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SXSW preview: Texas Tornados
It was entirely apropos that the Texas Tornados announced the release of their new album, ‘¡Esta Bueno!’ on March 2. That date, as every proud citizen of the Lone Star State knows, is Texas Independence Day. And the self-proclaimed ‘Tex-Mex Supergroup’ is nothing if not independent; their defiantly, delightfully eclectic mix of conjunto, rock ‘n’ roll, country, Deutsch-Tex polkas and swamp pop could have emerged nowhere other than deep in the heart of Texas.
The album had its official coming out party a few weeks before SXSW at a press conference at ME Studios, where the three reconstituted Tornados — Flaco Jiménez, Augie Meyers and Shawn Sahm — held forth on their new baby and its long gestation.
Released on Bismeaux, the custom label formed by Asleep At the Wheel’s Ray Benson (which released last year’s Grammy-nominated ‘Willie and the Wheel’) the tracks for ‘¡Esta Bueno!’ were recorded several years ago, before the passing of the fourth Tornado, Freddy Fender, in 2006. Doug Sahm, Shawn’s father and the Tornados’ frontman, died in 1999. The group had not released an album of new material since 1996.
‘You’ve heard of the New Kids On the Block,’ joked Augie Meyers, ‘Well, we’re the Old Farts In the Neighborhood.’
Still, the new album has the heart and the soul of the original quartet (and it’s only appropriate to mention here that the Texas Tornados would not be the Tornados without their longtime sidemen—drummer Ernie Durawa, bassist Speedy Sparks, guitarist Louie Ortega and bajo sexto player Michael Guerra).
‘I’m not competing with my dad,’ said Shawn Sahm, explaining his role in the band as both center-stage vocalist and the album’s producer. ‘I played with dad since I was 13. I’m doing what I’ve done my whole life. I just wish he was here doing it with me. ‘
‘It was very simple to put the puzzle back together,’ said Jiménez of the group’s 2010 lineup. ‘It was the same vibe as when Doug and Freddy were alive. ’ ‘When I close my eyes onstage and hear Shawn singing, the hair rises on my head,’ Meyers said. ‘I think it’s Doug singing.’
Besides playing at SXSW on Friday, the band already has dates booked around the country, including an engagement at Lincoln Center and opening shows for Los Lobos, Sahm said.
Re-introducing the Tornados to a 21st century audience via songs like ‘Who’s To Blame, Señorita?’ (whose joyous roller-rink vibe draws a straight line back to Doug and Augie’s first hit-making band, the Sir Douglas Quintet), a Spanish take on ‘In Heaven There Is No Beer,’ Freddy Fender’s heartfelt ‘If I Could Only’ and even a nod from Doug himself (a ‘lost’ Tornado track, ‘Girl Going Nowhere’ features the Sahm patriarch on vocals) doesn’t seem daunting to the band members.
‘We haven’t lost that punch and feel,’ Jiménez said.
‘You don’t replace a Doug Sahm or a Freddy Fender,’ Shawn said with emphasis. ‘You celebrate them … We’re not trying to reinvent the wheel; we just want it to be the best it can be. You just bring your A-game.’
10 p.m. Friday at Kenny Dorham’s Backyard, 1106 E. 11th St.
If you like Texas Tornados, check out:
1. Little Joe y La Fmailia
2. The West Side Horns with the Moeller Bros.
3. The Krayolas
4. The Gourds
5. Kenny and the Kasuals
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