Los Lobos recently released their first studio album of new material in four years with the live-sounding, vigorous, and deceptively diverse Tin Can Trust. Ostensibly just a collection of tunes crafted in the Lobos normal manner of coming in the studio with only abstract ideas and no songs whatsoever, the band, again, miraculously pulled 11 tracks from their generous muse’s bag of audio tricks, and crafted another fine document. Indeed, the album, with basic tracks and other elements recorded mainly in East L.A., has a rich, wizened flavor to it, while also signaling a return to the band’s cultural roots—both geographically, and with its longstanding tradition of getting a song’s essence, its true spirit, down on tape after only a few takes.
Jambands.com caught up with keyboardist/saxophonist Steve Berlin, while the band was on tour with John Hiatt. Collaborations ensued on the road as Berlin, along with Lobos guitarists David Hidalgo and Cesar Rosas, often joined Hiatt to play on a Little Feat song in tribute to their fallen compadre, the late drummer Richie Hayward. Live, Los Lobos is still a formidable force with a large catalogue of songs which resonate. What is most intriguing is Tin Can Trust allows the band much more freedom to explore even more sonic terrain on stage with the added problem of having many choices to make when one sits down and writes a setlist. Berlin is an honest, witty and engaging gent who has now played with the band for 27 years after a stint in the L.A.-based Blasters, and co-producing the 1983 Lobos EP, …And a Time to Dance with T-Bone Burnett. The musician discusses the construction of the band’s new album with warm and detailed candor. He also displays an astute mind about how the band’s music has always appeared to weave an interesting spell around audiences without ever trapping the band in their own collective identity. In the end, Los Lobos has remained a defiantly independent music force, outside the mainstream, because they know no other way.
RR: Why did Los Lobos decide to go back to basics, and return to their East L.A. studio roots to record Tin Can Trust?
SB: The story goes that basically what it was was that we had spent the better part of a decade recording at Cesar’s [Rosas] house where we had set up a studio. It wasn’t optimum, but it worked fine for us. He moved. He sold that house, and moved away. His new place was not going to work for the way we record; a little bit too small, and the configuration was a little too bizarre to try and record the way we record these days. We knew we had to go some place, and our engineer [Shane Smith], a guy I had worked with before, had recommended this place in East L.A. He said, “It’s really special, we like it, just bear with it. Don’t go by your first impression because it looks like shit. (laughter)
And he was right. There’s nowhere to sit. We had to actually bring in a couch to have somewhere to sit, other than a couple of folding chairs. It’s basically a punk rock studio that has this really cool sound [Manny’s Estudio]. But once you get around the fact that it doesn’t really look like much, it really sounds great, and that was the main thing. Then,
we realized that the salient feature was going to be the fact that we could set up and play live, which we never do at Cesar’s house. It was just a little bit too small. We started that way, and pretty much tried to address every song that way. We adapted [to the studio], and it was great. I’d go back there in a second. I think part of it, too, was that the guys were going back to the old neighborhood every day, and, in some way, that definitely informed the record. I know the vibe was there, and there was a lot of reflection going on.
RR: How did that atmosphere inform the material and the way the band played?
SB: This wasn’t the first time we’ve shown up with nothing, really. At this point, it’s sort of become our stock-in-trade, I guess. (laughter) There were no real songs, per se, so David [Hidalgo] would start with an idea, which would turn into a song, and Cesar would start with an idea, which would turn into a song, so, I guess, we just filled it out from whatever there is. In a weird way, that’s like the only way we know how to start now. Once that gets going, then an idea turns into a song, and that turns into another idea, and that turns into a song, and once you get through the first two or three days of it, that’s not so bad. But, initially, at least, the first couple days are terrifying because there feels like there is no point to it. We’re out of ideas; we might as well go home, call it quits, and never bother to record again. But, somehow or another, a muse always shows up and shows us the way.
