Street roots., July 03, 2015, Page 8, Image 8

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in a band called Flake Music. The band split
when singer and songwriter James M ercer and
Sandoval left as a duo, forming The Shins.
After gaining a few more band members, The
Shins went on to hit it big, receiving a 2008
Grammy nomination and mainstream success.
The band relocated to Portland from
Albuquerque in 2002.
Along with rock stardom, came the rock ‘n’
roll lifestyle. “I was never the partier per se,
says Sandoval. “You just eventually live that
lifestyle because that is the lifestyle.., if you talk
to à lot of people in bands, it just becomes part
of what you do.”
But partying like a rock star may be too
much of a cliché for today’s youth. Sandoval
says talking with kids in bands, he’s noticed
they don’t seem to share the same affinity for
drugs and alcohol held by previous generations
of musicians.
“For me,” says Sandoval; “I’m shocked,
because at that age, that’s what I was doing. We
were drinking six packs at practice. Beer came
with it.”
“What do you mean you don’t drink? That’s
weird kid.”
Following a 2007 tour, the band’s front man,
James Mercer decided to continue The Shins,
but with new band members surrounding him.
M ercer told Pitchfork magazine it was “an
aesthetic decision.”
Sandoval says he was fired on what happened
to be the same night President Barack Obama
won his first presidential election.
“Once The Shins ended,” says Sandoval,
“there’s just this series of personal losses of
friendships and departure from a life that I had
grown to love, playing music. I really, at a young
be
interim1.1 ■■
And to kind of see that end was really hard for
me. I didn’t realize it while it was happening,
how - not necessarily the lifestyle - but what
had become a norm to me, was gone.”
“With James and Marty (Crandall) - I knew
them since high school,” he says. “I didn’t really
know how to process all that.”
Sandoval tossed his drumsticks aside and
returned to his roots, opening Nuevo Mexico, a
food cart offering the New Mexican food he
learned to cook as a teenager.
The scarcity of his main ingredient, Hatch
chile,
drew Portland’s New Mexican transplants
P H O TO BY JOE G LO DE
to his cart, but that same scarcity along with
rising costs made the business a challenge. At
one point, he says he realized, “Oh God, I’m
sitting in my coffin.”
Marshall Berg, a fellow New Mexican who
found Sandoval’s cart in his search for Hatch
A t age 7, Sandoval was strong enough to
chile, was so impressed with the food he
x Y c a rry a bucket of water and therefore
offered to help him out.
deemed old enough to start working.
The two became friends, and in 2012 they
His summers growing up were spent
launched a roasted Hatch chile pepper company
traveling between thecities, towns and tribal
called Los Roast. Before Sandoval closed his
villages of New Mexico with his family’s convoy
food cart for good, he continued to work the
of concession stands and food-vending trailers.
cart while he and Berg got their company off
“I would set u p th e food stand, run the gas
the ground, putting in long hours on both
lines, the electricity, make sure the stove was
fronts.
set up,” remembers Sandoval. “As I got older, I
After closing up the cart each night, he
learned to cook.”
would drink.
He worked for his mother and “Uncle Joe,”
“At 2, 3 in the morning, I just needed to get
and they often reunited with dozens of relatives
away,” he says. “And there it is again. It’s not
at festivals where everyone gathered to set up
' necessarily the rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle, but who
shop for the weekend.
am I sitting around with? It’s the bartenders,
His Peruvian mother cooked authentic New
it’s the service industry, who are all just so
Mexican fare for her customers with skills
excited to close the bar, and it’s like close the
handed down to h er from her mother-in-law. At
doors - drinking. And then it became very
the heart of her food was the Hatch chile
cyclical for me.”
pepper, best grown- in the cooked earth of
He was slipping fa st He knew he had an
southern New Mexico’s Hatch Valley.
addictive personality, but hadn’t really
When he was back home in Albuquerque,
gravitated toward partying in the past, which he
Sandoval was hammering away on the drums.
says may have contributed to his oblivion about
He and three of his high school friends played •. his problem: He tried to clean himself up, he
The indie-rock drummer turned chile roaster tells
how his brush with death brought him back to life
BY EM ILY GREEN
S TAFF W R IT E R
“ V T o u have three months to live.”
V Jesse Sandoval knew his lifestyle would
J L catch up with him eventually, but this
soon? The doctor’s words hit him like a slap in
the face. He was only 38.
It was the culmination of a downward spiral
that was sparked several years earlier when he
was fired from the iconic indie-rock band, The
Shins. He’d been the band’s drummer since its
inception in 1996, and his bandmates were
close friends for most his life.
In the years since his departure from the
band, Portlanders came to know Sandoval as
the friendly proprietor of the Nuevo Mexico
food cart and for his roasted New Mexican
Hatch chile pepper company, Los Roast.
But beyond the headlines and behind the
numerous reviews lauding his New Mexican
flavors» Sandoval has been quietly fighting for
his life.
Street Roots • July 3-9, 2015