As if fate knows. as if everything was written, or if someone, from who knows where, said: “Karito, doubts are enough”, it’s because that phone rang just when it was supposed to. Not before, not after. At the precise moment.
It was his birthday, and as the kettle raised the water, from the next round of friends, Karito Fox She told her mom it’s over. She’s already rowing it, putting bands together, casting, knocking on doors.
The music continued but from a more relaxed venue. After two decades of trying, It wasn’t throwing in the towel, but almost.
At that time, from Spain they wanted to talk to the protagonist of a viral cover of Guns N’ Roses on the networks.
It wasn’t just any phone call, it was from Diana Deville, who had been the manager of Fifth Station, the emblematic Spanish band, winner of two Grammys (2007 and 2010) and recognized worldwide in the early 2000s, who was looking for a voice powerful to a new project with the founders of that madness, which marked the sound of Iberian and Latin pop just over twenty years ago.
“I worked in an office. And at the same time I had my own band, Sangre rockera, with which I played bars and events. He had been part of the rock underworld for almost 20 years and I was already starting to lose hope when that call changed my life“, he says clarion Karito Volpe (37) singer and mother of two children, a 17 year old girl and an 8 year old boy.
life on stage
Karito has always known that his life should be close to the stage. Since she was a girl she has done theater (another of her passions), but with adolescence her course turned to singing (mainly international rock of the 80s). Her motherhood at 18 made the road more uphill, but he never gave up on music: “I don’t know how to live differently”, he says.
In recent years the networks have allowed his voice and stage presence to transcend small and medium-sized stages to multiply his followers by the thousands, who have begun to attract attention in the environment, but without stability.
Songs by Aerosmith, Bon Jovi, Guns N’ Roses and Metallica were some of his most played covers. But the boom was with the versions of Rata Blanca (Loving woman AND You are still in my dreams), which the singer of the band himself, Adrián Barilari, has recommended more than once. “Your versions have more opinions than mine,” Adrián revealed to him when they met.
Some say that when the message is good, it reaches its destination even if it is put in a bottle and thrown into the sea. So it happened with Karito. His talent could not get lost in oceans of videos and algorithmic dictatorships. Someone, thousands of miles away, would find in her the fuel to once again rewrite the history of pop rock in Spanish.
In this regard, the guitarist and one of the founders of both La quinta estación and Cinco estaciones, Sven Martín, tells us: “We had started a search for singers, but it was not easy. We met great artists, who weren’t exactly what we were looking for. Until one night of wine with friends in Salamanca they send me a video of Karito singing My sweet sonand there I said: it’s her”.
“It’s that out of 800 billion people in the world, it had to be her,” he says.
The trip to Madrid
After the call, they got in touch to meet up. You had to assemble styles that a priori didn’t seem so close. But first of all it was necessary to see if there was the necessary alchemy. She left all projects and went to Madrid in April 2022. “You will play first class,” her friend and artistic producer Guillermo Marín told her.
But fears were many. “We (people) have a horrible chip that it feels like if your dreams don’t come true at 25 they won’t come true again, and I used to carry that backpack, but that all changed when I met them,” he says.
The wave was instantaneous and almost organically Flores’ rocker became a “pop Beast”, but without losing its essence. “We weren’t going to change his singing, nor his torn voice of him, when all we really wanted is something that blends into freedom,” says Sven.
Five seasons starting in “fifth”
After touring the world several times with former band La quinta estación, Pablo Domínguez and Sven Martin, they had been away from the stage for almost a decade but, after the pandemic, they began to feel that something was missing and went looking for it.
“Our lives were fine. We didn’t come back for the money, because it wasn’t a problem, but we went back in search of that passion that stages give us, studying, creating music, for us it’s like a poison that gives us life, that is why we came back”, he says Martin.
Meanwhile for Pablo (who in recent years has dedicated himself to the production of artists) “everything happened in a very natural way” and he adds: “You work with total freedom and on the same harmony”, which according to his story “is almost utopian in this environment”.
Already with the trio format, in addition to the collaboration of musicians who have accompanied artists such as Paulina Rubio and David Bisbal, the band has focused on finding its own sound.
The “Estacioneta” (as they call it in clear reference to the world champion Argentine team) would have a bit of the smell of what it was, but it wasn’t just that. It was a rebirth, “where freedom and a love of music led the way,” they say.
After almost a year of work, the band released their first single at the end of February: Because I insist on loving youa song with the inevitable destiny of a hit, and the unmistakable spirit of those years, which smell of a bridge between Spain and Mexico, but with Karito’s voice, which rips rock from everywhere.
In ten days the song has already exceeded 300,000 visits. In the meantime they are working on a tour in Latin America and Spain, as well as on a first album of their own songs where they take much more advantage of the rock/pop side of the new line-up and anticipate possible collaborations with Alejandro Sanz and Coti, among other referents of the genre .
The problem with the name
Although these are days of happiness for Cinco Estaciones, in recent weeks there has been a strong judicial controversy with the former members of the previous band (specifically with the former vocalist Natalia Jiménez and the former guitarist Ángel Reyero).
At the heart of the discussion is the use of the “La Quinta Estación” patent, which, according to Jiménez, her former colleagues have tried to cancel (and she assures it is in her name).
However, both Pablo and Sven explain that although they are the composers of many of the songs and have “every right to use them”, this is a “completely new” project.
“We just make music. What we generate is music, love and good vibes. The rest doesn’t come with us. He neither argues nor tells or says», says Domínguez, distancing himself from any controversy.
“My luck will have changed, it will be that I’m not that strong”, paradoxically sings Karito who, in his search for more than two decades in the underground, has become immensely strong in order for his luck to change.
“If I could meet the Karito who was fighting her from below 20 years ago, I’d tell her to be patient and believe in her, that everything will work out,” describes the singer, as she grins one last time, her greenish eyes seeming to get lost in some memory, of those hard times.
It’s not to contradict the memorable success with which La Quinta Estación arrived in the country more than 15 years ago, but there are times when “it’s always worth a last try.”
Source: Clarin
