Interview: Holy Pinto unwinds spools of uncertainty, restlessness and distance

No matter how much we kick and scream and throw red-faced tantrums right in the middle of the local grocery mart, life is gonna crash into our skulls with blunt force. With it, there’s an enormous wealth of crushing angst that only changing seasons can relieve. Aymen Saleh, who goes by Holy Pinto onstage, allows himself the time to mourn the life of a musician, a commitment that takes a kind of strength few muster or can maintain longterm. Originally from Canterbury, England, his nomadic nature has often been the catalyst for his meanderings around the globe and has ultimately led him to make a temporary home in Milwaukee. With his new EP, Tales from the Traveling T-Shirt Salesman, he’s no longer hostage to those feelings. Instead, he lets them glide up and away into the stratosphere, and for the first time, he’s at utter peace with his reality. “I’m trying to base my life off the ability to be a touring musician, and I guess, it’s kinda hard to commit to both people and places,” he admits over an email to B-Sides & Badlands.

As with most touring musicians, there comes even heavier doses of detachment from friends and family, those back home who seem like a presence sealed off on the other side of a black abyss. Even so, “this kind of traveling, touring and being away from home comes very naturally to me and is something I’ve always gravitated towards,” Saleh says. He weighs his heart on his sleeve, then, with such songs as “Gold Leaf,” the EP’s opening indie-rocker, which contains the pointed line “I still love your music / But you go away too much,” shedding the luxurious facade to reveal exactly how outsiders perceive the industry. “It’s essentially an imagining of the other person in the relationship speaking and expressing unhappiness with my distance. I read [that line] on a Christmas card from like 2005 that I randomly found in my room a few years ago. It was a Christmas card from my neighbor who looked after me a lot when I was younger. I sort of took that expression and put it into a new context.”

The sorrow glazes his lips, and even in the context of a floundering relationship, the song carries with it a transcendent meaning, one that connects our heartstrings to the brain stem. Our sometimes uncontrollable, unrelenting emotions drain our bodies, and we’re left with conscious choices that lead us down one of two paths: to further fulfillment or to entrapment in mundanity. Saleh confesses that his constant pursuit of a music career can feeling very much like a sacrificial lamb being led to slaughter. “It’s something I freak out about occasionally,” he says, “the idea that my transience and lack of locational roots might catch up with me. I worry that I’ll hit my thirties and look around and everyone will be married and have lives and I’ll just be kind of left behind.”

But he’s also a byproduct of a different generation that is less concerned with upholding traditions and more with setting the world on fire. “I feel like a lot of our generation, or at least most of my circle of friends, is hitting that stage a lot later in life than past generations, so I’m not sure it’s something I have to worry about too much, but it does cross my mind,” he says. All in all, this hopeful optimism and ambition has bestowed the singer, songwriter and musician with a world of experience, the kind that both breaks his bones and strengthens his will to truly live.

Tales from a Traveling T-Shirt Salesman bleeds out, relating the expanse of open road, the struggle, the exasperation, in a way that is incredibly moving. “Love is such a powerful drug,” he broods with “Bitter Enemies,” only the tender weeping of electric guitar coming to his aid. His performance reaches right into the tear ducts and pulls out all the stops. Saleh’s work is often rapturous and fueled on the power of early-00s punk and pop-rock, but more indie and willing to get dirty, gritty even in its delivery. Saleh is a dutiful craftsman whose style is just beginning to bud.

Below, the young talent talks juxtaposition of the sobering with the sunny, his nomadic experiences and live performances.

The EP has a pretty sunny disposition, overall, but many of the lyrics are often more solemn. How do both those components work off each other and sharpen their meaning?

Pretty much all of my favorite artists and records have messed with that aesthetic for years. Jens Lekman and Nate Ruess come to mind. They tend to write bright indie-pop music that has a colorful musical palette, yet most of the songs are about heartbreak, insecurity or the like. At the end of the day, I think I just like bright, happy and dance-y music, I think, so that’s what comes out. I also like lyrics to be honest, insightful, emotional and challenging. So, I guess it’s about a blend. Maybe it’s an unconscious trick that artists do to get people to listen to their deepest, darkest and saddest sentiments ⎯⎯ by dressing up the darkness in pretty musical arrangements.

While on tour in your mattress-installed van, did you run into many unsavory or even scary moments?

You know what ⎯⎯ I totally haven’t yet, but I’m going to very much keep my fingers crossed. My van doesn’t have blinds or curtains installed, so anyone could literally watch me sleep. I usually crash at Pilot Truck Stops when on solo tour, and they’re very overnight-sleeping friendly and feel like a safe place. You know there’s also tens of truckers sleeping parked next to you, and you’re just one of the numbers. Also, thank you for the reminder that I should install curtains!

Have you always been a nomad-at-heart?

One hundred-percent. I managed to do my first bit of traveling and backpacking when I was around 21, and I got hooked. Music gives me legitimate purpose and growth from travel, and that is very enriching for me both as a person and someone trying to build a career in music.

Did you find that really exploring your nomadic experiences was a necessary moment for you?

It’s definitely become a part of my identity, purposefully or not. I guess, I am exploring that fact through music right now. I just wrote a song that I titled “Wisconsin” that I will put out soon that definitely has a lot of lyrics pertaining to these questions. I will say that I wrote “Gold Leaf” before I properly sunk my teeth into almost permanent nomadity ⎯⎯ but I definitely knew this path was imminent, and that’s why those lyrics came out.

What did you learn from that?

I’m not sure quite. I guess a lot of the lyrics and my thoughts are more of an objective look. Not sure I have a solid perspective on things yet, honestly.

What have been some of the most interesting towns through which you’ve ever toured?

Oh my god, so many. Especially whilst touring with Ryan [Hurley], we ended up playing a lot of weird and wonderful shows, events and locations. It’s the best thing about DIY touring. You could be playing any environment anywhere in the world. Off the top of my head, last month we ended up playing an outdoor stage / DIY festival show in Ezstergom, Hungary, which is a town I never thought I’d go to. It wasn’t weird at all, just very rural, pretty and certainly not somewhere I ever expected to go on tour! Had such a blast.

When you first started playing and making music, professionally, was it pretty easy to adapt to the life of a traveling musician?

It wasn’t too hard, but that’s probably because it happened gradually. Me and Ryan started booking like a couple weekend runs. Then, we’d do weeks. Then, we started booking month runs. It kind of just graduated naturally.

How has it changed you?

I’m not sure. It’s all felt very natural. Ask me again in a couple years!

Have you found that music has been a way for you to deal with your fears and overcome them?

Not really…I think I find myself more fearful through sharing and releasing music, especially lyrics, rather than just keeping my feelings and stories private and doing something else in life. Being a musician, I think, makes me face insecurities a lot. I love the writing process more than anything, though. I enjoy it but not sure it helps eradicate fear, if that makes sense.

What are your favorite songs to perform live, and do they change meaning when under a live setting?

I absolutely love playing “Gold Leaf” acoustic. There’s this new song “Daisychain,” too that’s on the record that’ll be out next year. Interesting that you ask that ⎯⎯ I find that when I play solo or acoustic, sometimes the songs do take on a new meaning. I might find myself naturally slowing down a verse or section and engaging with the lyrics in the moment in a different way and through a different perspective.

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