One of the coolest things I learned during my first time at the ACL Festival is that the best way to find good music is to let it find you. Such was my journey of discovery for the electrifying duo, Paco Versailles. With a revolutionary sound and such a fascinating story behind their music, this duo was without a doubt the highlight of my time at the festival.
“The best way to describe who we are would be to tell you the story of the name of the band, Paco Versailles”. The name pays homage to the world class flamenco guitarist Paco de Lucia, and also sends love to the French suburb of Versailles. It is a clear reflection of how the duo blends the rhythmic flair of Flamenco guitar with dance music and electronic production. The electrifying duo is composed of guitarist/producer Vahagni and songwriter/producer Ryan Merchant (of Capital Cities).
I had the pleasure of speaking with the duo after their show at Titos Stage on Day 1 and before I got to see them play again at the Austin Proper Hotel. The duo reflect on the inspirations and origins of their music, their experience performing at ACL Fest, their first two albums Dancemenco and Young in California, and their recent 3rd studio album Olé Maca.
DANNY RAMIREZ: What’s going on everybody, My name is Danny Ramirez, and I’m here representing KTXT 88.1 FM at ACL Festival and I have the pleasure of speaking with the one and only Paco Versailles. Thank you guys so much for taking the time to interview me. I know you guys have a busy schedule, you guys just came off your performances from ACL and Soho Nights so thank you guys so much for taking the time to talk with me and chat with me.
VAHAGNI: No problem thanks for chatting.
RYAN MERCHANT: Thanks for having us.
DANNY RAMIREZ: definitely! So I want to get a quick little background into who you guys are as a band you know for our listeners. Can you give us a quick little introduction to Paco Versailles, who you guys are, where this musical project originated from, you know, basically the origin story.
VAHAGNI: Yeah we’re Paco Versailles, we started in Los Angeles, Me and Ryan met and started speaking about this concept about taking flamenco music and flamenco guitar rhythms and fusing it with more of a house, electronic, a french kind of production style of music. We did our first show in LA at the Peppermint as almost like an experiment, and after that we just started writing more music to have a live repertoire more than anything because the concept of the band was created for live music. But once we started writing music we realized that we’ve also created kind of like a style, a genre of music and we started putting that out. In 2019 in june is when we first put out our single our first single, We put out an album in 2020 called Dancemenco, another one called Young In California, and we just released our third called Olé Maca, so it’s been a five-year journey so far and were having fun
DANNY RAMIREZ: 5 years strong! Could you guys talk a little bit about your personal influences? I know on stage we saw you (Vahagni) rocking the flamenco guitar, I know (Ryan Merchant) you’re doing you know all the songwriting all the singing and stuff so could you talk about your own personal influences and kind of like what you guys brought to this new experimental thing?
RYAN MERCHANT: Yeah I mean I would say the best way to describe it would be to tell you the story of the name of the band, Paco Versailles. So the Paco side of the name refers more to Vahagni’s influences, it’s a reference to Paco de Lucia, who’s a very famous, THE most famous flamenco guitar player so that’s part of it, and then the other side Versailles is more of a reference to the french suburb called Versailles and there’s a bunch of really famous french bands like Daft Punk, Air, Phoenix, all these amazing french bands all happen to come from Versailles and our sound is sort of a mixing of you know flamenco and flamenco rhythms with this sort of like modern french touch dancey funky production style with you know songwriting happening over the top of it. I think the name, we were lucky to stumble across a name that had significance in describing what the band is but also happens to sound very cool and looks good on a screen, on a billing for a festival so that’s kind of the two influences coming together. But we do everything together, you know, when we’re writing and producing we produce and write everything together it’s a total collaboration.
DANNY RAMIREZ: Nice! and yeah i know like you said for a festival it definitely brings the energy, it brings a new sound, it brings something unique you know like the way you can dance to it, the way you can sing to it, the way you even think about it and connect with the music because it’s bringing in two distinct, I mean you can argue that they’re very distinct styles of music, like very classical flamenco style guitar with more modern songwriting and production. It’s bringing two completely distinct styles and merging them into something that could, it just it blows people away, it blew me away and I know like all of our listeners back home it’s gonna blow them away. It’s mind-blowing it really is.
VAHAGNI: Thank you man.
DANNY RAMIREZ: So for this festival right, you guys were telling me earlier that this is the first time that you guys have ever played a very top tier festival, and you’re here in ACL in Austin right in the center of texas man. How does that feel, you know? How does that change from shows that you’ve done in the past, your mentality going into the show, just you know what’s the whole like mindset behind playing ACL.
VAHAGNI: I would say for every show that we play, we put everything we have into it, so whether it’s ACL or a small club somewhere, we definitely treat it as serious you know, but we did a lot of prep for this one you know for our set because we had to play a 45 minute set and we normally play longer, so we had to trim the set down, really think about the set, what was going to be the most dynamic, what was going to represent Paco the best way possible. You know, the only other thing is you come out and you just try to forget about everything else in terms of a big festival or pressure or whatever and you just come out and you play your heart out and you hope that all those people out there are going to take away something and you’re going to be able to reach them somehow and share something, so regardless, I think that’s always our goal.