RR: Let’s discuss the new album by starting off with the ethereal closing track, “27 Spanishes”—it is tough, confident, and fragile. I love the whole vibe, especially the organ sound which creates a certain atmosphere inside the track.
SB: That one was a demo of Dave’s so he’s actually playing everything on that—keyboards, drums, and the guitar. A couple of songs from this record were done that way; not all of them were done live. That was one that just had a cool flavor to it, and it was the last one to get finished. It just took a while to figure out what it was. The demo itself needed some editing, so we sort of had to cut it up so it made coherent sense, but those sounds are just Dave’s wacky crap he has in his house. He’s got a great demo process. He doesn’t let any of us observe it, but I know there’s lots of pedals involved, and I know there’s an 8-track tape recorder involved because that is how he has to play it back.
Let me think about that. Actually…there’s an organ and there’s a…the sound you might be referencing, believe it or not, is me playing a clarinet sample. Yeah. There’s an organ and I forgot about the clarinet sample. I don’t know what the hell it is—probably a Mellotron, a clavinet, or something like that, through an amplifier. There are a couple of layers of percussion, too. If I’m not mistaken, there are a couple of things where we said, “Cougar, do something,” and he just did stuff. (laughter) And then it was sung, and then it was done. The solo, the guitar, the drums—all that stuff—is all Dave. That’s him playing at the end there, and then dropping the sticks. We just thought it was a cool way to end the whole record (laughs)—just bizarre, suddenly getting up from the drum kit and walking away.
RR: Yes, and then there is the almost polar opposite on “Jupiter or the Moon”—ambient, impressionistic, and quite moving, it’s a song that sounds like it was always out there like many classic tunes.
SB: Thank you. Yeah, it’s one of my favorites. That was probably the second song that we did. The first couple of days Cesar had a song which may have been the very first one, and then Dave sat down and started playing [“Jupiter or the Moon”]. That could be the first take so that could be why it has that flavor. He kind of said, “Follow me,” and it was done with the standup bass and the drums, and I think it was all in one room, too. The piano was on it, too, and, yes, it was all basically in the same room. As the record enfolded, we ended up moving it to a different room, but I think the first couple days, we had it all in the same room so I think that’s why it might have some of that flavor to it.
We got lucky on a couple of those. “Tin Can Trust” was first take, “West L.A. Fadeaway” was first take. I guess when you do it for this long somehow or another you just develop telepathy of pulling that off. (laughs) That’s all I can figure because we didn’t know the songs. We had never rehearsed them. We just had an extremely vague idea of how they went.
RR: True, if you have been doing it this long, it may become easier. But a lot of veteran bands are so far removed from their instincts after a certain period of time. There is too much history with the relationships in the band. And yet, after all these years, Los Lobos continues to find their muse and deliver songs. How are you still able to lock into those original, profound moments as you did on Tin Can Trust?
SB: Well…I think…thank you. I think part of it might be that we don’t really feel, in any regard…the bands you might be referencing are probably bands that have had huge hits, or have had a sound that they are identified with that they feel, to some degree, that they have to either maintain, or retrofit as they get older. Besides “La Bamba,” which was clearly a separate deal, we never really had that issue so there’s never been an identity that we had to live up or down to. It freed us in a lot of respects to basically do whatever we wanted to do, and wherever the albums and the songs lead to, is where we go.
RR: Interesting you mentioned “La Bamba.” If one has followed the career of Los Lobos all down the line, that song and era is occasionally forgotten. It is like the band is this long, epic film, and that was an early scene in the band’s film/career where one goes, “oh, yeah—I forgot about that scene with “La Bamba” because there have been so many other great moments after that.”
SB: (laughs) Yeah, it does seem like an awfully long time ago, doesn’t it? “La Bamba” was always good. It was certainly something we didn’t plan. It was really kind of a mess when they were putting [the film] together. They hadn’t cast the Ritchie [Valens] role, and the entire rest of the movie was shot without a Ritchie role. Every scene that he’s not
in was done before they found him. And then they discovered Lou Diamond Phillips in a San Antonio community summer stock theatre, and had to finish the rest of the movie.
