Meet Alec Damiano of Varkan in Mesa

Today we’d like to introduce you to Alec Damiano.

Alec, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
I was born in Nogales, Arizona, and as bizarre as it sounds, I was literally brought into the world with music. The doctor was blasting a Linda Ronstadt mariachi album in the delivering room while my mom was in labor. I guess that’s set the tone of my life, always being surrounded by music. Feeling most comfortable and “at home” with music.

There has always been music around my house. My uncle (my mom’s younger brother) had a mariachi band with friends from high school, and they would practice at the house. I desperately wanted to be a part of the group. My mom bought me a kazoo shaped like a trumpet, and my grandmother made me a matching mariachi outfit so I could “perform” with the group. I must’ve been around three or four years old at the time. I guess the last thing they expected was for me to actually play the kazoo during one of their gigs…

So, they bought me a 1/16th size violin, and I learned how to play the instrument by ear and by watching the other players.

I played in the orchestra and drumline during my school years. I also taught myself how to play the guitar and the piano, inspired by the classic rock my mom loved listening to (Queen, Journey, AC/DC, you get the idea).

During middle school and high school, I also started getting into heavier music, like traditional 80’s metal and thrash metal. I learned how to play several of these songs (and their guitar solos) on the violin, which was my main instrument at the time.

I moved to Tempe in 2011 to pursue my bachelor’s degree at ASU. I tried to join several bands, initially as an electric violinist, but the demand for such was essentially nonexistent. I switched to bass guitar to expand my opportunities and started jamming with other musicians at ASU. I did brief stints in some existing bands, but things just didn’t work out.

I wrote and recorded a few song demos in my bedroom and launched them as a one-woman metal solo project called “Black Monarch.” I showed these songs to some friends in the local metal scene, and we started jamming, eventually coming up with our own new material. This was the beginning of Varkan.

Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
I have always had a vision of forming my own rock band for as long as I can remember. Through most of my school life, I tried to form this nebulous “band” I had in my head various times, but things just never worked out.

Nogales didn’t have a rock/metal scene, so I knew I had to move if I was going to make this happen.

When I graduated high school in 2011, I moved to Tempe to pursue my bachelor’s degree at ASU. My mother and grandmother moved to Tempe with me.

After being in and out of various bands, I began jamming with other musicians at ASU and becoming involved in the local metal scene. I immersed myself in it, interviewing bands, writing album reviews, doing photography, and designing show fliers (which were all extremely helpful in the pursuit of my journalism degree).

In the summer of 2014, I finally managed to form Varkan with two folks I had met at local shows, guitarist Ricardo Hall and drummer Michael Rodriguez. We booked our first show for November 1, 2014, at the Nile Underground, and the band underwent a series of lineup changes before that first show.

On October 23, 2014, nine days before Varkan’s debut, my grandmother passed away. She didn’t live to see my band’s first show, and she didn’t live to see me graduate college.

I carried on with work, school, and the band. On the day before my graduation, half the band left to pursue their own endeavors.

Mike and I played a few shows with fill-in musicians as we auditioned new bandmates and wrote new songs. I switched from bass to guitar to expand our opportunities.

Our friend Salvador Barragan filled in on bass for a show in December 2015, and he’s been our bassist ever since.

In early 2016, I put an ad in Craigslist looking for a guitarist.

Dominic Scarano, who had recently moved to Phoenix from Pennsylvania, answered the ad. After one time jamming with him, we knew he was the right person. We wrote what became our song, “The Revenge of the Black Queen” in one session, and the songs just started flowing from there.

Please tell us more about what you do, what you are currently focused on and most proud of.
The thing people bring up most is my guitar playing. It’s funny because I never wanted to be the guitarist of my band. I just wanted to be the singer!

I took up the guitar out of necessity when we were forming the new lineup. I would have been perfectly happy just doing rhythm guitar, and I was honestly very insecure about my soloing skills. Our other guitarist, Dominic, kept pushing me to practice, to write and learn complex riffs, and to start doing solos. Now, we trade off solos all the time.

Also, metal has always been a male-dominated genre. Although the scene has become more diverse in recent years (and I’m happy that it has), female guitarists in the thrash/power metal realm are still somewhat of a rarity.

I’d say that another thing that sets us apart is our stage presence. We’re playing technical music at 180 – 200 beats per minute, but I’d like to think that we’re pretty theatrical as well. We go ham onstage, doing high kicks, beating up our guitars… it’s a lot of fun.

We take a lot of influence from 70’s and 80’s arena bands like KISS, Judas Priest, and Poison. Some of these bands don’t immediately come to mind when you first hear our stuff, but their influence is indispensable.

What is your favorite childhood memory?
Some of my favorite childhood memories are cruising with my mom all over downtown Nogales on summer nights, while blasting Queen, Journey, and other 70’s and 80’s bands on the radio. We’d be screaming and singing along at the top of our lungs with the windows open. I remember the smell of rain and the streetlights reflecting against the puddles on the ground, as well as people staring at us and even following us around to see what the hell was going on… happy times.

Contact Info:

• Website: http://www.varkanofficial.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/varkanofficial/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/varkanofficial
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/varkanofficial
• Other: https://varkan.bandcamp.com/

Image Credit:
Arianna Grainey, Trevor Ronde

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