DANNY RAMIREZ: What other festival would you guys want to play in the future? Because now you guys just came off of ACL, you got that on your rep sheet, so what is another festival that you think you guys would love to play?
RYAN MERCHANT: God, there’s so many good festivals. I think we’re really excited next year to start playing in europe we’re doing a couple shows and we actually have a lot of our fans in Europe so we’re doing a couple club shows in Paris, London, Amsterdam, and we’re hoping that going out there maybe leads to some more festival offers because there’s so many great festivals in the summer in europe so we’re excited about that. Another cool one is, so Lollapalooza does a whole south american tour, and when you do that you basically do all the festivals you do Brazil, Argentina, Chile, and so i think that’s going to be if we ultimately get there that would be an amazing trip just around South America. South America has embraced our music, it’s always a good time playing to the latin crowd.
DANNY RAMIREZ: Yeah man you got to connect with the people! you got to connect with the people that you know share not just connection to the music but connection to the roots of the music too. It’s very important to connect to that. I’m a mexican american myself, I am a big advocate for you know representation of cultures and of that kind of music so that’s really beautiful that you guys have that power of your music to connect with your fans like that.
RYAN MERCHANT: Right, of course.
DANNY RAMIREZ: So you guys are just coming off a third album right a recent release, you guys are kind of riding the momentum of that so i want to ask you know just so we can get a little more background on that specific album since that’s the one that you guys are putting the most momentum behind. could you give us a little background on the thematic of that album, the story behind it, kind of the idea of what you wanted this album to be compared to like your other two albums?
VAHAGNI: Yeah going into it you know the first album that we made Dancemenco was a very very specific sound, kind of hyper focused on flamenco guitar rhythms, dance beats, a lot of really great vocals, vocal lines, and hooks, and things like that and it kind of gave us our sound. It was really the catalyst of what is Paco Versailles’ sound. Then with our second album we took the approach of taking our live sound, the sound of our band, taking that into the studio and capturing that, and getting a different feel. I would say this album (Olé Maca) is a good mix of both what paco is in the studio as a production and what paco is live. There’s some tracks like letras, it’s all tracked with the with the band live and that really represents Paco in that sense, you know, what we sound like live and then there’s some other tracks on there where it’s just me and ryan where we played everything, we produced everything, and so it’s a good mixture of what paco versailles is both live and our sound in the studio. We kind of wanted it to be almost like we always talked about Thriller being this album that isn’t very thematic, you know, there’s just great songs and so we just wanted to put out the songs that we felt were ready and we felt really good about it, the production, the writing, and regardless of you know if it had anything to do with the previous albums in terms of theme. So some of the tracks are just like there’s one Hasta Málaga that’s totally like latin based latin centric, there’s a song called Little Stranger that’s a little darker, you know, a little more heavy, and then there’s a lot of the Dancemenco sound, the live sound, so it’s a good representation of Paco Versailles i would say
DANNY RAMIREZ: it’s just a collection of good music at the end of the day just so you can connect with the fans.
RYAN MERCHANT: Yeah you never know where an album is going to go. When you start making it you have an idea like oh we want to make this type of album, but then you start writing and it’s always taking twists and turns and we’re always. you know, not trying to repeat ourselves too much and so we just kind of let it go where it wants to go honestly.
DANNY RAMIREZ: Well thank you guys so much for chatting with me! I think honestly you guys are visionaries, you guys are pioneers. The fact that you guys can blend two genres so beautifully together and create a sound that’s unique, i feel like there’s no other better way to describe it, uniqueness, you know, it’s original, it’s new, it’s fresh, you guys are bringing a unique sound to not just ACL and Austin and Texas, but like everywhere you guys are taking it. You guys bring something really unique, it’s beautiful man.
VAHAGNI: That’s a nice compliment, thank you.
RYAN MERCHANT: One of the biggest challenges in music is to try and be unique so thank you.
DANNY RAMIREZ: Oh definitely yeah you guys deserve that and more. Like i said you guys are the visionaries, you guys have the vision for the future and i can’t wait to see it, i know that all the fans everywhere, the listeners from lubbock from back home, everyone’s gonna be very excited to see where you know Paco Versailles goes in the future and where this goes and we’re excited to tag along for the journey.
RYAN MERCHANT: Absolutely
DANNY RAMIREZ: So one last question that we’re asking all the bands that we’re talking to, a little fun one you know we’re kind of just asking everyone see what their take is. If you guys could recreate the soundtrack to any movie or tv show, which movie or tv show would you pick and why?
RYAN MERCHANT: recreate the soundtrack.. all right well this idea just popped into my head, i don’t know why, but so there’s a composer, there’s a movie called uncut gems
DANNY RAMIREZ: Oh yeah so Adam Sandler!