As we were working on it, it was quite literally the last thing in the world that we thought was going to be a hit if you would have seen the confusion that was going down in the making of the movie. I would get called because I was the one who had the job, and we were doing By the Light of the Moon, literally at the same time in the same studio. I was down the hall working on La Bamba, and they were down the hall doing By the Light of the Moon, which clearly at the time we thought was going to be a much larger enterprise. It was amazing. I remember seeing early rough cuts of the movie, and thinking, “Wow, this is really moving. I don’t know how the hell he pulled it off, but it’s actually a good movie. It’s a shame no one’s going to see it.” Shows you how wrong you can be.
RR: I suppose it is often easier to create when expectations are so low.
SB: It was good because, yeah, we didn’t really know what was going to happen. Some of the stuff, for instance, that Dave had to do to sound like Ritchie—had to tune the songs way up to make him sound like a 16-year old—if he had known that the stakes were that high, I think it would have been harder. It was hard enough without anything, but I think if he had known (laughs) how big the movie was going to be, it would have been really hard to do.
RR: Speaking of the classic appeal of Los Lobos’ own material, I feel the band captured that sound, again, on Tin Can Trust’s “The Lady and the Rose.” It’s really quite beautiful—lyrically, of course, and the musical composition, in general.
SB: Yeah, that’s another one of my favorites. The story on that one is that we had done everything else. I may have said “27 Spanishes” was the last song we worked on, but “The Lady and the Rose” was the last song. There were two or three other ideas in play that we were in the process of working on, or sort of the way that “27 Spanishes” was—half a song that needed to be edited into coherency, a very sketchy idea, no lyrics, and, actually, some of them did have lyrics, but no real work had taken place on them. They were all sort of like blank canvases. We were in Fort Worth [Texas]. Half the record was done in L.A., and the other half we were forced to go on the road because David and Cesar were doing this Hendrix tribute tour [Experience Hendrix Tour], and we weren’t done. We had done most of the basics when we had left L.A., but we hadn’t done any of the vocals, very few of the guitar solos, and a lot of the stuff that needed to happen, hadn’t happened yet. We were more or less forced to follow (I was forced into it; Louie [Pérez] and Conrad [Lozano] got to stay home), and I would have to go wherever Dave and Cesar were with a hard drive and find a studio and setup camp, and try to get as much done as we could get done in and around their schedule. It was a bit of a pain in the ass, but we pulled it off.
So we were in Fort Worth, and we had an April 1 deadline. This must have been like the third week in March, and we were about to start working on one of these other tracks, and I was in the other room doing something, and Dave and Louie were in the other room doing something like getting another song ready, and they came in and said, “We’re not going to do this song anymore.” I said, “What do you mean?” They said, “We’re not going to want to do this song anymore. We’re going to write another one, and do another one. We’re going to write a song over the weekend, and do that on Monday.” Wednesday’s the deadline, and nothing at this point on the record had gone down that fast, so I said, “Don’t you think we should do this one as a back up?” And they said, “No, we’ve got another idea.” So, had to trust ‘em. Had to let it go. (laughs) I was really concerned. I didn’t think there was a way in hell it was ever going to come together.
And that’s the song that came together. It was kind of a miracle, a miracle birth, more or less, but I couldn’t be happier with the way it turned out. I think that song’s amazing. It’s a very out of character…actually, I shouldn’t say it’s out of character because, in a weird way, Good Morning Aztlán [Los Lobos’ 2002 release] came together in almost the exact same way. We were at the end of the end of the end of the process, and somebody—I’m not sure whose radar, either Dave’s or Louie’s—said, “We need one more idea; we need one more thing that we don’t have yet,” and they come up with it. It’s kind of amazing.
