Trans Van Santos emerged from the fertile waters of the San Francisco music scene in 2009 with his neo-psychedelic collective Os Beaches, a band whose rotating membership included the late Steve Mackay of Iggy & The Stooges and former Brian Jonestown Massacre guitarist Jeffrey Davies.
After scoring the soundtrack to James Franco’s 2015 arthouse film I Think You Are Totally Wrong: A Quarrel, Trans Van Santos relocated to the American Southwest and released Moon Mirage. The album introduced the desert-noir and moody acid-folk that would be explored to fuller effect on TVS2, which featured contributions from Dead Meadow’s Jason Simon, Matt Adams of The Blank Tapes, and former Patti Smith guitarist Oliver Ray.
In 2018 he toured as support act on Dead Meadow’s 20th Anniversary Tour and in January of 2019 the UK’s Cardinal Fuzz Records released the self-titled debut Old Mexico, a new project fronted by Trans Van Santos, Dead Meadow guitarist Jason Simon and San Francisco free-jazz drummer Dave Mihaly. In the words of Ariel Pink’s Don Bolles, Trans Van Santos is “fucking great… reminds me of Bob Dylan and Tom Rapp.”
