![[Clickable Image]](/linen/gif/button.gif)
Amid the cheers that rattle the Cabaret, a small doubt enters the mind that this pace, achieved so quickly, cannot be maintained through the scheduled two hour set. Cesar has exchanged his Telecaster and David his Strat for an acoustic bajo sexto and button accordion respectively and a tranquil interlude is anticipated. The band, however, with this lineup launches into a marvelously energetic three song set of Mexican-American music consisting of "Serenata Norteña," "Anselma," with its catchy stop-time arrangement, and the (as yet) unrecorded "Carabina 30-30." Immediately, the Rio Grande Valley polka rhythms assume a rock 'n' roll energy level, driven by Perez's wondrous attack on the offbeats. The mostly gringo audience sings the Spanish choruses phonetically while trying to remember polka dance steps. The subsequent return to English-language rock 'n' roll becomes a small turn in the road, not a major border crossing. Later, after six encore songs (three sets of two songs each) that pointedly excluded their mega-hit "La Bamba," this satisfied, drained audience will be dismissed into the Philadelphia night, perhaps to contemplate the short list of rock bands as good as Los Lobos.
Formed in 1974 by Rosas, Perez, Lozano and Hidalgo after each had joined different bands out of Garfield High School, Los Lobos originally operated as a rock 'n' roll band for a brief time. Afternoon sessions at the home of Rosas' parents (chosen for its proximity to an outstanding Armenian bakery) led the musicians to a deeper appreciation of traditional Mexican music and the choice to go acoustic. With a fifth member playing harp, the band adopted the name of an old Mexican band to become Los Lobos from East L.A. Not dressing in mariachi suits while playing traditional music flew in the face of the expectations of the Communities' elder audience; dressing casually and not performing protest music confounded the younger sector, making commercial success difficult. During this period the band played many wedding gigs, their last being for Richard Thompson and Nancy Covey in 1985. Gradually in the late seventies, Los Lobos reconverted to an electric band as Perez took up the drums and Hidalgo discovered an unused accordion in a friend's closet. This band eventually began to get gigs on the Hollywood rock club circuit, impressing Steve Berlin of the Blasters. He was invited to attend rehearsals and learn some norteña music which soon led to an invitation to join Los Lobos. The challenge inherent in the offer was great since norteña music utilizes alto sax, not the tenor or baritone instruments that Berlin played, but eventually, he joined the band.
In 1983 the electric band released an EP on Slash Records (...And a Time to Dance) and followed it the next year with an LP, How Will the Wolf Survive?, that showcased Hidalgo and Perez's considerable songwriting gift of presenting community concerns in highly personal terms (most notably in "A Matter of Time" and "Will the Wolf Survive?"). Three years of hard touring that extended the band's reputation as an excellent live act and almost uniform critical praise for their eclectic mix of American musics made completion of their second LP, By The Light of the Moon, a difficult year-long process. This album was again critically well-received for its strong, original compositions, eventually selling a respectable 400,000 copies. It was totally overshadowed, however, by the band's soundtrack work for the film La Bamba. As it became the big 1987 summer movie hit, the film propelled Los Lobos to their first #1 record which sold two million copies. Larger audiences came to see the band thinking them to be some retro-rock act like the Stray Cats, and found that they still only had time for two songs from the Valens film, "La Bamba" and "Come On, Let's Go," that they had been performing from the beginning. Frankly, the band and its long-time fans knew that rock oldies were the least of their accomplishments.
After this ambivalent brush with success, the band returned home and repeated some of its own history, going to Cesar Rosas' home this time and playing Mexican music. In five days they recorded the short, but wondrous, La Pistola y el Corazon, consisting of eight traditional Spanish-language tunes and the original title song. They then took this acoustic evening of Mexican traditional music across the U.S. in 1988, showing fans outside of L.A. what they used to sound like.
1990 has seen the release of The Neighborhood, their first entirely English-language release, which should most appropriately be viewed as the long-overdue followup to By the Light of the Moon. At press time, it is not known how long the supporting tour may be extended.
Two evenings after the Philly show in Washington's Lisner Auditorium, Los Lobos performed a similar two-hour set that included 25 songs (to Philly's 28) from all of the band's recorded works. Each of the shows drew heavily on the current CD, including nine of its 13 songs. Highlights of both shows were Rosas' blues shout on "I Can't Understand" and Hidalgo's twelve-string guitar showcase on "Angel Dance." For "Carabina 30-30" in D.C., Lobos substituted the classic "Volver, Volver (Return, Return)," which Rosas aptly introduced as a "slow Mexican blues."
