In the early 2000s, WYEP was producing “The CD Live Concert Series.” On March 9, 2004, we presented The Mavericks, a band that we had been championing, beginning with their first album. The band had recently returned following a hiatus and a change in line-up.
Lead singer Raul Malo and the band’s new guitarist, Eddie Perez, joined Rosemary Welsch in the studio for a Live & Direct performance. The discussion included the band’s early days, the challenge of genre hopping, and Eddie’s dream of joining the band. The pair played three songs, including “I’m Wondering,” “Since When” (a song from Malo’s solo album), and a cover of Gram Parsons’ “Hot Burrito #1.”
Their conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Rosemary Welsch: Back when WYEP was looking at what we were going to do with a CD live concert series, we kind of hit on The Mavericks. The Mavericks are a band that we've played, well, pretty much since their inception, since they joined MCA, and there was the back and forth. So we decided to bring that concert to town, put the tickets on sale, and you would have thought that we'd announce that everybody was getting a second birthday this year without aging, because the tickets went like crazy. So Raul Malo and Eddie Perez are here from the band, and you are playing in front of a wild and crazy sold out show tonight.
Raul Malo: Yeah,we're looking forward to that a lot. We got news of the show and how well it was selling and all that stuff. So we're excited.
Welsch: Well, I think there's been an audience in Pittsburgh for the band for a while, but I don't think that's an unusual thing. I would bet that there are pockets of really rabid fans for this band all over the country. But, you know, the industry being the way that it is, you have to kind of search and work to find your music sometimes.
Malo: Yeah, that's the way we like to do it. We like to make it easy on anybody.
Welsch: Well, let's talk a little bit about what's been going on with the band, because everybody's talking about the big reunion. Four or five years ago the band decides to take a hiatus, and apparently it turns into a breakup. Then it turns into this big reunion. Eddie joins the band and and is that pretty much the story?
Malo: Yeah, that's pretty much. I don't know that it was an official breakup. I mean, there were rumors that we were broken up and all that, but, you know, what does that mean? We weren't touring or working together. People like to put words in and, you know, they need to feel they need some closure or something. I don't know, but, yeah, that's pretty that pretty much sums it up.
Welsch: People like high drama.
Malo: Yeah, of course.
Welsch: And they certainly get high drama on this. This record, I think. But I want to go back a bit. I want to go back to kind of giving a brief history of the Mavericks. We go back to like, 1990 Miami and the band gets together, releases an independent release, and then you get this MCA, big contract. And MCA, it's a label that does pretty good with country. So you get the country tag. Well, I've read where you've said this was never really a country band.
Malo: You know, it's one of those tags. I mean, not that we're ashamed of it at all, but I think, to strictly classify the band as a country band, is unfair not only to us, but to country bands. I think we do a lot more than just that, even though we love country music and like anything, it's part of, anybody who picks up a guitar and writes a song, chances are they've heard a country record or two, and and you can't help but be influenced by the music, you know? So yeah, that's kind of where it goes.
Welsch: It's really rare to find a band that just fits one category. I think most performers, if you listen to their music, you hear all different kinds of influences, especially if you're talking about really good artist, you're going to hear all the different things that they've listened to and been influenced in their life. When you listen to The Mavericks, you hear that country element, but you hear a Latin element, you hear a pop element, you hear a rock element. And even beyond that, they're these great classic love ballads. So there's a lot of different things in there. And you're working in an industry like most industries, likes to punch out the musical widgets.
Malo: Yeah. You know that unfortunately, that's part of our business. They like everything to be in a neat little category so they can put it at the record stores in the proper place and all that stuff. And I understand that. It's a difficult job for record labels to sell records. And so they put labels on things to kind of stick them in certain genres to make it easier. But this was a problem from the beginning. We've been battling this from the get go. So it's nothing. And at the time, there were artists like Steve Earle and Lyle Lovett and Nancy Griffith and people like that, that we admired and respected greatly. And we thought we were closer to what they do than what was happening in pop at the time. So we went with it. It was a great opportunity. And, you know, I can't complain.
Welsch: You're now with Sanctuary, which is a label that's more known for its more independent rock elements. So, it almost feels like, well, this must be some sort of statement. Or maybe it's just this is the right thing at the right time.
Malo: Yeah, I think it's the right thing at the right time. Sanctuary has given us an opportunity to make music again and to put out records. We have a great relationship with them. I like the way they operate, you know, and they don't they don't worry too much about what genre it is or what category it fits. They just go out and sell the records, which is all we've ever wanted, you know?
Welsch: Well, do we have a sold out show tonight or almost. There's still a handful of tickets, that you might want to head down and see if you get lucky and keep your fingers crossed. But we want to make sure that since we have these two incredible musicians here in the studio, let's get some music. It's Raul Malo and Eddie Perez of The Mavericks.
“I’m Wondering”
Welsch: You know, I got an email from somebody earlier today who said that he's getting married on May the 1st, and the wedding is going to consist of all these Mavericks and Raul Malo tunes. And I think that song in particular is an example of why that sort of thing happens. So, at an early age, did you start developing this voice and thinking, I can use this for many, many reasons, many purposes.
Malo: Hey, you know, you got to work with what you got.
