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A short-run zine featuring Pueblo-based Latinx artists and writers including a download code, visual art, photography, poetry, personal narrative, and a chord chart to play along with Fiesta Day in a high quality printing. Each zine is printed on one-of-a-kind stock, making each one unique. Also available in limited quantity at alwaysberkley.com.
There are things I wanna show you
But I don’t want you to see
There are things I wanna tell you
But I don’t want you to talk to me
I don’t want you near
But I wish you were here
Please understand me before the end of the world
The end of the world
You don’t have to if you don’t wanna wait
You can leave before Fiesta Day
Go before you get stuck behind the parade
You’ll get your chance to say what you wanna say
I don’t wanna be next to you
But I miss being close
I’m not searching for any clues
But I never lost hope
I never lost hope
I never lost hope
I’m so afraid to be loved
The time I told you that, it’s all I think of
Hell below, God above
Light the Virgin Mary for the boy that I was
Feels like everything you’d ever want is here
When someone leaves it’s like they disappear
I feel for you but I don’t wanna go back
I look like an asshole cuz you can’t understand
You’re gonna lose that fear
When the future’s clear
Rainbows in the water
Things are different here
They’re different here
They’re different here
about
Fiesta Day, the follow up to Berkley’s entry into the top 100 songs in Dallas-Fort Worth, is his first with no outside contributors. Where Berkley’s previous singles have included members of Austin indie band Watering and Third Man Records’ Luke Schneider, the personal subject in Fiesta Day demanded Berkley’s full attention.
Over the pulsing rhythm that propels the track, Berkely revisits the end of a teenage friendship with clarity brought by time. The track pumps at a windows-down-driving tempo while Berkley pleads with the estranged: I don’t want you near/but I wish you were here/please understand me before the end of the world.
Warbling Moog synthesizers, shaky guitars, and a lonesome piano represent the haunting memories of a lost connection. With this concoction, Berkley sounds like he could warm up an audience for Ethan Gruska or Andrew Bird when live music returns.
The track reclaims the pain of growing apart by reimagining a final conversation. For Berkley, this takes place during a local celebration in his hometown of Pueblo, Colorado known as Fiesta Day, a celebration of of Latinx culture: You don’t have to if you don’t want to wait/you can leave before Fiesta Day/leave before you get stuck behind the parade/you’ll get your chance to say what you want to say.
The video for Fiesta Day is inspired by the first-person experimental video game Paratopic, which switches players’ perspective and place in time. A companion to Berkley’s debut video, Pueblo Nights, Fiesta Day takes viewers through different moments and locales in Berkley’s life, all captured by the artist in his obsessive audio/visual cataloguing of his career.
Beginning on a stretch of interstate in pre-COVID New Mexico and shifting among Berkley’s early 2000s high school years, his 20s spent in Los Angeles, and a 2008 sold-out performance in a northern Colorado theater, Fiesta Day ties several ends of time together. As Berkley hopes to find common ground with his long-lost friend in the song’s lyrics, the video shows the relativity of every experience in one’s life.
Interrogating the small spaces shared between what-ifs of the past and the realities of the present is where Berkley’s songwriting sparkles. In Fiesta Day, Berkley continues to blow the dust off the events that shape us to reveal what follows.
credits
released February 19, 2021
Music and lyrics: Berkley
Recorded, mixed, and mastered at The Nest, Denton, TX by Andrew Jones
Cover photography: Lauren Carey
Cover art: @glitchybb
Layout and design: Danno
Born and raised in Pueblo, Colorado, now residing in Portland, Oregon Berkley took to the American songbook and pop
mainstays early, recording himself at 5 years old on a boombox singing along to The California Raisins and early 90s chart toppers.
Now, he composes laid back pop grooves driven by shaky electric guitar tones and chiming keyboards....more
Four indie-pop reflections on growth and loss from the Australian singer-songwriter, sustained by robust pianos and fervent vocals. Bandcamp New & Notable Feb 29, 2024
