Already Sweaty might be the most-loved band that’s never played a public gig in its life. It started in 2012 when Desiree Borja and Cristina Luck were at Bar 35. “Cristina got back from Oakland and said she wanted to start a band, so Ilona [McGill] called out drums, I called out bass, and we started to teach each other to play music,” Borja said in the bathroom of Paiko, where they chose to shoot their Precious Moment.
Since then, they’ve been practicing, writing music, and learning how to play it. But they’ve only played one show—Paiko’s private anniversary party in December of 2013. “We did not have the desire to play a show in the beginning, because this is just a hobby we get together to do,” Luck says. “It’s like, if a group of friend’s got together to study the bible, they wouldn’t necessarily want to go out and practice what they preach.” It was when guitarist Nick Ross joined six months ago that they started to think about gigging.
Here, Already Sweaty features Ross on guitar, McGill on keyboards, Borja on bass, and Luck on the tulip mic, singing a song called “Vomit.”
“For the record, I puked in this bathroom four times. I feel very comfortable being here,” Luck said. She spent hours plastering paper flowers and eyeballs and real plants around the walls, “to pay tribute to this bathroom.”
“You wake up, take a shower, and you’re sweaty. You walk down the street, you’re sweating. You carry your backpack around, you’re sweaty. You’re already sweaty before you even get there,” Borja said. “That’s life.”
Already Sweaty’s first public show will be on May 1 at Downbeat Lounge, 42 N. Hotel St., at 9pm, but they already have a following, because, as Luck says, “Everyone can relate to sweating.”