It’s incredible, but I couldn’t be happier with the way [“The Lady and The Rose”] turned out, and that was, literally, just a couple of days back in L.A. We ended up going back to L.A. after the Hendrix tour and the tour of our own, and had a weekend to get that together, and then we were done.
RR: Two ideas also came from old friends, Robert Hunter and the Grateful Dead. Los Lobos covers “West L.A. Fadeaway,” and Hunter, along with Cesar Rosas, co-wrote “All My Bridges Burning,” which precedes that Dead tune on Tin Can Trust.
SB: The Dead song was one of those that helped break the log jam at the beginning of the record when we were still bereft of really anything resembling songs or ideas, and we were casting about. I think it was Cesar who suggested “why don’t we do that one?” We had fooled around with it a little bit live, and never really learned how to play it. We had really extremely half-assed it a number of times trying to play it live. He was great. He said, “If nothing else, why don’t we learn how to play the song? Learn the actual chords, instead of screwing them up every time we try to play it.” We went after it, and it was the first take, and after we got the chords right, it wasn’t hard at all.
Cesar came up with the chord changes on “All My Bridges Burning.” Louie who collaborates with Cesar, sometimes, had, at that point, had about four or five other songs to write, so there wasn’t any way he was going to have any time to deal with one of Cesar’s songs, as he had these other Dave songs he had to deal with. Cesar and I were talking about it one day, and we said, “Why don’t we give Robert Hunter a try?” We hadn’t really talked with him since the time of The Ride. I think I was in San Francisco at the time, and I put a few feelers out. We still maintain close relations with a lot of the
Dead organizational people, and really within 15, 20 minutes, we found him. Much to my surprise, we sent him the chord changes, and (laughs) it seemed like in another 15, 20 minutes, he had sent something back already. He works fast. It was incredible.
RR: You also had Susan Tedeschi singing backing vocals on “Burn it Down.”
SB: Right. We knew that none of us could actually get to the part that Dave had in mind (laughter) on that one. We just love her; I think she’s great. We toured with her, and played with her a little bit. She was on the Hendrix tour that Dave and Cesar went on, so they were together on the road, but this idea came about rather abruptly, and, unfortunately (it turned out fine, but…), when we thought of the idea of having her sing on it, she was only going to be on that tour for one more day. Dave and Cesar were leaving the tour to start a Lobos tour, and she had extremely little time to do it, and extremely little time off. She had been on that tour, and had no time, and she incredibly graciously agreed to give us a day to do it. It was just a very typically wonderful thing that she did for us. I think it was her only day off for weeks, more or less. But it sounds great, and it’s just a pleasure to hear her voice every time I hear that song.
RR: Rev. Charles Williams appears with Los Lobos again on keyboards on “All My Bridges Burning” and one of two Spanish language tracks, “Yo Canto.”
SB: This also goes back to The Ride. We had met him when he came in with Little Willie G. when he sang on “Is There All There Is.” We’ve used him on a few things over the years. He’s just a classic B-3 guy that I know in L.A. If you want to get a classic B-3 guy, call the Reverend. That was done in Cesar’s house at his new studio. I actually wasn’t there when he did it, but boy he’s good.
RR: In the end, what’s fascinating to me is that thematically—both musically and lyrically— Tin Can Trust has a consistent tone—it’s a formidable signpost of where America and, indeed, where the world stands at this point.
SB: Well, we are citizens of both of those, so it is kind of hard to ignore it. Needless to say, it’s a rather ripe opportunity for songwriting because there’s lots of stuff in there that you could talk about. I think just going back to the neighborhood and seeing what was going on was pretty informative. I won’t say it was specific to everything—it’s not a concept record in any sense—but as the songs were coming together, they all sort of seemed to have a slight unity to them about the economic status and stratus of the neighborhood, and what it’s like to live in America in 2010.
