When 20-year-old Adan Diaz got a phone call asking him if he was free for Lollapalooza weekend, he didn’t even have a manager or an agent yet.
On Thursday night, after years of performances at Chicago venues and as openers for different bands across the United States, he’s making his Lollapalooza debut.
“It’s just a blessing to just do my usual routine the day before and the next day wake up and just … like I could take the CTA,” he told the Sun-Times in a recent interview. “It’s just so comforting to know that I’m so close.”
As a 15-year-old high schooler in 2020 stuck at home thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic, Diaz started making music in his bedroom. His first song, “ripped jeans,” was written and produced with the help of Los Angeles-based music label GOD MODE.
The song is about a girl he had a crush on: “Ripped jeans, she was my beauty queen (mi reina) / 17, she knows a lot of things (¿me quieres?) / Maybe one day, I’ll be 17 (un día) / Maybe one day, you’ll be next to me (te necesito).”
It was the first time he’d ever put pen to paper.
“It’s like in my veins, I think, to naturally write about my life,” he said.
Diaz said he doesn’t expect the Lolla crowd to “know who the f- – – I am,” but he’s excited to make some new fans and wants to interact with as many as possible.
“I think the best way of introducing myself is by playing new music that represents me now,” he said. Diaz’s first songs have a younger, do-it-yourself vibe that you might find on the soundtrack of a teenage rom-com, but now he’s striving for a more alternative sound. He sings in a mix of English and Spanish on most of his records.
As a Mexican-American who grew up in suburban Northlake, he doesn’t want to be restricted to making one type of music, noting that just because he had a bachata track on his “Luchador” EP, it doesn’t make him a bachata artist.
“I really don’t believe in genres anymore. It’s like, anything can be pop, anything can be rock … I just make what sounds good to me.”
And while he admits that the music from his teenage years came from a place of “infatuation,” he’s been leaning into a grown-up version of himself on his upcoming EP that includes “weird sounds and very loud drums.”
The first single, “jsyk,” from that currently untitled EP, is set to be released on July 31.
He’s pursuing a digital marketing degree but decided to pause his studies to focus on his music.
“The new stuff is going to be very head-bopping and dancy,” he said. “I’ve been in a better, fun head space lately and I’ve been embracing my weirdness.”
As a kid, he was classically trained on the violin, initially quite reluctantly. But having that instruction, he said, helped him pick up a guitar while in quarantine and teach himself.
Earlier this year Diaz went on his second tour where he opened for Good Kid, an indie rock band from Canada. Diaz and his band mates piled into his blue 2010 Dodge Caravan to drive to each show since hiring a driver or flying to each gig was out of their budget, he said. The vehicle is old but it’s reliable.
“Until it wasn’t,” Diaz said as he explained how he had to replace the minivan’s radiator during the first week of the tour.
“When you’re a smaller artist, you just don’t have to budget to get a driver,” he said, adding that they’d often have to wake up at 4 or 5 a.m. to get on the road and make it to a show nine hours away.
Diaz said he’d never been to Lolla before last year, when he accompanied friends who played a set, because he could “never afford it.”
Performing just a year later “never crossed [his] mind” at the time, but then in April he got a call from a BMI representative as he was coming out of a study session at the library. He called his parents, who didn’t believe him at first, to share the news right away.
“It still feels surreal, and I think it’s not really going to kick in ’til I’m there,” he said.
Adan Diaz will be performing at Lollapalooza at 6:50 p.m. on Aug. 1 at the BMI Stage.