New Calexico

Calexico's new tour-only CD will be a live one, from the band's Carried to Dust tour last fall.

Always excellent live, Calexico just wrapped up a very well-received tour with Andrew Bird. (And recorded an album with Tom Russell.)

Ancienne Belgique - Live In Brussels 2008 features 14 songs and is only available on Calexico's Web site or at shows.

But the band did post four of the songs to YouTube as a bonus preview.

Here's "Fractured Air":


Check out the rest of the videos here.

DOWNLOAD:
Calexico - Inspiracion (live 2006-12-02)

Packed!

This weekend is definitely shaping up to be the busiest of the year.

Starting off the agenda, we have Damien Jurado and Laura Gibson in an early show at Club Congress. I'm pretty new to Jurado, but he comes highly recommended, and I haven't heard Gibson at all, so it'll be nice to catch up to so much new music live.

All day Saturday and Sunday is the Tucson Folk Festival downtown, and while I've tuned into KXCI's live coverage before, this is the first year I'm going to make it down there myself. It's too bad headliner Todd Snider goes on so late Saturday night, because I'll have to get over to the Rialto Theatre because...

Calexico returns for yet another hometown benefit show, with Sergio Mendoza y la Orkestra opening again. The latter is about a 20-piece band with the vibe of a mid-20th century Havana nightclub, playing hot Latin jazz and big-band mambo. Mendoza himself is an incredible showman, leading the band through the sweaty, intensly rhythmic set.

And then, on Sunday, there's SwedeFest...

DOWNLOAD:
Damien Jurado - Gillian Was A Horse
Laura Gibson- Hands in Pockets
Calexico - All Systems Red (live)

Heads up from Yep Roc

Today we've got a couple good tidbits from the folks over at Yep Roc:

First is a new track from Dave Alvin, "Walking with Mr. Lee." It's a tribute to Lee Allen, who taught a couple saxophone lessons to a 15-year-old Dave Alvin, before advising the student to try another instrument. Decades later, Alvin has a long-standing reputation as a rip-roaring guitarist - especially down at the intersection of rockabilly & blues.

Lee had a 1957 saxophone instrumental hit with "Walking with Mr. Lee," and as a tribute, Alvin put together a guitar version with his Guilty Men. It's fantastic. Check out more of Alvin's digital download series at his Web site.

Next up is news of a second album from Robyn Hitchcock and the Venus Three, his super-group backing band of Peter Buck, Scott McCaughey & Bill Rieflin. Hitchcock has this to say about Goodnight Oslo: "The album, in part, celebrates the ghosts of the smoke age, and the various ways they were wrecked but still sailed on. That's the way it is with humans. You could call it the comfort of doom. Goodnight Oslo is a vortex that I am still leaving."

Olé Tarantula, the band's first effort, was stellar, landing at No. 6 of my best of 2006 list. Hitchcock took the veteran combo on the road, tearing up Club Congress for a night. Goodnight Oslo drops on Feb. 17, but check out a preview of "I'm Falling" over at Yep Roc. Yep Roc also has special pre-order offers, including a special three-song bonus disc.

Finally, Yep Roc has word on a tribute album to Chris Gaffney, the country-soul pioneer who died last April. Gaffney led the Hacienda Brothers, but also played with Dave Alvin and in numerous other bands over a nearly 40-year career.

A Man of Somebody's Dreams: A Tribute to the Songs of Chris Gaffney has contributions from Dave Alvin, John Doe, Joe Ely, Los Lobos, Calexico, Alejandro Escovedo, Tom Russell, James McMurtry, fellow Hacienda Brother Dave Gonzalez, and will be released on March 31.

DOWNLOAD:
Dave Alvin - King of California
Calexico - Frank's Tavern (live, Chris Gaffney cover)
Robyn Hitchcock & The Venus Three - (A Man's Got To Know His Limitations) Briggs (live)

From the mountains, back to the desert

I'm back from a long and relaxing trip north to Prescott, to celebrate the holidays with my family and friends, chill out, read, hang out and pat a best friend on the back just before he took his wedding vows, saying quietly that it was going to be the easiest thing he'd ever do.

