Saints of Havana is a country trio featuring brothers Cesar, left, and Rey Montecristo, right, and Aaron Shea.IF YOU GO• What: Saints of Havana with the Collins Brothers and Stacy Wilson and the Band Raven• When: 7 p.m. tonight.• Where: The Camp House, 1427 Williams St.• Admission: $7.• Phone: 702-8081.
As children back in their native Cuba, brothers Rey and Cesar Gutierrez Montecristo used to head to the bus stop to sing and dance for change to add to the family's meager income.
"We were very poor," the 38-year-old Rey says. "We grew up with no electricity."
Something they did have was talent, which they came by naturally as their father played in various Flamenco bands and their grandmother taught violin and piano.
Today, the brothers -- Cesar is 36 years old -- live in Nashville and are two-thirds of Saints of Havana, an unsigned country/rock trio that will perform tonight at the The Camp House. They've come a long way from those early days in Cuba. The family wasn't always without, however. Prior to 1959, when Fidel Castro seized power, their grandfather, Don Nicolas Gutierrez, was the wealthiest man around, making money in cigars, coffee, a taxi service and other interests.
"We lost everything when [Fidel] Castro nationalized everything," Rey Montecristo says. "They took his taxi cab business and his cockfighting business and put him in jail.
The entire family, even their grandfather, managed to escape to the United States in a boat in 1980, and the boys began their acclimation in a new country.
"We had really good schools," Montecristo says. "They were not there to brainwash us but to educate us. Our teacher put us in special music classes, and we won a bunch of talent shows."
Eventually the brothers formed a Spanish rock band, but they kept coming back to the music their father and the farm workers they knew back in Cuba loved -- American country.
In 2008, the brothers decided to move to Nashville to focus primarily on songwriting, but "we still had the entertainment bug," Montecristo says. "I was a singer in the Spanish rock band, but we figured we needed a good country singer."
They believe they have found him in Aaron Shea, the 29-year-old son of a Michigan auto worker whom they met in 2008.
Rey and Cesar soon hatched a plan to not only become well-known in the Nashville country scene but to spread their brand of music.
"Everything was planned out to bring country music to the world. Cubans are very loved in Europe. In Latin America, the girls love singers with blond hair and blue eyes. They love rock now and just haven't accepted country yet. We want to bring it to them."
Saints of Havana is currently writing new material for its second album. They also signed an endorsement deal with the Tennessee-based cigar company Jaxsin Cigars and have their own premium private label cigar.
Contact Barry Courter at bcourter@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6354.