Pemi Fortuny: "Now I have so many rituals before giving a concert that I look like a bullfighter."

BarcelonaFortuny Award (Vendrell, 1965) Lax'n'Busto is back. At least, this year. What started as a benefit concert for the Cat Radio Barming project has ended up being a twelve-date tour with the original Lax (Fortuny, Jesús Rovira, Jimmy Piñol, Pemio Rovirosa, Cristian G. Montenegro, with keyboardist Eduard Font). They started in May in Salt, will finish in Inca in September and this Sunday they perform at the Les Nits de Barcelona Festival in Pedralbes with sold-out tickets.

Let's do the math. He left Lax'n'Busto in 2006, after twenty years leading the band. Almost twenty years later, he's back on tour.

— They're cycles. I started around 20, left the group at 40, and this year I'm turning 60. It's been twenty years since I reunited with my colleagues.

What has happened to Pemi these twenty years?

— I've done a lot of things. My partner and I lived in Costa Rica and did a project on foreign investment, interviewing forty figures: ministers, environmentalists, lawyers, and investors. In 2009, we launched the Cat Radio Barming project in Sierra Leone. We were there for five years and successfully passed a law in Parliament. It's a place that has gone from having no electricity to having Facebook, thanks to the radio. We go every year.

Have you ever worked as a volunteer?

— We don't want to be an NGO; we're social consultants. We started a company selling construction materials to generate money to invest in our cooperation projects. We don't believe in cooperation, as it is. Emergencies are a different story. But we've seen many schools that end up being chicken coops. NGOs have $15,000 to set up a school, and once it's set up, there's no money for the teachers. If you dedicate $15,000 to teachers, you have it for several years. We worked in Mexico, Myanmar, Thailand, and spent the pandemic on an island in Indonesia. We tried to travel and help with projects.

What did you feel when you listened to Lax'n'Busto during the twenty years you were away?

— I've never heard it, I haven't even heard myself. I don't like it. I haven't even sung in the shower. What I did find when I came back is that songs from Salva's [Racero] era, it's as if they were made for me. The first day we were amazed together.

What's it like to sing the songs of your youth band again?

— It's like riding a bicycle. It felt like we'd rehearsed the day before yesterday, and look, it was years ago. Everything just flowed. It started as a concert to celebrate the radio station's fifteenth anniversary and revive it, to help the team that runs it, who are survivors and fighters. And I said, "Hold my drink." I called our manager, I called Luz de Gas, and I did that Blues Brothers thing, going door to door to see what the band thought. They all said yes to helping me. We sold out the first concert right away and had to do a second one so the patrons could come.

And this turned into a tour.

— The audience's reaction, with people in tears, was incredibly moving, and we planned to do four more concerts. In the end, there were twelve.

Anyway, the group hasn't had a singer since 2017. Have you talked about coming back?

— No, no, everyone was so down on their necks that everyone was doing their own thing. If we had planned it, it wouldn't have turned out so well. We don't tour with retirement in mind, either, as my friends joke. I think we're more comfortable on stage now than we were years ago.

How has the day-to-day life of the tour changed in twenty years? I imagine the post-concert experience was wilder, right?

— The energy is still there, and it's projected differently, perhaps. But there are resources. Look, before, you'd finish a concert and go to the local bar, which is why we've made so many friends, and now there are many days when we rush off to bed. With kids [Fortuny has an eight-year-old son], they stretch you out in the end. I can't tell you how we felt, reuniting with so many people.

How do you feel on stage?

— I feel much more confident now, I feel better singing, we've adapted the tones of some songs because of course, everything goes down.

Your iconic look? Has it been cared for?

— I always joke that, since I've never had a voice, I haven't been able to lose it. I've never canceled a concert because of my voice. I have an all-terrain voice that keeps growing. I won't lie to you, it's not the same performing a concert now that I'm almost sixty; you have to take much more care of yourself. I have so many rituals before giving a concert now that I feel like a bullfighter.

What are you doing?

— I brought a cream from Thailand that's like tiger's ointment, like a super-strong menthol, and I put it on my ankles, under my eyes, and under my nose. And I also inhale peppermint essential oil. It opens your chest. The microphone stand also has to be positioned in a specific way.

Are these concerts the beginning of something?

— Nothing's planned. We'll do these concerts, and we don't have anything else planned. I won't tell you I'll never do it again.

Never say never to a never, right?

— Exactly. Life shows you how. We're letting all the good vibes flow. It's hard for us to process everything that's happening, the audience's reaction. We could have expected something, but not this. Music has a lot of power. I also noticed that the first few days I was remembering songs, here at home alone, I felt better. I've seen that music heals me, heals the soul. Maybe I needed that. It's good for me emotionally.

That's what happens to the public, I guess.

— We met people who fell in love at one of our concerts. A group of guys came to Girona and, on their way back from a concert, killed one of their members. A pregnant girl told me, "Look, I have a Roc in my belly." One of them told me that one of our concerts was the only night he ever had sex.

How did you make the repertoire?

— Let's make songs from the time when I and the others were not there. hits of all life. Let's make a hit after another.

He sings songs written when he was very young. There are songs that would be canceled today, like Labrador either I'm hungry for you?

— They're like old movies, which you'd also change, but deep down they're a reflection of an era. We were teenagers. Things have changed a lot. What we're doing is stepping into a time capsule and going back twenty years. The people who come aren't looking for something.

A song that was censored in the 90s was Carme Flavià, dedicated to a teacher. He'll never touch her, will he?

— It was the first song censored after Franco. It was a silly thing that got out of hand. In the end, we were really worried because they were asking us for six million pesetas. Jimmy was 16 or 17 years old. Imagine the faith Jesús [Rovira] had in writing a song that said: "When I'm very important, you'll regret it and sing the song I dedicated to you while you're taking a shower." Sweet revenge.

How does a member of the Catalan rock scene view the current Catalan music scene?

— I don't know it very well. I'm putting Pink Floyd on for my son so he doesn't go all out on autotunes. They're different eras and different ways of seeing things, but there are things I don't think are music. Of course, my father also said that what I did wasn't music. Let's just say it's not what interests me. I'd risk telling you that rock bands will soon start appearing again, bands with musicians.

And the last question. What do you say when you get back? Jump in?

— What do you say?

"Auanta".

— No.

"Are you bragging?"

— No, not that either. Even now I walk down the street and every now and then someone says to me: "Excuse me, what does the back of the Jump in?". We all say the same thing in the group, but I won't tell you now if I haven't told you before. Whatever you say will be fine.