When Rodrigo y Gabriela hit the stage this summer, there will be no foot pedals, no amplifiers, and no electric guitars. The tour will be 100 percent acoustic.

“We’re going to play new material in a new set up because we’re going back to a six-six (acoustic),” said Gabriela Quintero, one half of the Mexican instrumental guitar duo, “and we’re not going to use any effects and kind of see what happens. You can never have expectations, whatsoever, so we’ll see what happens.”

The U.S. leg of the tour runs till Aug. 4 – stretching from Oregon to Maryland – and supports several charitable organizations and eco-friendliness.

Before heading out on the road, Quintero, in a telephone interview, talked about returning to an acoustic format, writing new songs, taking solos and creating a full, rich sound.

Why did you guys decide to return to the acoustic format?

Mainly because we kind of realized that what makes this two-guitar format fun is that we can play whatever we come up with acoustically and I think that what makes it interesting to us ultimately and other people as well. When we start using effects and stuff, it’s not surprising anymore. With acoustic, it’s more pure.

Will the new material end up on a new album in the near future?

Yes, we are always in the search. Creatively speaking, we always look forward to new music. These tunes are supposed to be on the new album, but who knows if we come up with something else . . . but we like the songs and now we’re going to present them to our fans and see what they think.

Can you take us through the song writing process?

It is a process. Rod usually comes up with the melody, and then from there, we both start to structure the tune. And then I come up with the harmonies and the structure of the piece, and then eventually we both start to arrange the piece and that takes a lot of time. We need to be completely happy and completely aware that we can play this live with full sound and not sounding empty. That’s important because it’s two instruments only and it can definitely happen sometimes. With a rock audience or festival, you want to make sure to have a full, rich sound. That’s where we focus on – the most pure, not complicated, not complex, but easy and at the same time, well played. There’s a lot of elements and that’s why we take a little longer between EPs.

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