Neko told me she was amazed how the Tucson musicians didn’t like to work from demos—hers or their own.
This band doesn’t even do demos! We played her stuff in the van driving from Seattle to Chicago that were the basic tracks, not demos at all. You know, she’s so intuitive, has all these great comments to make. There was a show we played with her in Phoenix, and John and I were just making up some stuff. One song was kind of influenced by meeting her mom and dad in Hawaii, and she really liked the song—although I don’t think she knew that. So she’s going, “Oh, what was that song, you’ve got to get a copy of that!” And I go, “I don’t remember what I did! I was just making stuff up.” She goes, “Goddammit, that’s the stuff that sounds the best! When you’re not thinking about it! When you’re just playing your guitar and singing.”

Anything on the new album you care to cite that reflects that kind of spontaneous process?
A lot of the songs, actually. For example, on “Black Heart,” John just started playing this drumbeat, and the whole band was in the studio. The reason it’s called “Black Heart” is because in some ways it reminded me of something the Black Heart Procession might have done—and we’d been planning on getting together with them to record. I think we are, in fact. Next week. So anyway, we quickly mapped out some chords to go around a melody, got a basic take in about 30 minutes, and the whole band was like, “God, that was quick!” The other guys were amazed at how quick John and I were able to get an idea or inspiration and map it out on chords and have a song. I think that’s a good example. That’s the one Volker made the mistake on, and it was fine, you know?

Would the opposite of that, of something being more thought out and planned, be the song “Crumble”—which seems to be a deliberate homage to Evans and Mingus?
Yeah. I think we wanted to do something like that, so it was just coming up with our own basic track. I had this figure on the bass, and of course when you hear jazz bass played in that way you’ll automatically think of either Mingus or that era of jazz. And Jacob plays trumpet on that track, and he’s very influenced by Miles, Lee Morgan, all those guys. We could have just kept it bare, but we said fuck it. See, John’s been after me for years: “Man, you got to do your Gil Evans thing! You can do it!” Because he wanted to hear it. And I’d been listening to “La Nevada,” off Out Of The Cool, and noticed that Gil’s got two flutes and one muted trumpet, which is great, because as John Lomax, the writer from Houston, said, “It’s like ‘metro jazz’ or ‘crime jazz.’”

It’s interesting how it comes so late in the album that it takes the listener completely by surprise due to its differentness.
When I hear one of those Radiohead albums and they go into this bluesy, almost New Orleans style thing. Here’s this pseudo-ambient, electronic band who at the end of the record they throw this left turn in, and I just think how brilliant it is. “Crumble,” in fact, almost didn’t make it onto the album. We wanted to make it shorter. We had almost three hours of tracks. It was either that song, or this typical Calexico-sounding accordion waltz. Now that one’s a b-side.

“Quattro” isn’t the most characteristic Calexico-like song to be selected for the first U.K. single, either. It’s unique enough just for the percussive vibe and that shuddery vocal effect you get.
I was just trying to be like Emmylou Harris. Just singing it like that, no effect. Emmylou’s got a great sensibility. I’ve just gotten more comfortable I guess, having played live a lot, plenty of practice singing. That’s been the ongoing comment: “Oh, your vocals sound different.” The German record company asked, “Who’s the female singer?” “Oh man, fuck you!”

It sounds like you were making a conscious effort to get your vocals having a different sound or vibe on each track. On “Black Heart” you go for this eerie, kind of haunted, desperate quality.
I like that effect. Neko will do it; Tom Waits does it in his own way.

There’s also the inevitable question that all the journalists will be asking, so let’s tackle this one too, as long as we’re talking about some of your songs. The song “Not Even Stevie Nicks.” I mean, it’s kind of strummy and folk-rockish, has the “Go Your Own Way” drumbeat, but that’s all. Obviously, she lives just up the road from Tucson, in Scottsdale ...
[In fake Euro accent] “Vot is the ‘Not Even Stevie Nicks’?” Yeah, exactly, that drumbeat was enough [for the title]. That was recorded right after “Black Heart” and Craig said we had just a little bit of tape left, did we want to do something? So I picked up this cheap steel string thrift store guitar, I’m thinking in my head maybe a Wilco type of song, and John picks up on it with the Mick Fleetwood drum thing.

