This Denver Musician Is Taking a Risk…And It’s Paying Off

Joshua Randy Abeyta has played shows with several ensembles on 16th Street over the years, to varying degrees of audience engagement. If a Broncos game was happening at the same time as a performance, he knew there was virtually no chance that more than five people would show up to watch him play, making it easier for Abeyta to sneak off and check his phone for the game’s score. 

But then came his gig as lil piñon, a solo project he rebranded last year that was booked in December through the Downtown Denver Partnership, which is working to enliven what was formerly called the 16th Street Mall. 

“It was packed. It was a little spot on 16th and Welton; they have an artificial turf area. It was a ton of teenagers, families, and not just filling up the tables,” Abeyta recalls. “They were sitting on the green, and they were dancing, and they were really engaged. And it was perfect timing for that kind of show, because I was fresh in my feelings. You can tell when people clap out of courtesy and when they clap because they’re into it. And I didn’t get a lot of sympathy claps.”  

Those fresh feelings were the direct result of a trajectory-shifting move Abeyta had made just before the performance: He’d officially resigned from the band of which he was a founding member, Los Mocochetes, Denver’s sociopolitically zealous Chicano funk band.

Founded in 2016 by Abeyta, Elias Garcia and Diego Florez, Los Mocochetes quickly grew in popularity and membership. Over the past decade, the band has played with Thundercat and Chicano Batman, and in front of the Aurora ICE detention center. Last September, it was the first act to perform at the revamped Federal Theater, alongside fellow Latin act iZCALLi.

Ten years of writing and playing music with the same dudes inevitably creates a familial feeling, after hours spent crammed together in hot vans and green rooms, sharing meals and refining comedic bits. And this band had real family times: A decade ago, on a visit to help clear the acequias — a traditional Spanish irrigation system commonly used in the American Southwest — on land owned by his family in New Mexico’s Mora Valley, Abeyta learned that he and Garcia are cousins.

But then in January, Abeyta announced his exit from Los Mocochetes on Facebook. He says he felt that, as difficult as it was, leaving the band was important to his evolution as a musician, husband, father and grandfather. “As I thought about the road where I let go, I could feel my body physically relax,” he recalls. “I could feel my stomach knots loosen. And so, I knew even before the decision was made.”

He also has more time for his work as a community organizer, including monthly potluck gatherings and the good, old-fashioned protesting he’s done for the past twenty years.

Like Indigenous wisdom that asks you to consider the seven generations that came before you and the seven that will follow, Abeyta is concerned with leaving a legacy that his descendants and children can be proud of. Clouded in early adulthood by trauma, injustice and rebellious rage, Abeyta found himself incarcerated on a felony conviction, an experience that continues to shape who he is, even twenty years later. “Having a record puts a label on you that you wear like an invisible ink tattoo,” he says. “You know it’s there. And once someone’s like, ‘Hey, let me check that,’ they’re gonna find it. So that’s something you carry with you, especially in that shame and guilt space.”

But because of that formative experience, Abeyta says he’s not afraid to start over. After his release from prison, he began teaching music as a freelance educator and eventually became part of the Little Swallows team at Swallow Hill Music, a program he now runs as the organization’s outreach director. 

As for lil piñon, the project’s first LP, Don’t Even Trip, is expected to be released this summer. Abeyta is excited about this new phase; he hopes to sharpen his vision and enjoy the opportunity for complete creative control. Pioneering the logistical management of Los Mocochetes, Abeyta felt his artistic input was often put on the back burner. But his work as a solo artist through lil piñon now gives Abeyta a chance to connect in a way that feels raw and immediate. “By broadcasting the most vulnerable parts of myself, by commenting on the social ills that feel most impactful, I want others to know they’re not alone,” he says.

And though the grief of leaving Los Mocochetes goes on, the healing balms multiply for Abeyta. In January, as lil piñon, he played his first show at Dazzle with an impressive lineup of musicians — Felix Ayodele, Josiah Contreras and Theo Wilson — who comprise his backing band, the bosque. He and his wife, Nicole, also performed an intimate yet exuberant EP release show at Swallow Hill Music as their new project, the Xisme, in February, in preparation for a run of shows in Alamosa, Del Norte and Las Vegas. With a station at the back of the venue where patrons could make their own protest signs,and a song that required the audience to shout “FUCK ICE!” roughly ten times, Abeyta encouraged those around him to get loud.

Regarding his old band, he says that a closed door might be a challenging thing, but it doesn’t have to be a bad thing. 

“If you’ve ever loved someone, you always will. It’s the same for projects, for non-romantic relationships, because there is an etching in your DNA of that love story, and then it becomes a type of scar,” he says. “And I don’t think scars are inherently bad. I dig cool ones.”

Abeyta is optimistic about the future, and he accepts the fact that despite discomfort, realignment is a gift. 

“It’s kind of like how the forest needs to regenerate every so many years through a fire, when something’s kind of overgrown or entangled,” he concludes “Sometimes you need to just start over.”

lil piñon will perform at noon and 1 p.m. Sunday, April 12, at the Cifford Still Museum, 1250 Bannock Street; learn more at cliffordstillmuseum.org. Joshua Randy Abeyta will also play with his full band, the bosque, at 5 p.m. Saturday, April 25, at Odell Brewing Co., 800 East Lincoln Avenue in Fort Collins, as part of FoCoMx; find details at focoma.org.