Brujas del Sol prepares to bid adieu 

Last September, circumstances led Adrian Lee Zambrano to set aside the guitar he’d been playing on a near-daily basis for the majority of his existence, swapping it for his carpentry tools in the months following Hurricane Helene.

Zambrano, a Columbus expat who since July 2020 has lived in Asheville, North Carolina, felt an immediate impact from the storm, which downed a tree on the remote hilltop property where he lives with his wife and sent it crashing through the couple’s home. “We had rain pouring into our house for about seven hours,” said the musician, whose family and pets were all unharmed. “We spent a lot of time chainsawing after that. If I never hear another chainsaw again, I’ll be a happy man.”

The morning that followed, however, Zambrano quickly began to realize the magnitude of the damage, the initial signs arriving as he worked with neighbors over the course of the weekend to clear myriad fallen trees and other debris from the private road that snaked down the mountain. “Everything happened on Friday, and by Monday we were able to get out and make a run for supplies,” said Zambrano, a trim carpenter and cabinet maker whose skills took on new importance as he worked alongside his neighbors and employees to clear the road and then later to repair his home. “We basically spent the winter with a hole in our roof, but by March we had everything patched up.”

Those six or so months that Zambrano spent more intently dealing “with his own fish to fry,” as he described the post-hurricane crush, doubled as the longest stretch in which he wasn’t writing or recording something for Brujas del Sol, the psych-rock band he helped to form in Columbus in 2012, and which will play its final show together when the musicians take the stage at Ace of Cups on Saturday, Aug. 16.

“It’s something we’ve talked about for a while, and it’s not a negative thing for any of us,” said the guitarist, who pointed to life changes as one of the motivating factors behind the decision, including the reality that both bassist Derrick White and drummer Joshua Oswald have families with children. “It just feels like it’s time to put a bow on it and put it under the tree, for lack of a better term.”

Brujas’ performance is part of the third annual Blockout Bash, a single-day affair where a pre-purchased wristband grants attendees access to full slates of shows at a half-dozen venues clustered on High Street in the Old North neighborhood, including Spacebar, Records Per Minute, Dirty Dungarees, Old North Arcade, Bossy Grrl’s Pin Up Joint, and Ace of Cups, where Zambrano will pull double duty, playing back-to-back sets with Brujas del Sol and Nashville rockers Howling Giant. (Scroll down for a full list of performers by venue.)

The decision to put Brujas to bed has introduced small degrees of nostalgia in Zambrano, 39, who described himself as “young and hungry” coming into the project, embracing the mostly instrumental band as a means to meld his developing fascination with psych-rock acts such as Black Angels and Dead Meadow with the prog influences he’d absorbed from childhood, including Rush and Yes. “I had just moved back from Cleveland, and I called Derrick, like, ‘Man, I got this idea, do you want to play bass?’” he said. “So, he sold some guitar gear, bought a bass, bought a bass amp, and we just went for it, man.”

Part of what drew initially Zambrano toward psych, with its big, repetitive guitar riffs, was the ease with which he could zone out to it – something he cited as welcome during those earliest years when his father navigated a series of health issues. At its core, though, the musician said the pull he felt toward being in a band was always rooted in the allure of the road, and coming into Brujas he cited then-road warriors Lo-Pan as a clear source of inspiration. 

“I remember looking up to Jeff and Jesse and Scott and the boys in Lo-Pan first, and being like, man, I want what they have,” said Zambrano, who noted that the reality of life on the road didn’t always live up to his romanticized version of it. “I mean, playing in rock and roll shows is the most fun part of being in a band, right? You’re in a different place every night, showcasing your art, wearing your heart on your sleeve. … But then your van breaks down and you don’t have any tools and it’s like, ah, man, what do we do?”

Zambrano acknowledged that it took some time for Brujas to find its musical voice, which he said surfaced most clearly on the band’s final album, Deculter, from 2022, which the band put to tape at Relay Recording in the early months of Covid, finishing just days before the guitarist departed for North Carolina. “And I just think it encompasses everything we wanted to do,” he said. “It has those psych-rock elements. It has the space rock thing. It has the prog thing. And it has the Krautrock thing. And I feel it was all wrapped up in a way that we were finally proud of, where before we always looked back [on the albums] like, dude, we could have done that better.”

While ending the project was far from an easy decision, Zambrano said it was aided by the band’s final, yet-to-be-released recordings, which to him felt like something different from Brujas. “It was all written during Covid, so my mental space was way different, and the more I think about this record … the more I think this is a different project,” said Zambrano, who is already braced for the tears to flow once he’s onstage at Ace of Cups. “I’m an emotional baby and I know for sure I will end up crying. The only reason I can compartmentalize it and feel good is because those guys are my brothers, and I know they have my back. And I know there will be another record, and all those guys will be involved. And even if it’s something different, that still gives me some solace.”

Full list of Blockout Bash performers by venue (all shows take place on Saturday, Aug. 16):

Ace of Cups

Brujas del Sol 11:45 p.m.

Howling Giant 11 p.m.

Lo-Pan 10:15 p.m.

Horseburner 9:30 p.m.

Liteweight Champion 8:45 p.m.

Surfer 8 p.m.

Bossy Grrl’s Pin Up Joint

Ebri Yahloe 8:45 p.m.

PP & Nemo 8 p.m.

The Lycan Bite 7:15 p.m.

The Castros 6:30 p.m.

Clever Space Plants 5:45 p.m.

Bribed Fuzz 5 p.m.

Dirty Dungarees

Six Flags Guy 9:45 p.m.

Mindless Consumption 9 p.m.

Shove 8:15 p.m.

Fish Eyes 7:30 p.m.

Mires 6:45 p.m.

Ope 6 p.m.

Dadkeef 5:15 p.m.

Old North Arcade

Uncle Moze 6:30 p.m.

DJ Jefecita 5:30 p.m.

Citizen Dorian S 4:30 p.m.

Rip Roarin’ Lauren 3:30 p.m.

DJ Dynamo & Mimi Dromette 2:30 p.m.

Records Per Minute

Mery Steel 7:45 p.m.

Joy Cry 7 p.m.

Mercedes 6:15 p.m.

Damon May vs. Drake Talbot 4:45 p.m.

Mitch Rose 4 p.m.

Spacebar

Earwig 10:30 p.m.

Red Temple Pray 9:45 p.m.

Boat Jail 9:15 p.m.

Dingo Dango 8:30 p.m.

Triceratops 7:45 p.m.

Desespera 7 p.m.