 |
| photo
by Wendy Lynch |
|
| Date |
City |
Venue |
Details |
| Sat 7/5/08 |
Detroit, MI |
Comerica CityFest |
|
| Sun 7/6/08 |
Toronto, ON |
The Mod Club |
|
| Mon 7/7/08 |
Montreal, QC |
Le National |
|
| Tue 7/8/08 |
Quebec City, QC |
Quebec City International Summer Festival |
|
| Wed 7/9/08 |
Ottawa, ON |
Cisco Systems Bluesfest |
|
| Fri 7/11/08 |
Winnipeg, MB |
Winnipeg Folk Festival |
|
| Sat 7/12/08 |
Winnipeg, MB |
Winnipeg Folk Festival |
|
| Fri 7/25/08 |
Calgary, AB |
Calgary Folk Festival |
|
| Sat 7/26/08 |
Calgary, AB |
Calgary Folk Festival |
|
| Sun 7/27/08 |
Reno, NV |
The Robert Z. Hawkins Amphitheatre |
|
| Sun 8/3/08 |
Newport, RI |
Newport Folk Festival |
|
| Thu 9/25/08 |
Chicago, IL |
Millennium Park - Pritzker Pavilion |
# |
| # Performance with Mariachi Luz de Luna
& Salvador Duran |
|
|
 |
"A
band has got to keep changing and moving or it will get boring
and break up," says CALEXICO's John Convertino. Fortunately
CALEXICO have barely stopped moving for ten years. Even when
they're not on the road – and this band tours hard –
they're recording: for themselves, with others. It's a tradition
that Tucson, Arizona residents Joey Burns and Convertino –
the engine that drives CALEXICO – have maintained ever
since they worked with another endlessly productive individual
with an intense work ethic, Howe Gelb, with whom they constituted
Giant Sand for over a decade. And it's a tradition that ensures
that, whatever they're involved in, it's going to be at least
a little different from what you heard last time. If that wasn't
the case, CALEXICO would still be trading in the lo-fi dusty
instrumental cassettes recorded on an answering machine that
represented their very first work back in 1996.
Case in point: since their fourth album Feast Of Wire's release
in early 2003, CALEXICO's work ethic has birthed a live DVD
as well as collaborations with Nancy Sinatra, Neko Case, Francoise
Breut, Gotan Project, Amparanoia, Marianne Dissard and Niam
Amor, while Convertino even found time to release a solo album,
Ragland. And now comes GARDEN RUIN, the band's fifth album (and
that's if you don't count their unofficial releases and tour
only CDs). Once again, it highlights how CALEXICO refuse to
stand still…
CALEXICO now is very different to the duo that started out in
1996. Joey and John remain at its heart, but the multinational
touring band they have gathered around them – fellow Tucson
inhabitant Jacob Valenzuela, Germans Martin Wenk and Volker
Zander, and Lambchop pedal steel player Paul Niehaus –
now plays an important role not only on stage but also in the
studio. To record GARDEN RUIN, CALEXICO also called in the services
of a producer, JD Foster (Richmond Fontaine, Marc Ribot, Green
on Red).
They began with a week of rehearsals in Bisbee, a turn of the
century Victorian era mining town in southeast Arizona, now
a stronghold for left wing liberals, artists, writers, touring
circus acts, and people who prefer the more creative lifestyle
of a small town rather than the big modern cities of Tucson
and Phoenix. "Plus," Burns notes, "it's always
10 degrees cooler in Bisbee than in Tucson."
"Our friend Bill Carter, writer, film maker and photographer,
recommend we practise on an empty fourth floor flat at his friend's
restaurant, Cafe Roka," Burns continues. "The surrounding
proved to be inspiring on many levels. Great food, everything
within walking distance, down to earth people, and no working
cell phones since the old town was barricaded inside a deep
ravine. It's an amazing place, perfect for making music or hanging
out in thrift stores and haunted hotel saloons, both of which
the town has a healthy supply."
Inspired by their surroundings, the band explored musical avenues
that they had previously left untouched. "This album was
a conscious decision to try something new and tap into strains
in our musical fabric that haven't been highlighted in the past,"
comments Burns. The fabric he refers to is still inherent in
their music, of course – the band has always admitted
to being influenced by sources as diverse as Portugese fado,
50's jazz, gypsy or romani music and its offshoots, 60's surf
and twang from Link Wray to country's Duane Eddy, the spaghetti
western epics of Ennio Morricone and dark indie rock singer
songwriters like Smog, Richard Buckner, Will Oldham and Vic
Chesnutt. But this album, he states, "turned out to be
more about songs, songs that didn't necessarily go back to the
same pool of influences as before. At home I'd picked up the
steel acoustic guitar rather than the nylon strung guitar, and
the difference in sound immediately took me down a different
path. For starters, I wound up playing more in major keys, and
there are more pop elements and a bit more rock too."
John Convertino is well aware of how things have changed. "I've
been channeling Charlie Watts while Joey channels Mike Watt,"
he laughs. "I've finally come back around to enjoying a
simple rock beat, while praying for some roll in there as well."
This is no doubt one reason why GARDEN RUIN seems a more accessible
album. Where the open blue skies of the landscapes they chronicled
were normally tempered by the smoky dark blues of their jazz
influences, GARDEN RUIN is musically brighter, though this time
the sky blues are tempered instead by a darker lyrical content
in which "Birds refuse to fly / No longer trust the sky".
Opener "Cruel" is a case in point, its potent melody
and upbeat, almost uplifting arangement masking stories "that
break like branches in the cold". As Burns says, there
is rock in there too. Closing track "All Systems Red"
is massive, guitars surging round Burns as he howls in a way
that will be as surprising to those who followed the band throughout
their career as to the late converts brought in by their cover
of Love's "Alone Again Or".
Lyrically, too, the album sees Burns taking a left turn, addressing
contemporary America rather than the mythical America that always
previously inspired him. Stories of the little man are now set
alongside far more personal insights into Burns' world view.
"There is much more of an influence of the current state
of affairs in the lyrics on this album than before," Burns
believes. "In the past there were songs like "Service
and Repair", "Sanchez", "Sunken Waltz"
and "Across The Wire" that brought up social political
issues, but never has an album been so concentrated on these
themes as this album."
Convertino agrees. "I think we are trying to do what we
can in the music and lyrics to help people relate to the frustration
that's been ever present since Bush became President. I don't
think we have ever had such 'political' thoughts going through
our brains in the process of making a record as we have had
with this one. There are monsters lurking all over it, even
in the pretty bits."
The result of the thousands of miles travelled since 2003's
Feast of Wire, GARDEN RUIN takes into account the enlarged line
up of the band, its multicultural roots, the band's growing
input into the songwriting and arrangement process, the arrival
of a producer, new domestic arrangements, international affairs,
broadening horizons, developing ambitions and changing scenery.
GARDEN RUIN is definitely not the sound of a band standing still.
Put succinctly, GARDEN RUIN is where CALEXICO fill those dusty,
empty landscapes they documented with a big, big sound… |
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Garden
Ruin
Touch & Go
2006 |
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