Image: Diego Molina, class of 2025, a performance major, with an emphasis on guitar, plays guitar for the band DOWNHILL at band practice on February 21st, 2024. Photo by Kayla Brotherton
Story by Kayla Brotherton | Translation by Rodolfo Fabela
The downtown Corpus Christi area is currently a hot spot for local bands and the music scene, covering a multitude of genres and spotlighting many different bands, including DOWNHILL and Los Tiburones, both of which have members who attend TAMUCC.
Diego Molina and John Rocky Esquivel are performance majors here at TAMUCC, but outside of their education, both students take on the role of the lead guitarist for their band. Molina is the lead guitarist for the Corpus Christi band DOWNHILL while Esquivel is the lead and rhythm guitarist for the Corpus Christi band Los Tiburones.
The two describe the local music scene as “friendly, welcoming, and a little rough, but caring,” according to Molina, and “pretty collaborative…” with the people being “pretty nice,” according to Esquivel. The Corpus Christi scene consists of a mixed bag of genres, ranging from shoegaze to metal, punk rock, Spanish, and the blues. DOWNHILL falls within the popular punk rock and hardcore scene while Los Tiburones takes part in the Spanish scene.
Molina says DOWNHILL met originally at Del Mar, making them very involved with each other and the campus. However, Molina is now going on his second semester here at TAMUCC, making him the only one of his band to attend this university. With this change, the band has become almost a separate life to him.
For Esquivel, the two other members of Los Tiburones, Christopher Gabriel Pena–the vocalist and leader of band–and Gideon Matthew Perkins–the bassist, violinist, and pianist of the group–are also students at TAMUCC, making the band something that is actively part of his daily life. When it comes to balancing school and the band, Molina says “it gets a little hectic at times” while Esquivel describes it as initially hard to find the balance but ultimately “not… super stressful”, and it is “a very much needed challenge” that everyone should experience. The two note that their experience of being in a band and being a student at the same time is not too much different than anyone else’s, besides having to work practices and gigs into their schedules.
Both bands experienced struggles getting into Corpus Christi’s music scene. For DOWNHILL, it took the band six months after their debut show for them to get people to show up more and more, and with the influx of people, the band now has a show once every one to two weeks. Los Tiburones has been feeling the same struggle recently. Their biggest show was at the Corpus Christi artwalk, and the band has also taken up church gigs four or five times now. Esquivel says his band has felt the roughness of getting into the local scene since the lack of knowing certain people means “you don’t really get into a lot of venues.”
Despite DOWNHILL’s success, Molina still holds other dreams. As a performance major with an emphasis on guitar, Molina plans to be a classical guitar teacher either at a high school or a university but still plans to continue the band on the side. For Esquivel on the other hand, the band is his main goal as well as to “produce and push out [his] own music”, especially when he is eventually able to lead his own band.
In their time within the scene and these bands, both have experienced the expertise and kindness of others. For Molina, having fun has been his experience through it all, and for Esquivel, being able to make steps towards his dream has been fun as well as an incredible learning experience.