadway musicals.

First album ever owned: The White Album