Los Lobos members coming to Santa Fe for intimate acoustic performance
After 35 years of making music, two members of Los Lobos are now opening their front doors to their fans — metaphorically speaking.
“We’re gonna invite people into our living rooms and sit them on our couches and have a nice conversation with them,” said Louie Pérez during a recent phone interview from his home in Orange County.
Pérez and band mate David Hidalgo will bring the band’s impressive music catalogue to the Lensic Performing Arts Center tonight for a special acoustic performance that will be an “intimate and candid forum.”
The show will be stripped-down and informal — fellow Los Lobos members Cesar Rosas, Steve Berlin and Conrad Lozano will not be performing.
“It’s a little bit scary,” Pérez said. “We won’t have a loud rock band to hide behind. We’ll see what happens when you jump out of an airplane without a parachute.”
Pérez said he is looking forward to talking about the history of the songs he and Hidalgo have been writing together since the two met in 10th grade at Garfield High School in East Los Angeles.
“Since 1969 or 1970, we’ve been writing songs,” Pérez said. “That’s almost 40 years. Man, that’s scary.
“We started out by picking up Mexican instruments that we didn’t know how to play,” he said. “We both loved music.”
The two hit it off as songwriters and would ultimately form Los Lobos in 1973, or “Just another band from East L.A.,” as the band has humbly referred to itself.
After several years of playing rock, blues and Mexican standards to L.A. crowds, the band members took a hard look at themselves in the mid-1980s.
“We came to a crossroads,” Pérez said. “Are we going to be a cool garage band that plays rock ’n’ roll and rhythm and blues, or are gonna be serious songwriters?”
In 1984, Los Lobos would release its first major-label recording, “How Will the Wolf Survive?,” to critical acclaim.
Success followed quickly — so quickly that Los Lobos could have been mainstream radio darlings for years after their contributions to 1987’s smash hit soundtrack, “La Bamba.”
But they chose not to.
“We could have been the Mexican Keebler elves and sold tortilla chips our whole lives,” Pérez said. “But we didn’t want to do that.”
Instead, the band followed with 1988’s “La Pistola y el Corazón” — an album of traditional Mexican standards. That was followed by a string of other critical standouts. Those include 1992’s “Kiko,” 1996’s “Colossal Head” and the 2006 album “The Town and the City.”
Each album has featured a blend of experimental psychedelic-rock fusion combined with unusual instruments and smooth, soulful vocals.
“The Town and the City” stands out as the band’s most personal record, with lyrics about Pérez’s East L.A. upbringing and topics touching on issues such as poverty and illegal immigration.
Pérez said that album “started the ball rolling” for the idea of the acoustic and intimate performances he and Hidalgo are about to embark on.
“We dug in deep,” Pérez said. “It was a very stirring record. It was a sense of looking back.”
Pérez said the Santa Fe area and the Southwest in general “is our neighborhood,” and he hopes to continue to inspire young musicians — especially Latinos — to develop their own identities.
“There’s Mexican-Americans living through the Southwest being challenged by the music we’re making,” he said. “I think we’ve redefined stereotypes of what people think of Mexican-American people.”
If You Go
WHAT: David Hidalgo and Louie Pérez
WHEN: 7:30 tonight
WHERE: The Lensic Performing Arts Center, 211 W. San Francisco St.
HOW MUCH: $27-$42
CONTACT: 988-1234