RR: Speaking of…what was it like to play outside the White House in 2009?
SB: Needless to say, first and foremost, it was an honor to be asked. The experience was amazing in that this was before the party pressure scandal, before those two people showed up unannounced, and all of that stuff. When you walk up, we were staying
around the corner, and when we drove up, we got out of the car, and there was a bit of a green expanse before you actually get to the White House. There was all these fuckin’ lunatics out there. There was all the preachy party—Lyndon LaRouche with pictures of Obama with a Hitler moustache—and, you know, all these fucking idiots that seem to be growing like weeds everywhere.
We walk up, and we thought that the White House was under assault. The streets were packed with these right wing looney tunes out there. We got inside the gate, and there’s the stage, and we were just walking around, thinking, “Someone’s going to tell us where to go any second.” (laughs) And nobody did. We were able to go wherever we wanted to go. There was a reception prior to the gig, and, yet again, the security was just so low key. You could see the Secret Service dudes, but it was just so not in your face. It was amazingly low stress. We got to go anywhere—the Green Room, the Red Room, and all these historical rooms where all this stuff in history had occurred, and we were standing with them, at a party, having a beer with Robert Gibbs [White House Press Secretary] and Rahm Emanuel [White House Chief of Staff]. It was beyond belief.
Then, they said, “All right, you’re going to meet the President. You’re just going to go in and take a picture with him. Smile and move on.” So, there’s like a holding room, prior to that, and we’re in there—J. Lo and Marc Anthony and Shakira and, you know, these heavy people, and we just feel like “this is crazy; we don’t belong in this deal.” We’re hanging back, and they’re all there with their handlers and shit, and somehow or another, we end up being the last ones to go out. We’re in this room, and one by one they leave and go out, and it’s just us—“Let’s go.” We walked out and he was just so happy we were there. He said, “All right, my boys are here!” There were big ole hugs from him and Michelle and the girls and the mom and the whole thing. It was just like it was not at all…we just felt that it was going to be a very formal sort of deal, but he and his family and his people were just so warm and so normal. It was like going to somebody’s house and having a barbeque. Truly amazing. It was a really amazing experience and an amazing night. Marc Anthony turned out to be an extremely nice guy. Who knew? But, just hanging out with him, and being there, and being able to walk around (laughs) the White House. Got to meet Bo the dog [the presidential pooch]. The whole thing was just a really amazing experience on every level.
RR: As I currently live in Arizona, and I am hit with some of the issues of its legislation, I wanted to ask you about the boycott of Arizona by Los Lobos. What do you think of the immigration laws in that state, and how does it impact America?
SB: Well, clearly, we think it is idiotic beyond all reckonings. Certainly, we feel we did not observe the boycott without a lot of thought and thinking. The show was on native land so there was a lot of that. And, actually at one point, we tried to make it a benefit for some people that had been arrested on the first day of the law. They were out protesting and got arrested, so we were going to make it into a benefit. But, at the end of the day, the subtlety of us playing a benefit for whomever would have been lost—“Los Lobos Breaks
Boycott”—so we sort of had to weigh that. At the end, we chose not to play. I think as time goes on, we’ll figure out a way to do it, but, for now, it’s a lose/lose situation (laughs) no matter which way you go.
The politics of that state are beyond belief to me. You’re seeing, basically, the lab of the right wing, and the tea party, and all that crap, and this is the kind of America that they envision. It certainly bears no resemblance to anything that’s in the Constitution or anything that has been historically part of this country. As far as I can tell, these people don’t know their fucking history from a hole in the ground, or their own ass, so why would I think they would be cognizant or observant of a tradition of caring and openness?
RR: Los Lobos has also has a long history of community interaction, so this is nothing new, which extends, of course, to their support of Barrios Unidos, an Institute for Peace and Community Development.
SB: Yes. We’re citizens of the planet and citizens of the country so we try to do whatever we can do to make it better.