And what's a better way to reintegrate back to life in the Ol' Pueblo than with a Calexico show? It was their annual benefit show for KXCI, Tucson's incomparable and treasured community radio station. It was by my quick count the fifth consecutive benefit or free show Calexico has played in Tucson, quite a streak of giving back to the locals.

Opening was the brassy mambo attack of Sergio Mendoza y La Orkestra, a tremendously energetic act that could very well have time traveled from the middle 1940s. Sergio Mendoza also sat in as Calexico's piano player.

The show ended typically, with somewhere near 20 musicians on stage for the finale and encore, a crashing, leave-it-all-on-the-stage rendition of Guero Canelo. Overall, it was an amazing welcome back.

While I was in Prescott, I missed noticing that Calexico has given an exclusive new song to a Threadless promotion. Joey Burns says the song was "written at home looking out the window at the weekly funeral procession... soul migration."

DOWNLOAD:
Calexico - Absent Afternoon (Threadless exclusive)
Calexico - Guero Canelo (live 2006 KXCI Benefit)
Calexico - 2006-12-02 KXCI Benefit (whole show as a zip)

Calexico & Jim Adkins: The Middle

Here's a stunning collaboration: Horns and pedal steel from Calexico giving a completely new life to Jimmy Eat World's "The Middle," with Jim Adkins joining his fellow Arizonans on stage:



Live Saturday 9/20 at Tucson's Rialto Theatre.

Calexico: Silver Trees

Today Calexico posted "Silver Trees" from the upcoming Carried to Dust as a free download on the band's MySpace site. The record is out Sept. 9, and this is the first full preview the band is giving, though a couple of teaser video clips are also up. Taken together they form a curious look at Tucson, with a long panning shot of the Boneyard in one and various Downtown scenes giving way to Joey and John playing in the Taproom in the other.


DOWNLOAD:
Calexico - Letter to a Bowie Knife (live 2006-12-02 Tucson)
Get the whole show at Archive.Org

Calexico album trailer

In advance of their new record, Calexico has released a short video clip featuring some Tucson sites and a bit of a music video recorded in the Tap Room:



"Two Silver Trees" sounds fantastic, and while the band hasn't yet put up any of the new songs on their MySpace page, here's a video of the song played live at the Rialto Theatre on May 23:



DOWNLOAD:
Calexico - Sunken Waltz (live Studio 2A, KXCI, 10-15-2002)
Get the whole set as a zip file.

Free Suicide Kings download; Calexico in Space

Phoenix's ornery honky-tonk heroes The Suicide Kings have relocated to Nashville, home of their record label, Blue Plate Music, as they ready their newest album.

Set for an August release, the record is streaming on the band's Web site (or just listen below), and what's more, sign up for their mailing list and you'll get an email link for a free download of the song "Bottle and a Gun."



I'd been a fan of the band (formerly the Revenants) for years, but never got to see them play live until March, and it was a hell of a show.

---------------

Next up is news that Calexico is going into space. Not Joey and John and the rest, that takes training and whatnot. But their music, specifically "Crystal Frontier," will be played as the astronaut's wake up Friday. Apparently Cmdr. Mark Kelly is a big fan and selected the song.

DOWNLOAD:
Calexico - Crystal Frontier (from Even My Sure Things Fall Through)

New Calexico on the way

I ran into a feller at lunch today who dropped me the news that Calexico has finished recording a new album and set a release day for Sept. 9.

"Carried to Dust" will be the band's fifth proper LP, but that doesn't come close to capturing the amazing array of recorded material that's come from Joey Burns and John Convertino. Add to that total two proper EPs, an iTunes-only live EP, an EP-worth of bonus downloads from their last album, six tour-only albums of mostly instrumental or live music, a live DVD and a tremendous collaboration with Iron & Wine.

