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Twin Town High (vol. 8) |
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Los Lobos - and still the wolf survives
Wednesday 02 July @ 12:54:48 |
 Since the release of their first full-length album, How Will the Wolf Survive?, in 1984, L.A.-based group Los Lobos has proven itself again and again to be one of America’s most distinctive and original acts. Driven by the eclectic partnership of multi-instrumentalists/singers David Hidalgo and Cesar Rosas, drummer Louie Perez, bassist Conrad Lozano, and the keyboards and horns of Steve Berlin, Los Lobos’ musical stylings cover rock, Tex-Mex, country, folk, R&B, blues, and traditional Spanish and Mexican music with equal ease and grace.
While it’s always a joy to sit and listen to Los Lobos on your own home stereo, it’s even better to catch the group live. Live, the performance takes on the aspects of what jam band fans say jam bands are like but never actually are—a seamless performance where one song flows into the next perfectly, where it’s obvious that the people on stage are enjoying the music as much as the people in the audience are. I spoke to band member Steve Berlin about this aspect of Los Lobos.
Pulse: I hate to call Los Lobos a “jamband,” but what would you call what you do during your live shows?
Steve Berlin: I’d say Los Lobos could be called a jamband. We’re kindred spirits. The one place where we divert is that we’re slightly less inclined to explore the virtuosic solo. And I think that’s the one place where we’re just ever so slightly to the right of the jamband ethic. We have the two very different songwriting sensibilities in David Hidalgo and Cesar Rosas, so to a certain extent with us, we’re very bi-polar that way. If we’re on one side too long we want to go to the other side. I think that’s the only real significant difference. But I think it’s the healthiest trend, it’s the most exciting music, it’s where the coolest things are happening. I think certainly the only things that are happening actually are happening in and around the jamband scene.
Pulse: Are the live shows scripted at all? Do you have an actual set list, or is it all just intuition?
Berlin: For years we didn’t have set lists. Then, when we finished Good Morning Aztlan, we realized that there is more to it than what the existing band can handle. So one of the guys that played drums on most of the album is now touring with us, and we are using set lists only because it is difficult to switch drummers constantly. And beca use I write them, I feel like it’s my responsibility to make sure that we never do the same show twice, as far as I know. But we’re pretty adaptable, depending on the audience we’re playing for. Anybody that knows anything about us that comes to our show knows that if we don’t play “La Bamba” it’s because either we didn’t feel like it or they weren’t vocal enough about it. If they really want to hear it, they let us know and we’ll play it. It’s not as though we have a categorical objection to it. But we won’t play it unless people ask us for it because we’re quite frankly tired of it and it’s a long way back for us—17 years now—and the stuff we’re doing now has more resonance. For years we wouldn’t play it, just because we were bastards about it, but now we just don’t care.
Pulse: Do you still enjoy touring after all these years, or does it start to feel like work?
Berlin: It’s still fun. For us, I think it has more to do with the fact that we’re excited about the songs. There’s unexplored depth to the songs so we’re excited about playing the new stuff only because it is new to us. So it’s not pushing product as much as it is just that the songs are newer and more fun to play and they hold more possibilities than stuff we’ve played a million times. But we really do try to touch on everything through the course of a show. I consciously try to make sure that we at least play one song from every record. I try consciously to make sure the set list is as wide and broad as possible, but some nights just take their own track. There’ll be a set list out there, but if somebody feels like playing something else, believe me it’s no big whoop. We’ll just go wherever the music wants us to go.
Los Lobos plays Wed., July 2, with Paul Cebar and The Milwaukeeans.at the Minnesota Zoo Amphitheater. 7:30 p.m. $28. All-Ages.13000 Zoo Blvd. Apple Valley. 952-431-9200.
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