Rik Avalos

Founder and driving force of the band. Rik’s voice carries the weight of a generation raised on grunge and the vulnerability of classic rock balladry. Every performance is an act of total commitment.

It started when he was thirteen. He and his best friend Toby were lifting weights before football season when Ratt’s Round and Round came on, and Rik said, “Imagine if we had a band.”

In 1989 Rik started Dirty Oliver in Austin, on guitar and vocals, with Jimmy Springer (drums and vocals), Garth Faigley (bass) and, soon after, Lance Merkin, a brilliant, innovative mind on keys, who landed them seven nights a week at the 6th Street Country Club. The lineup changed around him, and Rik, the only founder who stayed, moved to bass for good. In 1992 he called Toby at the Dome Bar in El Paso and asked him to join; Toby was in Austin within a day or two. With Paul Ramsey on drums and, for nine months, Brian Lee (a world-class singer and later a founding member of Suede) out front, the band settled into its best-loved lineup: Rik, Toby, Paul and Brent Stone. They worked the whole Texas circuit, played Hawaii in 1996 and went to Koots in Anchorage, Alaska twice.

In 1996, after leaving Dirty Oliver, Rik auditioned for Jumptrain and landed the bass spot, alongside Doug Wilson on lead guitar, Adam on rhythm guitar, Head Orona on drums and Paul Renna on lead vocals. Think the Black Crowes meeting Soundgarden, with a singer who could carry all of it. Paul is still one of the most soulful vocalists Rik has ever worked with, and today he’s a successful original artist in the Dallas area.

From 1996 through 1999, Jumptrain worked the Austin scene: headlining Steamboat, opening big shows at Antone’s, and holding down residencies at the Black Cat and the White Rabbit. It was Rik’s first original project, and writing alongside Paul and Doug is where he cut his teeth as a songwriter. In 1997 the band made an official video for “Faded.”

Doug, who also played in Sounds Under Radio, was one of Rik’s best friends. Just days before he passed, he called Rik with tickets to see the Black Crowes, one of Jumptrain’s biggest influences. He couldn’t go himself, so Rik met up with him, picked up the tickets and went to the show, then sent Doug videos from the night along with his thanks. A few days later, Paul called with the news that their brother was gone. Rik is usually grounded in an appreciation of life and an acceptance of death, but losing Doug hit especially hard. He plays Doug’s ’59 American Strat now, and every time he steps on stage, he feels Doug there with him.

From 2004 to 2013 he wrote with Joe Cieplinski as Seven’s Fears. The two of them were the band: Rik sang and played guitar, and Joe sang and played guitar, drums and five-string bass, a lefty who learned on a right-handed bass with the strings upside down. They wrote every song together and released three EPs, Reconciliation (2009), Introspection (2011) and Malefaction (2012), all still streaming on Spotify and everywhere else. They never found the players to build an original band around the songs, but Joe and Rik are still like family, and the chemistry they had is the same kind Rik found later with Omar Vallejo. Hear the Seven’s Fears EPs.

His sound sits somewhere between Radiohead’s tension, the ache of Stone Temple Pilots and the openness of Jeff Buckley. He leans on jazz voicings and open chord shapes that give a melody room to breathe, and he writes by exploring on guitar for hours until the feeling tells him a lyric is ready.