Julian Zamora: The Beat Goes On!
Humans of Galveston: Paint a picture of Julian Zamora for us.
Julian: My name is Julian Zamora and I’m from Houston, Texas, born and raised until I moved to Galveston in 2014. Galveston has always had a draw for me. I have roots here. My grandmother was a BOI and my grandfather moved from Mexico when he was 2 and lived on the island. She moved from the island when she was two and moved to Mexico where she met my dad and she got her future last name, which is Zamora-Michoacan. So I’ve always used Galveston when I was younger as my escape place. And then one day I was able to stay for an extended period, from Sunday to Thursday one time at the San Luis Condos and I actually got to experience some of the local life, and I loved it. It was not like the city (Houston). It has this everybody was friends and everything was so cool. It had places that were cool dive bars that would be trouble if you went to one in Houston. It was just normal people hanging out and having a good time. So I said to myself when I was walking down the Seawall one day in 2013, and I made an Instagram post, I said yep, Galveston will be my future home.
I did the prolonged stay in Galveston and a year later I had an awesome musician friend who was a guitar player and used to live in Houston before he moved to Galveston when he got back from Colorado. Now he lives in Hawaii and is doing his thing up there and I’m really proud of him. When he moved back to Galveston I went over to visit him and they happened to need a roommate and it was pretty cheap, so I said you know what, this is an opportunity and I said let’s make it happen. And so I moved in with them at a house right at the corner of 31st and O-1/2. I lived there about 7 months. It was always a goal of mine to live in one of the Victorian homes in Galveston, and there was another opportunity with a friend that needed a roommate because his roommate had moved out and I moved in. It was an old Victorian home just a few blocks from the Pleasure Pier at 25 and P-1/2.
So I lived there for about 2-1/2 years which was awesome. I loved it. We created a company called Shrimp Boat Productions, which was basically an umbrella company that did everything -- and my karaoke, the recording sessions. We did open mikes at Murphy's Irish Pub, and Drunken Monkeys at 20th and The Strand gave me my first opportunity to host karaoke and that's what got my foot in the door of actually doing what I love. I've always been a karaoke junkie or whatever because I'm a singer. Then Shrimp Boat Productions began to spread. Originally when I came to Galveston because I wanted to see live music. I found plenty of live music but my thing was, I came from Houston and where I'd go was original bands. On the island there were a bunch of cover bands. So when I don't like something, I do something about it so I put on my own show called Monkey Polooza in 2016. I came with a Houston background so it's different. The island's tough. You'll find out that sometimes it can very cliquish. I came in just trying to do my best the scene out because I was looking for live music but there were people who didn't like me because there was a Houston Press article written about me. And it basically said that I didn't think there was any live music and they all came out of the woodwork saying, Hey we're here and we've been doing this. Either way I kept on doing my thing and I became a karaoke deejay at Sound Bar in 2017. And that's when I did five nights a week at Sound Bar and as more and more people started to know me, they recognized me everywhere. I just try to bring love and light to people, you know make people smile, pick out their favorite songs, sing it for them and everything.
After that, everybody knew that our house was the Shrimp Boat Productions thing so everybody would come by. It was awesome. We did everything from the house. It was a two-story, four-bedroom house and we had one of the rooms as a recording studio. It was awesome, three friends and a recording studio. We had many artists to play at our house.
Humans of Galveston: What’s the best thing that’s happened to you in Galveston?
Julian: I had the opportunity to promote the ShipRocked Musical Festival in 2018 that was going on its 10th year. It’s all on a five-day cruise to Cozumel and the Yucatan. Before the cruise we did a pub crawl at five different Island bars, and each pub had a different band. The best time I’ve had in Galveston was the ShipRocked Pub Crawl. It was awesome to see about 900 people going to the bars and having a great time.
Humans of Galveston: What’s the worst thing that’s happened to you on the island?
Julian: I was at the Diamond Beach resort on the West End of the island and my girlfriend and I were all the way at the end at 1 o'clock in the morning. It's always been a spot to go to get away, calm your mind and look at the ocean. All of a sudden I just see a Glock. I had my arm up on her truck talking to her and I just see a Glock come up onto the side of me pointing straight at her. They tell us to give them everything that we have. I gave them my wallet. I’m like sure, my main thing was I know they had it pointed at her initially. For some reason that day I didn't put my money in my wallet. I put it in my front right pocket. They put me down on the ground right next to our truck. They had the gun pointed to the back of my head and then they grabbed her wallet and phone and when they realized she had a phone, he said I probably have a phone, too. He told the other one, if he doesn't want to give it to you , cap him, cap him. At that point I was just looking at the ocean and I thought that was the last time i was going to see it.
I had a phone and right away I told them it's in my left pocket. Get it. They got it and they never hit me, they never hurt any of us. Everybody was saying later, man you’re so big. I can't believe they robbed you. I’m 6 foot 6, 350 pounds with long dreadlocks. Everybody said wow, they must have been ballsy to rob you and I'm like, they didn't see who they were coming to, Not until they got to the back of the truck. And also I think that's a disadvantage with a gun because I'm so big and they might be quicker to shoot me. I got down on the ground, I complied and all they got out of it was two cellphones that they couldn’t get into, and two empty wallets. And really it's a great thing that they grabbed the phones because I had them tracked. (Galveston Police) Detective Jeff Murdoch is on the case right now.
Published by Bobby Stanton
Comments