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After serving as a principal songwriter for sophomoric New York garage rock band the Beets, Juan Wauters embarked on a solo career that explores far more stripped-down moods. Recording minimal songs often centered on just his voice and acoustic guitar, Wauters sings his light and child-like tunes in both Spanish and English on albums like 2014′s NAP: North American Poetry and 2019′s highly collaborative travelogue La Onda de Juan Pablo. After teaming with Mac DeMarco on 2021′s eclectic Real Life Situations, he took an introspective turn on 2023′s Wandering Rebel, an album that found him assessing the way his life had changed over the years.
Juan Wauters was born in Uruguay and left in 2002 to join his father, who had migrated to New York for work a few years prior. While working in a factory, Wauters turned to music and socializing to alleviate the boredom and loneliness he was feeling in his otherwise drab working life. He met José Garcia in 2004 when they were both enrolled in a community college art class, and the two formed the garage act the Beets, who would go on to release several albums on Brooklyn indie label Captured Tracks beginning in 2009.
In 2014, Wauters stepped out on his own with his first solo album, NAP: North American Poetry, which took a much gentler approach to skewed folk than the often-demented Luddite garage rock of the Beets. The next year, he collaborated with like-minded artist and tourmate Carmelle Safdie on a short EP, Wearing Leather, Wearing Fur. The brief collection of songs featured lead appearances from both songwriters and was issued by Captured Tracks under the moniker Juan Wauters & Carmelle. Wauters’ second solo full-length, Who Me?, was recorded toward the end of 2014 and released by Captured Tracks in May 2015.
Over the course of the next several years, Wauters was involved in an independent film being shot in Argentina and spent some time traveling around Latin America. During his travels he would find collaborators in each city and record songs with his new friends, resulting in the album La Onda de Juan Pablo, which was released in January 2019 on Captured Tracks. He followed it in May with Introducing Juan Pablo, a collection of songs recorded between 2015 and 2016 and intended as a prequel to the travelogue of La Onda de Juan Pablo. Prior to the 2020 onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and ensuing quarantine, Wauters had begun traveling the U.S. and applying a similar collaborative approach to work with artists ranging from Mac DeMarco to Cola Boyy and Nick Hakim. The resulting 2021 album, Real Life Situations, combined these travel sessions with field recordings and intimate solo tracks from his New York home. With time away from travel and touring, Wauters began to create material informed by a newfound sense of stability. Though he toned down his regular nonstop nomadism, he still relocated from New York to Uruguay just before the release of Real Life Situations and spent time over the next year recording there as well as in Los Angeles, New York, and elsewhere. While still borne of the globetrotting curiosity that had characterized Wauters’ earlier records, his sixth solo album, Wandering Rebel, included his most self-reflective songs to date. It was released in June of 2023, again on Captured Tracks. ~ Fred Thomas