The Washington encore set had been shuffled for a special event in honor of the last tour date with stellar opening act, the Dirty Dozen Brass Band from New Orleans. After performing "Shakin', Shakin' Shakes," Cesar Rosas summoned the entire Brass Band on stage, creating a fourteen-piece ensemble to do a Mexican cumbia, "Rosamaria."
Steve Berlin added his tenor sax to the six-man horn section of the Brass Band, achieving a huge horn sound. With both an electric bass and the mighty tuba line contributed by Dirty Dozen's Kirk Joseph, the well-rehearsed performance had a bottom sound to match the strong horn arrangement. As the long number came to a close, Rosas shouted into his mic for the photographers to take pictures, obviously intent on remembering a moment of musical satisfaction. Members of both bands took their bows together and exchanged handshakes and forearm shivers with each other, eventually departing to the ringing applause of the lucky D.C. crowd.
Returning to the stage, Los Lobos again eschewed "La Bamba" for a rock classic Rosas thought might be recognized. With a torrent of perfect blues guitar licks, Hidalgo launched the band into a brilliant recreation of Cream's arrangement of Robert Johnson's "Crossroads," exorcising the ghost of Eric Clapton's glory days with three brilliant solos. The audience response was so loud at the conclusion of his last solo, that it is doubtful the final verse about "telling my friend Willie Brown" made it to the back of the auditorium.
In these shows and this excellent new album, Los Lobos has reasserted its unique vision of American music without borders, inclusive of Mexican folk music, Tex-Mex polkas, New Orleans R&B, Cajun two-steps, Afro-American blues, and good old roadhouse rock 'n' roll. As musicians constantly seeking to improve, Los Lobos seems well situated to contribute significantly to this coming decade. These wolves will both survive and prosper.
Between the Philadelphia and Washington, D.C. shows in early November, 1990, Los Lobos's David Hidalgo conducted a lengthy telephone interview with Dirty Linen's Joe Compton. After the D.C. concert they got to talk face to face more briefly. The following interview is assembled from those two conversations.
As the band's musical fulcrum, David Hidalgo has recorded on more musical instruments than a good CPA can keep track of. Fortunately, he proved to be as generous with his time as the band is on stage with their audiences.
Joe Compton: You and Louie Perez are an established songwriting team, and on The Neighborhood, you've created a vast majority of the album's original material. How do you and Louie divide up that work between you? The music and the lyrics?
David Hidalgo: I guess there's no set pattern. It usually turns out that Louie writes most of the lyrics and I do most of the music. But there'll be times where we'll be out on the road and we'll sit down and often talk about different things we'd like to do, then store them until we get home and have some time to think and work them out. I guess there's a lot of different ways, sometimes a title or a melody will come first.
Compton: Wednesday night in Philly when you came to "Angel Dance," you brought out a twelve-string instrument that I hadn't seen you play before. Was that a guitar?
Hidalgo: Yes, that's a twelve-string electric guitar.
Compton: You had a capo on it, but what was that solo you played on "Angel Dance"?
Hidalgo: I don't know either. [laughs] It's just developed into that. I've always liked twelve-string guitars but wanted to use it in a different way, usually you hear it jangle.
Compton: The Byrds' sound...
Hidalgo: Right, but I've been listening to old blues records like Big Joe Williams with that nine-string guitar he had that gets a real raunchy dirty sound -- that was what I was looking for there.
Compton: "Little John of God" is about a school for special children in Westville, New Jersey. How did you get involved with them?
Hidalgo: It was a charity that Louie had been contributing to and they'd sent him a letter of thanks that said some wonderful things that inspired him to write the lyrics, and one afternoon he gives me this envelope saying, "Take this home and check it out when you have a chance." We were working on other stuff at the time, and it had come on him all at once. I looked at it and really liked it, was moved by it. Just grabbed my guitar, and it came together really quickly. It was just something that wasn't planned on. When we wrote it, we liked it, cool! It was a special little song. But we weren't sure we were going to use it on the record. When we were gathering all our possible material, Larry Hirsch [The Neighborhood's producer along with the band] heard it and says it's real powerful, you've got to include it. That's how it happened. As a matter of fact, when we were leaving Philadelphia yesterday we went to the school, and we met all the people who work there. We played acoustically for the kids. It was really cool.
Compton: That must have been a great experience for all of you. I used to work at a psychiatric hospital, and when I heard your song, "Deep Dark Hole" it seemed like an apt description of clinical depression. Other reviewers have seen it as an anti-drug song. Did you have a special dark hole you wanted people to avoid?
