A lot brewing for Vallejo, from new fest to good will

Alex Vallejo chats about Pachanga, his band's new album and growing up a Latino Zeppelin fan.

By By Joe Gross
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Tuesday, May 13, 2008

Sitting in Little City on Congress Avenue, Alejandro "Alex" Vallejo decides to take the whole "Coffee With" thing quite literally.

"It's called 'Coffee With,' right?" he says. The drummer for the seemingly indestructible Austin rock outfit Vallejo is drinking iced hibiscus tea, his black vest and pants making him look every inch the Latin rocker. He grabs an empty coffee cup from the next table. "Let's use this as a prop," he says, holding the cup in front of the camera. It's a weirdly charming, earnest gesture.

This is a big year for Vallejo the person and Vallejo the band. In February, the latter released "Thicker Than Water," its first new album in five years. Known for its party-hard image, the band struggled for much of the 21st century, extricating itself from major label relationships and treading water while it tried to set up a new deal, which took so long the band ended up writing and recording dozens of songs. Thirteen of them ended up on the new album. Vallejo the band also recently signed with Austin-based booker the Jiles Agency and is planning to embark on its first U.S. tour in a decade.

Then there's Alex himself. He's co-producing the Pachanga Latino Music Festival, a Latin-themed music, culture and food festival taking place May 31 at Waterloo Park.

The one-day shindig will close out Austin's Latino Music Month and present such diverse Latino acts as the Tijuana-based electronic artists Nortec Collective, Austin pan-Latin act Grupo Fantasma, the San Antonio punk act Girl in a Coma and Vallejo. More than 20 acts will take part. (Check out Pachangafest.com for ticket information.)

"I think Vallejo is the most American (meaning traditional rock) thing about the fest," Vallejo says. "At the same time, we're definitely Latino."

Growing up in El Campo, Alex Vallejo and his brothers A.J. and Omar moved from school jazz bands to rock 'n'roll smoothly.

"We were Latin kids raised in America by Latin parents, but we were into Led Zeppelin," Alex says.

The brothers rehearsed in the basement, playing local parties, then graduating to fraternity gigs during a stint in Alabama. They returned to Texas in 1995 and ground out Wednesday night sets at Steamboat for years. A stint on TVT Records yielded two albums but also led to the band filing for Chapter 7 bankruptcy protection.

In 1999, the band signed to Emilio Estefan's Sony imprint Crescent Moon. Alex says he first got a taste of the "rock en español" movement during the band's massive jaunt to promote its 2000 album "Into the New."

"We were on a tour in 2001 with (Latin rock band) Molotov, Juanes and Enanitos Verdes," Vallejo says. "I saw that there was something happening that wasn't like the Ricky Martin fad. That was pop; this was a rock thing."

Vallejo thinks the seed for the Pachanga festival might well have been planted during that tour, but it wasn't until he met events producer Rich Garza that the idea of an all-Latin concert in Waterloo Park could be a reality.

"Fun Fun Fun is a good example of how to showcase local punk," Vallejo says of the punk and indie rock festival that started two years ago at Waterloo Park. "I wanted to do something like that for Latin bands that wasn't just a Tejano festival or an Aqua Fest," he adds, referring to the local-band-focused, 1990s iteration. "I wanted something for the new generation of bands who grew up like me. "

Vallejo acknowledges that the lineup, with its local focus, might look modest to some. "We would love to go for bands like Ozomatli and Los Lobos eventually, but for the first year we wanted to be modest and not get over our heads. My hats off to (C3 principal and Austin City Limits Music Festival promoter) Charlie Jones and those guys. It's a lot of work."

There are also two community giveback components to the Pachanga. One dollar of every ticket sold will go to ALMA, the Austin Latino Music Association. In addition, the Pachanga crew — Garza and the band — have created a low-key community arts education program serving schoolchildren in the Holly Street neighborhood. Pachanga is creating music education and sound recording workshops for Metz and Sanchez elementary schools, Martin Middle School and Johnston High School. The band will get second- and third-graders together, have them record a song the band has written for them and distribute a copy of the song to each kid.

"This is just a chance to expose little kids to how music is made," Vallejo says.

Of course, part of the reason that Alex Vallejo was able to put this together was a little bit of soul searching on the band's part. The band released "Stereo" on its own VMG imprint in 2002 and then was effectively silent for five years. "We spent years trying to sign new production deals," Vallejo says. "We started and stopped over and over." But now, they have a new album, a new booking agent and a new lease on life.

The last time Vallejo went on the road, there was no MySpace, no YouTube. "Now, it's about reintroducing everybody to the band."

That being said, Vallejo isn't the same guys who played Steamboat and were fans of Ratt. With Pachanga, Alex is giving back to the Austin community that nourished him, trying to show kids that there are plenty of acts struggling to square their Latin roots with rock music. The drummer for what was once Austin's biggest party band sounds almost ... mature.

Alex Vallejo smiles and looks at his fake cup of coffee: "You can't sing about strippers forever."

jgross@statesman.com; 912-5926