Artist description Folk/pop for people with a soma or vicadin drug dependency problem. Sleepy weary moody songwriter.

Artist History Fernando Viciconte has a voice that rivals Hank Williams for it's sheer creaking glory and songs that cut clean to the bone. A native of Buenos Aires, Argentina, Fernando spent years in the L.A. music scene fronting the hard rock band Monkey Paw (under the stage moniker, "Xavier") before moving to Portland Oregon in 1994 to chart a new path. Focusing on folk, roots rock and country-western oriented material as both the solo artist Fernando and the fully realized band, "Fernando," Viciconte has truly blossomed as an artist and found his own voice since making the trek North. With the 1996 release of his first Cravedog Records album, "Season in Hell," Viciconte hit the ground running and has yet to look back, churning out several distinctly different flavors of music, including some harder numbers that recall his So. Cal days on, "Widows," and the tasty Latin rock of, "Pacoima." While these diverse approaches make his sound hard to immediately peg, Fernando's voice is the essential, integral agent that binds his work into a unified whole. Gritty, honest and with a slight rasp to his pipes, Fernando can swoop from the low-down agonized depths of despair to shouts of sheer unbridled joy in a heartbeat: brimstone to treacle in a single gulp. An easygoing and jocular fellow by nature, much of Fernando's material -especially his earlier tunes- comes from the darker side of the street. The honky-tonk blues appear to be the least of his worries, compared to what's Viciconte chews on in these songs- depression, suicide, death and abandonment. It's all very good, but it's often not good fun. But then, when was anything so passionate and worthwhile ever sugar-coated and nicey-nice?

Additional Info CLARIFICATION: Fernando Viciconte is the man. Fernando is the band.

Location Portland, Oregon - USA

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