RYAN MERCHANT: With adam sandler, and the guy that composed the music for that is a guy, i forget his artist name, but he does these like really tripped out synth soundtracks that are like very evocative so i was, the idea just came to me, what if you took Forrest Gump, and did like instead of a very like kind of sappy traditional score you put sort of a dark synthy score behind it. Okay it probably wouldn’t work but i think like, you know, the music to a film can completely change the feeling of it so that was an idea, Forrest Gump with a modern synth soundtrack would just be like a completely different movie.
DANNY RAMIREZ: It would change the way you see Forrest Gump too. Like as a character it would change a lot of things.
RYAN MERCHANT: It would, yeah. Maybe it would be i don’t know more profound or whatever
VAHAGNI: Yeah that’s it’s funny it’s like, and this is probably why me and Ryan work well together, because i had the same exact thought but the mirrored version. I was thinking it would be funny to take Clockwork Orange and put like a really synthy score under it, you know, almost like cartoon music, charlie chaplin stuff,
DANNY RAMIREZ: Yeah on a movie that’s supposed to be more on the darker side
VAHAGNI: yeah you put like a little flare on it so when you see a dark moment and someone’s getting butchered it’s like something from you know bugs bunny or something like that yeah.
DANNY RAMIREZ: My goodness, both of those ideas sound crazy! Like that’s definitely answers that we were not expecting, that’s probably one of the better answers that we received man. Both answers respectively are amazing though, taking something and just flipping it on its head, that’s it that’s pretty good man i love it.
Well once again guys thank you guys so much for talking to us. The listeners at KTXT, all the media, all the people from lubbock, we’re all very excited to see where Paco Versailles goes and it’s been a pleasure you know thank you we’re sending the shout outs from Lubbock and we’re sharing and sending the love from lubbock man so thank you guys for talking to us.
PACO VERSAILLES: Thank you very much, we appreciate it!
This was truly an amazing experience to chat with booth Ryan and Vahagni about their music and delve deeper into the inspirations and influences that make up their sound. I have such a deep appreciation for their music now not just because I got to talk with them about it on a more intimate level, but also because I personally hold such a deep connection and love for both flamenco and dance music. Obviously the group that combined both these genres into something new and spectacular is going to stick with me forever. But of course, I can’t talk about why I connected with their music without talking about the experience I had at their live shows.
It’s truly a sight to see when you see a brand new concept of music be performed and shared in its entirety with every element present. For Paco Versailles, this experience was split between two performances. One at the Titos Stage at ACL Fest where they played a full set of the best of the best songs from their discography, and at the Austin Proper Hotel where they played a more intimate show truly showcasing their ability as musicians to take their concept and showcase it in its most raw and rooted form.
I had previously heard of their concept of merging Flamenco Guitar with Dance Music when I first received the invitation to speak with them, but at the Titos Stage, All my expectations of what is going to be were completely blown out of the water. I can’t remember a single song from the performance that I didn’t fall in love with and danced to. Their music for me was a breath of fresh air, and all the rhythms and melodies of combined flamenco and electronic dance musical arrangements connected with me the way a person connects with a new song they can’t stop playing on repeat after discovering it. Immediately after the festival I went to spotify and started listening to their albums and music more intimately. With just a single performance they cemented their place as one of the artists i would keep on my playlist rotation for a while
The next day after our interview, At the austin proper hotel i saw them play a simpler more intimate and grounded performance. A DJ set, hosting a speakeasy for invites to kick back at the Austin Propers drink lounge. This in concept would seem like the easiest and most laidback performance one could do. A simple DJ set where you could relax and wind down after a day’s worth of mainstage chaos, which is why I was excited for this event because I was ready to unwind and dance the rest of the night away.
Little did I know that this DJ set would end up truly reflecting their musical talent and understanding of the musical concept they had created. The moment I saw Ryan load up his USB into his laptop and bring out the DJ Mixer, and at the same time see Vahagni mic up his guitar right next to him, I knew I was about to be blown away. For the rest of the night, Ryan was laying down the house music set and Vahagni was matching the keys and tones of the songs and adding his guitar on top of it introducing new melodies and arrangements. Oh, and he did this all by ear!! It was the perfect blend of house and dance music combining with the melodies and rhythms born from traditional flamenco style all happening in real time! I was torn between staring at them in awe and amazement, and dancing like crazy. I truly believe that I got to experience the true concept of their music and hear the foundational idea that would go on to shape their sound.
Like I said in the beginning of this article, hearing their music was a journey for me.
I feel like the perfect showcase of Paco Versailles, from the full exposition of their discography at ACL, to the conversation with them about their music and influences, to finally a showcase of the original musical concept they have pioneered. I can without a doubt say that this experience was my most memorable from the festival and very grateful to both Ryan and Vahagni for letting me connect with their music on such an intimate level and for taking me on this journey.
To all the readers that have made it this far, Do yourself the favor and join me on the journey. I promise that words cannot describe how groundbreaking their music really is. The only way to truly experience it is to hear it for yourself.
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