Welsch: Yeah, well, it's something that you've got now with Eddie Perez. Now Eddie, I want to ask you a question. I read somewhere that the story and hear so many of these stories. So you don't know it's true that you were in the audience once, like 96, 97 with your dad. You were watching The Mavericks and you turned to your dad and said, ‘I'm going to play with that band someday.’ Is that a true story?
Perez: That's absolutely true.
Welsch: But usually that's incredible. As a musician, as you know, when you stand out there and you're watching another musician play anything, oh, I've got to play with that band. And what about this band?
Perez: I was such a big fan of this band and their music. Since I first found out about them. And, so we used to go to the concerts and my father's a very big Mavericks fan, as well. I remember one time in particular, about 96, we were at the Greek Theater and, and we went to go see their show, and I just kind of had one of those like, ‘Someday I'm going to get to play in this band with these guys.’ And I just kept at it, and here I am, you know?
Welsch: I want to ask you about the album ‘Trampoline,’ because I think this is a really pivotal album for this particular band. It was an album that got incredible, critical acclaim. And you had a huge international hit with it. Huge in the UK still, you know, American radio always seem to be very confused about what to do with it, but it seemed to be a point in which there was a lot of experimentation going on. It was one of the last studio records that you did before the band took a hiatus, what was going on with that record?
Malo: Well, I mean, it was just a crazy time. We just went nuts. We wanted to do this record, like, in the old, old fashioned way and just do everything live with strings and the horns and percussion and all that stuff, like they used to record in the old days. So we went into this huge studio and basically recorded all the songs that way. I sang in the middle of the room with the whole band and the musicians and the strings and the horns and all that stuff. I don't want to sit here and say, like ‘I planned all this stuff,’ but, you know, I kind of just go with it and that record was really, you know, like you said, we were experimenting a lot. It was creatively, it was great fun. And, luckily we found some success overseas with it. And it found some life.
Welsch: The experimentation goes on when band members split apart and they do their own thing. You go with whatever it is that's on your particular mind. I know that you did your record today, which, yeah, we had incredible success with here. And of course, all of those strings and those horns were there, which reappear in this particular record. When you come back as all these individuals who've done your individual musical things and then you come back into the band, I guess there is a place where you say, ‘Well, this is what I really liked about the band, but this, this is something new that I'm bringing to it now because I did something different in the meantime.’
Malo: Yeah, that's probably, that's probably true. I don't think about that stuff the way you just stated it, but in a way, we wanted to kind of get back to basics on this album. So even though there's a little bit of the horns and the strings on there, just a taste of it. It's basically very simple album, very guitar driven. And just get back to how we used to do things, that doesn't necessarily mean that the next record won't be this huge production, but you never know. I think you got to take each project as it comes and treat the songs accordingly. Trampoline was purposely, purposefully done that way, and the songs I felt required that that treatment, you know, for this record, I think, a more subtle approach perhaps was, the best, you know, the better thing to do.
Welsch: I think it's interesting how you have your hooks in your songs. They seem to come so easily. They're really easy to catch on to, and they're basically very upbeat and happy. And yet as you start to listen to some of the lyrics on this, some pretty intense stuff going on in the lyrics. So it's like you're humming along and saying, ‘Oh, wait a minute, what do you say?’
Malo: I like a sense of irony. I think sometimes at the core, people want to be entertained, and I certainly want to be entertaining, but I think if you can say something and just make people maybe take a step back and listen to it for a whole other reason, I think that's a cool thing. I've always, you know, we've always tried to do that in a certain sense, but certainly on this record, there's a lot of things going on in the world that I felt like I needed to talk about, and it manifested itself into these songs. I equated to making your kids eat vegetables — you got to doctor them up a little bit to get them to eat their vegetables. So it's kind of the same thing, you put some thought provoking lyrics or whatever, some heavy duty lyrics around this melody that that draws him in first and hopefully they'll catch on.
Welsch: Vitamins can be mighty tasty.
Malo: Yeah, exactly.
Welsch: Well, let's hear some more music if you just tuned in, it's Raul Malo joined by Eddie Perez, and it's, The Mavericks in town tonight at the Byham Theater. New album called The Mavericks.
“Since When”
Welsch: You write all these great tunes, but every so often you'll do these covers. You know, the air that I breathe. You did a Johnny Cash cover on a tribute record. I can imagine that with your voice. There's so many things that would be so much fun for you to sing, for example, like some of the classic Patsy Cline songs, ‘You Belong to Me’ or something like that, or the Jim Reeves tune. You ever just think, ‘Man, I should just do a whole cover of that stuff?”
Malo: I'm actually getting ready to do another solo record that Peter Asher's going to produce, and we're collecting songs from some of my favorite songwriters throughout the years. And it's not necessarily going to be a standards album, but we'll probably do like a Randy Newman song and a Harry Nilsson song and that kind of stuff. So it's similar to what you're talking about. It's going to be fun and it's going to be a covers based record.
Welsch: It doesn't sound like there's any end to the music in sight.
Malo: No, no, I hope not. I have no other marketable skills. What else would I do?
Speaker 1: [00:24:41] Well, the new album is called The Mavericks. It's on Sanctuary Records, so thank you, Raul Malo and Eddie Perez for dropping by today. [00:24:48][6.4]
Speaker 2: [00:24:48] Thank you, thank you, thank you. [00:24:48][0.0]
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