Hidalgo: No, we left it open for the listener. When we recorded it, Larry Hirsch said, "Hey, you've got your anti-drug song," and we said, "Oh, yeah, really?" But it's like you said, it could be about depression, it could be about ignorance. The lyrics could be about a lot of different things.
Compton: It's an unusual arrangement, the guitar parts almost reminded me of a Beatles tune.
Hidalgo: Yeah, I know what you mean. It's a quirky little song. It just seemed to make the most sense that way.
Compton: The song, "The Neighborhood," was that always intended to be the title song? The focus of the album?
Hidalgo: Well, actually, we gave ourselves several months beginning in '89 to write the material and came up with 18 songs and started rehearsals for the album. As we did those rehearsals, the work started to reveal itself to us. It takes on a certain feel in the combination of songs, and "The Neighborhood" seemed to tie it all in. There seemed to be a sense of community, trying to find some order or some peace or getting things together in a lot of songs, and "The Neighborhood" said it best.
Compton: Another song that I was really impressed with in the Philly show was "Jenny Got a Pony." I thought Conrad's bass playing on that was quite remarkable.
Hidalgo: Yeah. [laughs] While we were doing it, it felt right, and I didn't know why. Then I listened to it on playback and said, "Man, that's a great part he's playing there." It's long...
Compton: It moves, that's for sure. The best memory of that show for me might be the grins on your faces at the end of that song that said, "This one's working well."
Hidalgo: Yeah, that's a lot of fun to play, and that was the whole idea of that song. The lyrics are like a child's jumprope song, it's just a rave up.
Compton: A quieter piece that really impressed me with its exquisite arrangement was "Be Still." It and "Emily" are your first attempts to incorporate the fiddle into the electric band presentation.
Hidalgo: Yeah, I hadn't played it in a long time until we did the La Pistola album, and I got it out again and really enjoyed playing it. I decided to do more with it and work it into the new stuff. "Be Still" was one of the last songs written for the album, and we had the idea of using Mexican traditional rhythms along with English lyrics. We've wanted to do that for a long time and finally figured it out.
Compton: There are obviously other Mexican instruments on that arrangement, such as the guitarrón.
Hidalgo: Yeah, the guitarrón is the bass instrument, a big roundback with six strings. Conrad plays that. Then there are rhythm instruments like a jarana: it's an eight [nylon] string instrument. They're all playing strings, so when you get down to the lower strings, it goes up an octave. That's a rhythm instrument from Veracruz, and we also use the huapanguera, which is this big, almost baritone guitar. It's funny because it's eight strings but five courses, and you tune it to that Keith Richards' tuning...
Compton: Like Keith's five-string guitar?
Hidalgo: Yeah, that's just the way they've always tuned it, and it's a song that really excited us also.
Compton: In concert, on "Emily," I believe, and on "Las Amarillas" for sure, Louie was using that big marching drum when you're playing the fiddle. Is that one of the sound adjustments you make to incorporate the fiddle into the electric band or is that just for those particular songs which require that drum sound?
Hidalgo: Originally, we did it all acoustic, and the drum we used was called a bom bom. It's about the size of a floor tom. When we started to play "Be Still" and were playing it live, we found that the electric bass could work on those more traditional-sounding numbers. So we thought back to La Pistola and "Las Amarillas" and decided to rock it up, make it a little bigger with the electric bass.
Compton: How did Willie Dixon and Cesar get together for their "I Can't Understand" collaboration?
Hidalgo: It was about five years ago when we first met Willie through one of the people in our management. We met and became friends, and we backed him up on a few shows. He mentioned that he was open to writing with other people, and we knew he'd collaborated with Robbie Robertson. Cesar had this basic idea, a melody and chord changes, and he thought it was a good opportunity to get together with Willie and write.
Compton: That's a real strong song.
Hidalgo: Yeah, he wrote a great lyric for the song,and he's real pleased with it too.
Compton: In Philly you had two Mexican songs that you haven't put on record. One you called a "beer drinking song." What was that?
Hidalgo: Yeah, that's "Carabina 30-30," which means, Thirty-Thirty Carbine. It's a Mexican Civil War song.
Compton: Oh, a little more going on than beer drinking! Where's it from?
Hidalgo: [laughs] Yes, it probably came from somewhere in Central Mexico, an old traditional song. We've been listening to these Mexican brass bands and these wild arrangements they do, and that was an approximation of those bands with what we have.
Compton: Then there was the last number you did that night which my notes read, "quadruple time, insane tempo" because double time wouldn't begin to describe it.
Hidalgo: Yeah, it's another old traditional song, "Ojos De Pancha." That day we went in the back and said what we were going to play, and Louie suggested "Ojos De Pancha." But suppose we play it faster than we've ever played it in our lives and see if we can get through it.