RR: Indeed. Like many records that I champion—past or present—I noticed the old school splitting of the album into two separate yet equal wholes on Tin Can Trust. That connection made me think of your introduction into the band 27 years ago. [Author’s Note: as a non-member at the time of Los Lobos, Berlin, along with T-Bone Burnett, produced the 1983 EP …And a Time to Dance.]
SB: When we started that record I was still in the Blasters, but I was spending, on balance, more time hanging out with Lobos than I was with the Blasters. Right at that moment, when the record started, it wasn’t like I had a decision to make. Six to eight months or so, as that record unfolded, from the conception to the execution to the release, by the time it came out, I was a member of the band. It was just sort of a quirk, time wise, that when I started, I wasn’t quite in the band, but I got there eventually.
RR: Right, and over the years, Los Lobos has gone through some transformations. For example, there was a period of time in the late 90s when there was a looser feel to the live playing, and the band moved away from that in the last ten years. I was wondering how you view those changes and your role in the band now.
SB: I think to a certain extent we’ve become better musicians. The music’s changed a bit. Certainly adding Cougar Estrada to the drums was huge. That kind of tightened everything and everybody up in an enormous way. He’s an extraordinary musician and he allowed us to do a lot more stuff that we, quite frankly, couldn’t do without him. The grooves got more complex and deeper and cooler in many respects, and it’s just nice to have a guy like that back there—anything that anybody comes up, we can execute with confidence. So I think that was a big part of it. I don’t know. In many respects, it really hasn’t changed from the first moment. I’m still kind of doing all the same stuff I’ve
always done, but I think we’ve just gotten a little more conscious of our own sound to a certain extent, and more responsible, I guess, about that. It’s a hard question to answer. (laughs) I don’t think in many dramatic ways we’ve changed all that much. I think it’s still the same five knuckleheads with the addition of Cougar now. We’re kind of doing the same stuff. Obviously, Louie playing more guitar, less drums, changed a bit. That’s the same thing I’m talking about; the grooves got more complex and deeper and required a little more of a technician back there. I think, over the years, that has been the biggest change—getting someone who could pull off any crazy ass idea we can come up with.
I think we’re all energized by the response to Tin Can Trust. This is what we hoped would happen. Then, there are songs that are getting better every time we play them. They get cooler and cooler, and they sound more burned-in, if you will, each time we play them. I know we’ve been doing this for a long time, but there’s no value-added for having done it (laughs) in my mind, anyway. We’ve approached everything as close to doing it the first time as we possibly can. It’s so nice to have new stuff at this point, new things to put in the set list, and new everything, really. That’s what I am enjoying—being able to integrate it into a set. It’s actually an interesting challenge. It’s almost like a jigsaw puzzle, especially with the Hiatt shows [Author’s Note: Los Lobos recently toured with John Hiatt on a series of dates, and collaborations included Hidalgo, Rosas, and Berlin with Hiatt on two Little Feat songs in memory of the recent passing of drummer Richie Hayward]. You don’t quite have enough time to do them all, and, yet, the guys really want to do them all. (laughs)
RR: It’s a good problem to have.
SB: It’s a good problem to have, so the math of it doesn’t really make sense to play two of them back to back because people aren’t familiar with them, so we can’t do two of them back to back, and that’s just one layer of the jigsaw puzzle. When I do the setlist, I try not to have any of the singers do more than two songs in a row so they don’t get burned out. I think the shows just have a nicer flow when it goes back and forth. You add that layer of complexity to it (laughs) because it is like a Sudoku puzzle where the numbers almost add up, but don’t quite. It is like you said—it’s definitely a good problem to have because the songs are great and they’re fun to play. I think the next step is going to be figuring out ways to segue them, either together, or to other songs. My only personal beef right now when we do them is that I think we make a little bit too big a deal about them: “here comes another new song.” As soon as that effect wears off, and we just start playing the songs, I think they’ll get better.
