
Hailing from Miami, Florida, Folktale San Pedro is a striking, six-person project who has just released a catchy single labeled “More Than Just Your Body.”
With the help of Nico Garcia on saxophone, the band’s original member Paco Villafane released a 12 song demo on Bandcamp wearing a latex alpaca mask. Soon after, drummer Javier Nin and bassist Robert Vanscoy joined to make the group a trio adding a ‘surf rock’ style to the OG animal mask persona. Classical guitarist Christian Padron and keyboardist Nehemiah’s Orellana soon joined Folktale San Pedro to bring even more of a unique perspective to their already-expressive band atmosphere.
The instrumental backtrack of “More Than Just Your Body” feels organic: a head-bopping percussion set with a melodious electric guitar melody. The group showcases their depth by layering different styles of electric guitar for a heavier effect at different points in the song. With minimal diversity in pitch, the intoner vocalist sounds as if he’s singing into a fan.
The electronic effect on the vocals is the main attribute that gives the song its vintage effect. On top of its relaxing and psychedelic soundscape, the lyrics of “More Than Just Your Body” hold an important message. Folktale San Pedro addresses the theme that the mind is exceedingly more important than matter.

We love the message behind your lyrics with “More Than Just Your Body!” Can you further describe the theme that ‘mind is far more important than matter?’
So the "mind over body" aspect of the song is in regard to how I view relationships. There are times where you find yourself with someone who uses sex to try and 'repair things' and that's nonsensical. So the name is kind of related to the fact that you cant f*ck away wrongdoings. So we figured the song should be called "More Than Just Your Body".
As a 6 person music group, you are able to utilize the talents and ideas of six individual minds. Can you tell us about your collaboration as a group? How do you overcome adversity?
Our writing process is rather smooth, the song ideas tend to start with a vocal melody that pops into my brain then putting the music behind it or a nice chord progression that either the pianist (Nehemias Orellana) or the lead guitarist (Christian Padron) come up with. We then come together mainly while recording to create the final products. The song structure and sections are usually felt out between the drummer (Javier Nin), bassist (Robert Vanscoy), and myself. Nico Garcia, the saxophone player, python hunter, and master of miscellaneous percussive elements, is like our vibe check and he is great with helping with melodies while recording vocals.
What was your inspiration behind “More Than Just Your Body?” Both musical and lyrical?
If you give it a listen....you can tell someone hurt my feelings lmao so it's kind of like a "screw you" thing. One can forgive but not forget, ya know? Musically the song kinda started when Javi started playing some beat and I started playing the riff of the verse. This song we actually jammed out a little to get a general feel for it, then we structured it a little and that's how it came to be. The original demo's file name was called "Interpol + Franz Ferdinand Type Beat to Study Too" The riff gives me a similar feel to "Take Me Out" by Franz Ferdinand and the vibe touches upon some Interpol. The lyrics come from a relationship I was in with an awesome person, really she's cool. But some things happened that were rather wild. Not the normal case of "backstabbing" which inspired one stanza in the verse and the cover art drawn by our amazing friend and tattoo artist Claudia 'Lua' Perez (@luahills). The last two lines in the last chorus reflect that 'rather wild' aspect of what happened and it says, "Can't believe with all the things I've seen, you actually surprised me".
Can you tell us how your music has evolved over time? How has each of you grown since the day Paco Villafane released his first demo with his alpaca mask?
So that 12 song demo album "It's Alright" that I recorded with Nico Garcia (saxophone), I would call it "whimsy rock" because it is very colorful with some whimsical/whacky sounds here and there. You can find it on bandcamp.com/folktalesanpedro. At the time, and still am, I was heavily obsessed with The Flaming Lips. I wanted to make something like them and I tried lol kept it light-hearted and real. I wish I knew more about recording when that was recorded.
We then became a three-piece once that album was released and touched upon a beachy shoegaze punk rock approach. We weren't playing punk rock, but we would show up in the latex animal masks we use to wear and just go hard and loud. It had it's rather performance art-rock aspect to it. It was fun, really got lost in those masks. With the addition of members Nehemias Orellana (Piano and synths) and Christian Padron (lead guitar), things started to sound a bit more polished and sophisticated. They know about theory and all that fancy stuff aside from being amazing musicians. So they bring in really cool points of view that I would have never thought of in my life. So from the beginning to now, the vibe has remained similar but the sound is more refined, thought-out, and polished.
What has been keeping you all inspired in 2020?
I think I could speak for all of us here and say that the inspiration is just having fun and having a squad of young lads getting together and enjoying creative release. We really are inspired by the musicians we love. We just want to record our songs and have fun with it.