Oh, and not to mention the five Calexico collaborations on the I'm Not There Soundtrack, their work with Giant Sand and the Friends of Dean Martinez and backing music on albums by Richard Buckner, Neko Case and Victoria Williams. If that wasn't enough, the band has made six full concerts available for free at archive.org, any one of which would make a fine live album.

The new record features Sam Beam from Iron & Wine, Douglas McCombs of Tortoise and singer-songwriter Pieta Brown, who brings here own connections to the Tucson music scene.

On the band's Touch & Go Records page, Burns says the new record is:

"at least partially, the story of a writer in Los Angeles around the time of the writers’ strike we had a while back in late 2007. Our hopper heads out east on a whim and a dry Santa Ana tail wind. Stopping at the Yucca Valley swap meet he buys an old road map with a route already marked with red pen. It leads him to a cabin and from the cabin to a chain of other small town thrift stores, picking up old copies of National Geographic magazines along the way. Stories about snow drops in Moscow, leaning houses in Valparaiso, abandoned neighborhoods in New Orleans, and a manmade lake full of cell phone trees creep their way into his notes. He finds further inpiración at old roadside diners, bending an ear to each waitress and the local news over badly brewed coffee. The break proves to be enlightening. He falls in love with the newly found space and being carried along spontaneity's spark.”

That sounds like a traveling record, one full of introspection and odd encounters. And the reference to space and spontaneity's spark might just serve as one of the better descriptions of Calexico's music in general.

Burns & Convertino introduced two new songs at their Rialto show last month that sounded sparse and haunting in their two-man arrangements. They later introduced another one with a shortened version of Burns' description, called "Writer's Minor Holiday." And lo and behold, some thoughtful soul captured it, YouTube style:



Another new song that was introduced at Calexico's December KXCI benefit show, "Absent Afternoon," doesn't appear on the track list for "Carried to Dust," but here's a video from TucsonScene:


"Carried to Dust" track list:

1. Victor Jara's Hands
2. Two Silver Trees
3. The News About William
4. Sarabande In Pencil Form
5. Writer's Minor Holiday
6. Man Made Lake
7. Inspiración
8. House of Valparaiso
9. Slowness
10. Bend To The Road
11. El Gatillo (Trigger Revisited)
12. Fractured Air (Tornado Watch)
13. Falling From Sleeves
14. Red Blooms
15. Contention City

DOWNLOAD:
Calexico - Sunken Waltz (live Studio 2A, KXCI, 10-15-2002)
Get the whole set as a zip file.

External Recap

As convenient and indicative of our technological age as it is, there's also a certain sort of erieness in being able to search around youtube for a few minutes and arrive at a fairly decent representation of my weekend.

First up is from the Calexico show on Friday. I briefly mentioned in another post that the band welcomed roughly 30 mariachi players onto the stage (two bands - one a bunch of high schoolers having what I am sure was the time of their lives while earning money for a trip to D.C. and the other Calexico's regular partners, Luz de Luna) for the finale, which included Neil Young's "Heart of Gold." Well, here it is, courtesy of someone recording from the balcony:



And from TucsonScene.Com, here's a performance from December of Dylan's "Goin' to Acapulco," which Calexico performs with Jim James on the I'm Not There Soundtrack, and briefly in the film. The Calexico boys have truly made this song, as well as "Señor (Tales of Yankee Power)," their own, which is a dual testament to their musicianship as well as Dylan's incredible songwriting.



Up next is Monday. Sport's On Congress took full advantage of the three-day weekend, having locals Garboski and The Swim play, along with Riddle of Steel from St. Louis.
Check out The Swim playing "Julie," from their March CD release show for Random Walk:



For more on The Swim, check out my interview with the band.

DOWNLOAD:
The Swim - Lazy Day

Mars landing day

After nine months of travel (across 422 million miles), the Mars Phoenix lander probe is set to touch down today on the Red Planet.