Is that about a literal or metaphorical suicide? I get that Thelma & Louise image in my mind, about the character sailing off the cliff, into the blue, in the car ...
It’s just a story, so you can take it either way. It was initially about two minutes long so we made it a little longer using ProTools, which is something we don’t normally do. But it did have some kind of spark to it. Lyrically, it was influenced by growing up in Southern California. Near where my folks lived there are these huge cliffs, and every now and then you’d follow the siren on your skateboard down to the cliffs and there’d be a car down there. And we used to cover this Clean song, “The Blue”: “Wonder why/We all get lost.” So I was thinking in those terms as well. There’s a peacefulness to the expanse of blue skies—“free fallin’,” as Tom Petty would put it. That kind of illusion. But to be honest, Thelma & Louise just carries a negative connotation to me. It seems too Hollywood-over-the-top. It’s become a phrase now.

Your compositions seem to becoming more complex and jazzlike as the band evolves, with you and John as bandleaders in the traditional sense.
Yeah, and that’s a hard thing to talk about in the press, especially in the U.K. and European press. One journalist was saying, “Don’t you think the name of your band is kind of limiting? In the ability for people to get into your music and see it beyond just those references?” Well, no—but that can happen. Like all these questions in Europe: “So, how do you feel about being lumped into the alternative-country category?” I feel like, honestly, it’s just kind of a door. A name on a map, and hopefully people will eventually get tired of being prodded by the occupants and go off and examine those artists who are off the map.

If you’d named yourself the Saguaro Blossoms or something, that might have been somewhat limiting.
Or the Cactus Boys! That’s one of the bands that John Lomax’s dad manages, a kind of bluegrass rock group. One of the guys in it plays a dulcimer that he bows ...

There’s a band in Tennessee, called Starlings TN, that does that too, kind of like Spacemen 3 playing bluegrass. Electrified, bowed dulcimers.
I’ve heard of them, too. In fact, the dulcimer thing got me thinking about different ways to play stringed instruments, so I went over to the Folk Shop here in Tucson where they get all these great things in, and picked up this Chinese violin called an Er-hu. I just thought, “Gee, this is bad ass!” It was so cool. And of course seeing the movie Latcho Drom you get to see the whole connection, of instruments from the East to the West—that diversity in melody, particularly when it comes to a more Eastern or Gypsy style of melody. I went to the studio and picked up the banjo and started bowing that as a result. Just making those connections over time.

That seems to get back to what I was asking about how you challenge yourself as a musician. Not being pressured, time-wise, certainly is a plus.
And it was important to give ourselves the time to do that. This was a pretty important record for us to make. Some people gave us flak for The Hot Rail. I could see why, because there is a lot of ambience in there, this obvious, deliberate attempts at fleshing out the possibilities of that mariachi or Spanish style of rock that we do. In some ways it’s great: “El Picador” has been picked up for so many songs in TV shows. Just recently, for Kingpin. They used it in that. And this Norwegian filmmaker came over and visited us when we were playing in Chapel Hill to show us this film called Johnny Vang. It’s got a lot of our music in there, but it’s this contrast between this Southwestern hybrid rock underscoring all this Norwegian countryside, small-town love affair stuff. It’s really funny, a great film. And I like it because it’s not deliberately associating the music with the place like Committed did, where the music was backing up this Southwest or Texas road trip. People ask us, “If you could work with any director or do any kind of movie, what would you do?” And the reply is “Jim Jarmusch!” Which has nothing to do with a desert. Or the Southwest.

Well then, that’s the perfect lead-in to my final inquiry. We talked not long ago about my needing to come up with another term than “desert noir.” Since you were kind enough to give me on-air credit during your NPR interview (“Morning Edition,” June 28, 2001) for coining that, I have here a list of possible substitutions.
[Groans, then laughs] Great! Let’s hear ‘em.

Here you go: “Cinema del Cantina.” “Pony Express Pop.” “Spaghetti Be-Bop.” “Sonoran Cinema.” “Arroyo Rock.” And since I couldn’t let loose of “noir” altogether, I have “Saguaro Noir.”
I do like the band Nortec Collective. Maybe “Noir Tech”? [laughing]

You’ll be happy to know I have more. You can speak your native language: “Calexican.” I was also thinking about the Mingus album, so there’s a more general term for what you do: “Old Pueblo Moods.” And then my favorite one, which is the worst, but it sounds like something a major label would put in an ad: “Salsa Verde pop—it’s spicy, yes, but not so hot that it stings!”
Owwww! You’re hired. I kind of liked “Cinema del Cantina.” I’m not sure about “Pony Express Pop.” “Arroyo Rock?” I kind of like that!

It’s alliterative and manly, perfect for T-shirts. A hint of the Southwest, perhaps, but slightly askew.
Yeah, and what is “arroyo” to a lot of people? They’ll go, “Huh? River rock?” Because the rivers are all fucked up here, dried-up and weird. That will do. Arroyo Rock. And I just call it “eclectic,” anyway, you know?