Compton: When you did La Pistola y El Corazon did you intend to draw on music from one specific region of Mexico to provide the material for a folk album?
Hidalgo: Well, we went back to traditional music we had played when we first started, and it's a compilation of different regional styles. "La Guacamaya" and "El Canelo" are from Veracruz on the Gulf Coast. "El Gusto" is from a region called Huesteca which is three states: San Luis Potosi, Tamaulipas and Hidalgo, just north of Veracruz. Some of the other was from nearby states such as Michoacan and Guerraro. Music really varies state by state, their own styles and vocal applications.
Compton: I've traveled a bit in Mexico around the Yucatan Peninsula and was very impressed with its music.
Hidalgo: Yucatan is more tropical, the same as Veracruz. A lot of Latin music has come in and had a big influence on the local musicians. Music from Columbia and Cuba.
Compton: This magazine started as a Celtic folk magazine and has been branching out to other world musics. Could you recommend for our readers any artist to seek out to better understand the breadth and diversity of Mexican music?
Hidalgo: Yeah, unfortunately, those can be hard to find. A lot of good stuff was on RCA in the forties and fifties. There are some reissues on English labels, but I can't dredge the titles up now. One guy to look for is a harp player who died in the sixties, Andres Huesca, great harp player, one who set the standards.
Compton: You used to have a harp in your original folk lineup. Who played it?
Hidalgo: He was Frank Gonzalez. He's the one guy who quit early on.
Compton: Is the harp an instrument from a specific region of Mexico?
Hidalgo: Well, the harp we used was from Veracruz. There are different styles in different regions of Mexico.
Compton: I really loved the La Pistola tour as an acoustic presentation of music. Do you think you would ever be touring like that again?
Hidalgo: I'd be open to do it. It would be nice someday to do it all, maybe open for ourselves.
Compton: Well, it's also nice to have a band like the Dirty Dozen on this tour.
Hidalgo: Yes, yes, it's been great to have them with us. Tonight's our last show with them, and I'll really miss them.
Compton: It's a real testament to your guys' playing to take a band that good out as an opening act.
Hidalgo: Some nights it can be scary to come on after them!
Compton: Back to the La Pistola tour. Then you did one non-Mexican tune, from Peru, a really lovely piece. What was that tune?
Hidalgo: It was a Peruvian waltz called "Nadie Quiere Sufrir" [Nobody Wants to Suffer], a great song. The melody is actually from an old Edith Piaf song they'd just put Spanish words to. I didn't know that 'til later. We'd been playing it for years, and one night we're playing it in the studio, and T-Bone Burnett comes in a asks, "What's that?" and we say that it's an old Peruvian waltz. T-Bone says, "That's so familiar." It's driving him crazy, and finally he comes back in and exclaims, "That's an Edith Piaf song!" [laughs] I've always liked the song, the melodies and the changes.
Compton: In concert you really surprised me with Robert Johnson's "Crossroads" à la Cream, and the Blasters' classic "Marie Marie." Was "Crossroads" inspired more by the Robert Johnson box set or those long hours practicing to the Cream albums?
Hidalgo: That's just great fun to do. That's from my teenage days listening to Cream, sitting there with a little stereo, with the speakers around my head.
Compton: I always thought Conrad's bass playing had a lot of Jack Bruce's movement in it, and it was great to hear you both grab hold of that rock standard and bring it so fully alive.
Hidalgo: It's a bit of a tribute to Cream. They were great, man. Growing up they were one of my favorite bands.
Compton: Cream surely pushed the blues form as far out as you could go. And "Marie Marie" is certainly one of the neglected masterpieces of the eighties.
Hidalgo: Yeah, again a nod and a thank you to the Blasters.
Compton: New Orleans has always seemed so close to you guys. A show in Tipitinas at the 1987 Jazz Fest was one of my favorite sets. You're able to go out and match Fats Domino covers with the Dirty Dozen Brass Band, and you've recently produced Buckwheat Zydeco's latest CD. What makes that music so appealing?
Hidalgo: I don't know. There seems to be something common in the music to what we do that gives us a feel for it. Also, we simply love it. Then we go down there, and Louisiana is like another country.
Compton: Or another planet!
Hidalgo: Yeah, or another planet! [laughs] It's great; it's intriguing. I remember the first time we went there from Texas. All that desert land and then it's houses on stilts.
Compton: On a river of American music.
Hidalgo: Yeah, man, it's great. You feel that and then the people are so nice. The whole atmosphere down there really impressed us deeply.
Compton: How was the Buckwheat Zydeco project for you?