And since the entire mission is being led by scientists right here in Tucson, I reckoned I'd go on down to campus and check out the whole thing live as it happens (on NASA TV, of course).

I'm excited to experience the "will it land or will it crash?" tension that will envelope the entire seven minutes of the craft's descent through the atmosphere and dramatic slowing via rocket thrust. As the scientists themselves say, landing a spaceship on Mars is not easy. (The last successful landing of this nature, using rockets to slow descent, was accomplished on the first Mars probes, the Viking landers in 1976, just seven years after man arrived at the much closer moon.)

Anyway, it should be an interesting afternoon. And for your pleasure, here are a couple Space songs, one from our local greats Calexico, who I saw tear down the roof Friday night, when they brought out about 30 mariachi players for a stunning take on Neil Young's "Heart of Gold."

DOWNLOAD:
Calexico - Lost in Space (live)
Luna - Lost in Space (live)

"One more gift to bring..."

I first heard about the amazing collaboration between Iron & Wine and Calexico long before any official word was released about the In the Reins EP. In late 2004, Sam Beam had been spotted hanging around the Tap Room in Hotel Congress, and he was talking a little about recording with Calexico over at Wavelab. I was immediately intrigued and thought the combination had a lot of promise, though the album wouldn't be released for another nine months or so. Beam didn't have any sort of a band to speak of at that point and Calexico is a band full of seasoned musicians who show tremendous versatility in backing various singers.

After the album dropped they all teamed for a tour, also bringing along Salvador Duran, a Mexican singer-songwriter who's since become something of a Tucson institution. I caught the tour at a very packed Rialto Theatre and later found a free NPR recording of a show from Washington D.C. later in the tour.

The day before the Tucson show, Sam Beam, Joey Burns and Salvador dropped into KXCI for an in-studio session that featured a more subdued take on some of In the Reins top tunes. Most interesting was hearing Burns take the lead vocal on "Prison on Route 41," with Beam providing the harmony. The EP started with Beam songs that he'd written with just vocals and guitar. The bands collaborated in the studio for a much fuller sound, and once the songs are stripped back down for a radio performance, there's somehow something more there.

DOWNLOAD:
Iron & Wine and Calexico - Prison on Route 41 (live KXCI)
Iron & Wine and Calexico - Dead Man's Will (live KXCI)
Iron & Wine and Calexico - He Lays In The Reins (live KXCI)

Goin' to Acapulco...

One of the things I love most about Calexico is the band's tremendous versatility. They've backed numerous other musicians on incredible albums (Richard Buckner, Neko Case), collaborated with others (Iron & Wine, Howe Gelb) and just generally become some of the best go-to musicians around.

Their versatility certainly extends to their own performances as well. The last two shows I've seen - less than two months apart - couldn't have been more different.

The first was a park show, drawing 10,000 people in an all-ages picnic atmosphere. It was one of the full mariachi shows, with Luz de Luna starting out the nearly three-hour set and joining Calexico on state for several songs later. It was rowdy and joyous, full of i-yi-yi's and a let's keep going vibe that ran well after dark.

Next was last Friday, when they played to 800 sweater-clad people inside a performing arts theatre. There were no mariachi players and the vibe was more sedate. A friend sat in on piano (not one of Calexico's most typical sounds) for the entire show - a more acoustic affair with several top-notch cover songs and a new one, "Absent Afternoon, which Joey Burns said was inspired by the funeral processions driving past his new home downtown.

The kind folks over at TucsonScene.com were kind enough to record part of the show and put it up on youtube. Below is a cover of Dylan's "Goin' to Acapulco," which features prominently in the "I'm Not There" film and earns Burns and John Convertino screen credits as "Brass Band Player #1" and "Brass Band Player #2." Before the song, Joey asked for all the reverb he could get out of the sound man, which hardly surprising since Jim James of My Morning Jacket sings the tune for the film and soundtrack.