Neko Case was telling me about working with you guys in Tucson for her Blacklisted album and commented on how adventurous and confident Tucson musicians seemed, saying, “They do what they want and are comfortable with what they do and they believe in themselves. You know, they realize that when you have what you want, it’s so great to extend that to other people and to invite other people to play with you. They’ll go on tour and invite local bands to play onstage with them—they love that! They love to include other people! I just think it comes from them satisfying themselves.”
It’s kind of a way of tapping into the sense of place. For me, I always want to hear a variety in the mix. Whether it’s picking up different instruments, or inviting other people to step forward, there’s something about that. And I’ve noticed that when we’ve toured in the past, when we’ve combined shows with people like Neko or the Mariachis, or even Jacob Valenzuela getting up to sing a song or two in Spanish. Or “give the drummer some.” Folks love watching John play. When we toured in Europe with Vic Chesnutt and Lambchop in ‘98, as an audience member you felt like you became part of the whole sense of community. Watching the mic shift from each person, from singer to singer, instrumentalist to instrumentalist. And there’s something about that. That shared space, that genuinely feels good. You get to be part of it onstage, and it feels good to be part of it in the audience.

Some musicians and bands are deathly afraid to give up that control and they wind up doing the same set list, the same choreography, every night.
They’re scared of making mistakes, and they don’t realize that mistakes can be beautiful. For example, being on tour with Giant Sand, we’d always play the Mean Fiddler in London, and for some reason our whole looseness, our whole sense of freedom just got kind of clammed up. “We’re scared, we’re in the big city now! Everybody understands every single word and is watching every move!” You’re almost playing in a cage. But I was talking to Sean O’Hagan and Mary Hansen, having a pint with them after the show, and I was kind of frustrated and confused and told them I kind of got lost in the set we’d just played and how I seem to do that every time we come to the Mean Fiddler. Mary goes, “Yeah, but that’s why I like watching you guys!” She liked that humanness. But I think a lot of people just don’t want to take that risk.

Either Rainer (Ptacek, late Tucson guitarist and Giant Sand accomplice) or Howe once told me that mistakes happen for a reason and that it’s foolish not to take advantage of the opportunities they provide.
I’ve been kind of wrestling with that, too, for this new record. John and I started recording back in August of 2001, and we consciously wanted to see what kind of possibilities were there and to give ourselves enough time to open up and digest what we’ve done. We started off the way we normally do, as a two-piece, hashing out snippets of ideas. Then we brought everyone in to overdub, then went on a West Coast jaunt. We came back and said, “Let’s get everyone in the studio to see what happens.” That’s where came up with songs like “Crumble,” “No Doze,” and especially “Black Heart.” After we mixed that song, we sent it to the bass player, Volker Zander, and he sends me back an email that says, “Whoops—I had three bass mistakes, sorry!” I sent him one back and said, “Yeah, and I’m loving ‘em more with each listen!” Because I heard them too when we were mixing them—but we’re living with these. Those bits of character that shine through, you know? And I think that’s harder for some people to get into, maybe. Especially in the huge spectrum of commercial, corporate music. Which we’re not doing, of course. It’s pretty clear that in music there’s a line, and we’re not trying to hop on the other side of the fence and make pop recordings.

We talked about this for MAGNET several years ago, how critics and the media often take the lazy way out in pegging Calexico, and you commented how they don’t always hit the dartboard—they read the presskit, they get their angle.
Yeah, and for a lot of those writers, especially the ones overseas, it’s an easy illusion to just think, OK, Southwest, road trip, bang! You want to hear what some locals had to say about that? There were some French journalists that came over here, and a couple of Dutch journalists, and they all came around the same weekend so there were six journalists all hanging out at the Hotel Congress. One of them goes up to a local person and says, “So, what do you think of this local band Calexico?” “Oh yeah, those guys. They over-romanticize this whole West!” But I understand that, and I’ve been thinking about that comment and digesting it. There are some elements, for sure, on this new record where there’s a continuation for some reason of paying homage to people like Ennio Morricone and Link Wray, all in the same bite.

You also try to throw a monkeywrench into that formula, though—if in fact there has been a Calexico formula. The Charles Mingus and Gil Evans stylings on “Crumble,” for example. And those not only depart from the Calexico sound, they reference it very slyly as well. I’m talking, of course, about Mingus’ Tijuana Moods, itself a very Southwestern-flavored album. That, to me, seems a very clever way of getting around the question, “How do we remain true to ourselves without doing The Hot Rail Part 2?” Were there ever conscious discussions to that effect?
No, but what happened was we’d been recording and backing up people who were passing through town ...

The “Ry and Slobby” rhythm-section-for-hire syndrome.
Yeah! One of the artists said, “I want to get that ‘Calexico sound.’” So—we did! And later we kind of looked at ourselves, (producer/engineer) Craig Schumacher, John and I, and went, “Yeah, we gotta change this up.” Same thing that happened with Howe Gelb when he was recording with Steve Wynn; Steve said, “Yeah, go in there and make some noise.” I think Howe gets known for being the noisemaker instead of this tasty, beautiful-yet-unique piano and guitar parts. But if you get known for doing something well and you do it a few times in a row, then you’re pegged for being the one for that sound or that part. So if you keep doing this, you craft, your art, you have to consciously—as Howe would always say when we’re having discussions about Giant Sand—reinvent yourself. And challenge yourself, mostly.

How do you do that? “Today I’m going to go buy six albums of people I’ve never heard?” How do you discover a new sound and find a new approach?
For us, just going in the studio and fucking around is the easiest way. Usually the first time you sit down with an instrument you come up with something kind of fresh. In the studio we’ve got Craig, who’s pretty knowledgeable about how we work. He realizes that he’s got time so he tries to get John’s drum sound and has him go away so he doesn’t keep playing and waste all these good fresh ideas that may be bubbling up. Same thing with Howe, all these guys. It’s important to get the sound set up, then leave. Then when you come back you’re tapping into the first ideas of the day—which in a lot of cases are the most unusual and innovative, for some reason or another.

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