Hidalgo: Great. We met Buck years ago in Rhode Island. We played a college gig that finished early, so we went over to Lupo's to catch his show and ended up jamming that night. We started talking off and on about working together as we'd run into each other on the road. So it finally happened.
Compton: I think you did a good job getting it more roots-oriented.
Hidalgo: Yeah, I'd been thinking of what I liked about him, and I told him what I thought could make a good record, and he fortunately agreed. I know he's such a great musician, terrific Hammond organist, pianist also, and I wanted to show that with the more traditional stuff. I think it worked out okay.
Compton: You were a session man on one of my favorite records of last year, Peter Case's Blue Guitar. Can you recall that work?
Hidalgo: Oh, yeah: I really loved doing it. Larry Hirsch was working on that. Larry and Peter called and asked me to play some guitar, and I said sure. I went for one evening, and we worked live with the band -- Jim Keltner, Danny Timms and Jerry Scheff, and it was good. In the end I spent a week there and had a lot of fun. I didn't want to leave. You know, he's grown a lot, an amazing singer and song writer.
Compton: When you were moving out of the traditional Mexican music were you at all conscious of the Ry Cooder/Flaco Jimenez experiments?
Hidalgo: Yeah, well, we liked Ry Cooder from his first album on.
Compton: You seem to have that same broad interest in a lot of American musics.
Hidalgo: Yeah, early on, I listened to people like Ry Cooder, The Band, and, even, Fairport Convention as a teenager. And that whole approach to music, of combining different styles and using folk elements made a mark on me that I didn't realize until later.
Compton: I've got to ask what your favorite Fairport album was.
Hidalgo: I really loved Full House, a great band. Along the same lines, we also love the Incredible String Band with the way they would work a song. A lot of the instruments they couldn't really play, but using that Brian Jones approach -- "I want to hear a sitar on this song." Well, go out and buy one and pick out a melody that fits the song. I loved that, doing it in house instead of hiring someone, someone in the band learns a new instrument.
Compton: That's always been a hallmark of Los Lobos: when those situations arose, one of the band, most often you, David, would learn a new instrument. Does it startle you with your success to see other record companies going out signing Texas Tornado-type bands that can cross over and back into two markets or more?
Hidalgo: I don't know, maybe our success might have had something to do with it. That album you can tell they were trying for a commercial success. It's good, they all sing great.
Compton: Is there ever going to be a CD release of your wonderful first EP, And A Time to Dance?
Hidalgo: It's out in Europe and Japan, and we've been talking about that for the States. Maybe adding to it some live tracks or something.
Compton: Just a final question on the band's future projects after this tour wraps up.
Hidalgo: Well, that depends on how much touring we're going to do behind The Neighborhood and the life this record's going to have. It's hard to tell because things have changed so much since our last record. Radio's the big factor there. It's been really hard to get airplay. In certain parts of the country it's picked up real well, but in a lot of the major markets, it's just hard to get in because pop radio has become so tight. We'll have to feel that out, but I'd like to go back into the studio and do another record soon, a year, year and a half, at the most.
Compton: All that needs to happen is for people to hear The Neighborhood and they will want to own it. Many of my friends have it as their album of the year, track for track, song for song, the best.
Hidalgo: Thanks. You know, it's that way with a lot of music. People aren't ignorant or stupid. Most people if given a chance to hear something "new" will respond to an artist. I always bring up John Hiatt in these discussions. He's doing really well, but a lot of his songs, hey, they're hits to me. If people just had the chance to hear these songs, they'd love this guy. Somebody, like Steve Earle, who's a great songwriter, if given a proper chance, would be a big success.
Compton: You mentioned The Band, whose vision came in part from being Canadian outsiders, except for Levon Helm, who saw American music as this great heritage to revel in. Los Lobos comes as close as The Band to doing a broad spectrum of American music. I wonder what gave you such a clear perspective?
Hidalgo: Oh, it stems from where we come from. Los Angeles, East L.A. Living in L.A., we were exposed to a lot of different things, all the different cultures which moved to L.A. Just driving there, you'd come to the Filipino section, and you'd get their food and their music on their radio stations. A little further on, it's a Cuban neighborhood with their food and music. It was all around us. You just had to be open to it. Then on the radio, growing up, it was normal to hear Slim Harpo followed by the Yardbirds. It was really healthy.
Compton: Let's hope that Los Lobos can keep that roots music alive on American radio.
Hidalgo: Thanks. See you next time out.
-- Ellen Geisel (Clifton Park, NY)
Return to the Dirty Linen Home Page.
![[Clickable Image]](/linen/gif/lbackbut.gif)
Return to the back issue page.