Raul Malo

"The mans voice is a marvel, and his intelligence and good humor shine through. We were all very lucky to be there." MSNBCs Eric Alterman on Malos August, 2005 show in the Hamptons
Considered to be one of the finest singers in the world, Raul Malo has always crossed cultures and blurred musical boundaries, breaking new ground with his distinctive balance of vintage sound and contemporary attitude. Born in Miami of Cuban parents, Raul is best known as the founder and frontman of Grammy-winning, multi-platinum band the Mavericks. He made his mark in the country music world and then drifted into the Latin and jazz arenas via rock n roll. Rauls talent has proven over the years to be ever expanding--as a true fan of all kinds of music, he sees only a fine line between rock n roll, country and salsa rhythms.
Currently Raul is traveling in the US making a short series of very unique solo appearances. Sheer exuberance...Malo mixes lounge crooning with zestful Latin music and adds a dash of country twang, writes the Chicago Tribune. Each night, Raul delivers an eclectic mix of personal and fan favorites, beautifully performed and extremely diverse. The set includes stunning acoustic renditions of several of the best-loved songs from the Mavericks catalog--his signature hits What A Crying Shame, Dance The Night Away,Here Comes The Rain, and All You Ever Do Is Bring Me Down. Staggeringly powerful live, Raul is just as likely to break into Tom Jones Its Not Unusual, as the Cuban standards Guantanamera and Siboney, then follow with Merle Haggards Tonight The Bottle Let Me Down or Rodgers and Harts Blue Moon.
Unusually charismatic and possessing a keen wit, Raul is larger than life. To hear him perform live is to be in the presence of greatness. Force of nature Raul Malo wraps his husky vocals around everything like he owns the copyright on heartbreak, says Entertainment Weekly. Rauls far-reaching talent and adventurous attitude toward his music has often led to the pursuit of new creative endeavors, and in the last couple of years he has established himself as a solo artist, as a producer and television musical director, and as a member of the super-group Los Super Seven.
Yet, first and foremost, Raul is a singer. Raul Malo has a voice on par with the best of em: Sinatra, George Jones and Orbison, says Rolling Stone. As the lead Maverick, as a key participant on the last two Los Super Seven albums and as a solo artist, Raul has been making records now for a good 15 years. Not just any records, but really good records -- the kind discriminating fans, critics and especially fellow musicians rally behind and cherish regardless of fickle fashion and commercial success. Its a body of work full of surprising stylistic quick turns and unexpected detours -- from country to Tex-Mex rock n roll to joyously kitschy 60s cocktail pop to strait-up, traditional Cuban and South American music -- but always executed with a degree of craft and ultra-confidence suggesting an artist who, far from fumbling around in the creative dark, always seems to know exactly what hes doing and where he wants to go.
RAUL MALO’S AFTER HOURS
Following his critically embraced 2006 album of standards, You’re Only Lonely, which Salon.com noted was “reminiscent of Frank Sinatra's classic late-night albums,” gifted singer Raul Malo brings this same artfully understated elegance to a set of classic country songs .. Hours (July 17, New Door Records).
“There’s a sophistication in country music, particularly in the songs that were written in the 1950s and’60s, that sometimes gets overlooked,” says Malo. “I wanted to make an album that showed these songs can be treated as pop standards, because that’s what they are, really. It’s just that the artists who had success with them were country artists, although Tony Bennett had a hit with a Hank Williams song, so it isn’t that unusual for the genres to cross each other.”
In approaching this material, Malo and his band—Robert Chevrier (piano), Jay Weaver (bass), Tom Lewis (drums) and Jim Hoke (saxophone, clarinet and pedal steel)—drew their inspiration from the classic Nashville productions of the era. “This record definitely pays homage to the kind of country music Owen Bradley created,” Malo acknowledges. “But the Ray Charles album Modern Sounds in Country & Western Music was the specific inspiration for this one. Ray proved that country music can be sophisticated and jazzy as well, and we wanted to do our take on it.”
Malo and his skilled bandmembers set the tone of After Hours with a slow-burning, seductive take on the standard “Welcome to My World,” with Malo’s nuanced vocal surrounded by muted horns and gentle piano. From there, these knowing and skillful musicians bring a new illumination to some of country music’s greatest songs, from writers like Hank Williams, Buck Owens, Kris Kristofferson, Roger Miller and Dwight Yoakam. Some of them smolder with emotion; others swing with finger-snapping gusto.
“What these songs have in common is that they were originally recorded by great singers, and the production was always based around the vocals,” Malo points out. “So we wanted to make a vocal-based album without a lot of frills. The focus is on the vocals, the lyrics and the melodies—that’s what these songs are about. We considered putting some strings on a couple of them, but there was an inherent charm to the sparse vibe of the band, and it sounded beautiful as it was, so we decided to leave it that way.”
The album was recorded live off the floor at a studio the band recently installed in Weaver’s Tennessee farm house. “I was in the middle of the room playing my big white Gibson guitar through a little amp that we had isolated in the back of the room,” Malo explains. “Tom was on the drums in front of me, Jay was over to my left on bass, and Robert to my right on piano. So we were all live in the same room, with very little isolation—much to the chagrin of the engineer. But that gave the record a live feeling.
“On the records that were made back then,” he notes, “you hear a performance, not a construction. Ray Charles would go in there and give you two or three takes, and that was gonna be it, so the engineer had to capture it. That’s why those records sound so great, because they caught a moment in time. We’ve gotten away from this kind of thing in modern record making, because everybody gets so hung up on making sure that every syllable and every note played is perfect—and by the time the engineers are done, they’ve taken the humanity out of the recording. We like to perform live, and certainly that can transfer over to records. You should be able to play your song from beginning to end without messing it up. So that was the other thing we wanted to do with this record.”
Born in Miami of Cuban parents, Malo is best known as the founder and frontman of Grammy-winning, multi-platinum band the Mavericks—well named considering the bandleader’s genre-spanning sensibility. Formed in 1990, the Mavericks were one of the decade’s biggest country bands, recording seven albums, including their 1994 breakthrough, What a Crying Shame, and twice being named Top Vocal Group by the Country Music Association. The Mavericks haven’t toured since 2001, but the bandmembers remain close.
In 2001, Malo released his first solo album, Today, a seamless blend of country and his Cuban roots, following it up five years later with You’re Only Lonely. He has also recorded two albums with the Latin-rock supergroup Los Super Seven, and continues to conduct a heavy touring schedule. The latest collection is the third solo outing from a one-of-a-kind artist whose powerful voice Entertainment Weekly has described as “a force of nature.”
MALO TALKS ABOUT THE SONGS OF AFTER HOURS
1. Welcome to My World (John Hathcock – Ray Winkler): “I’m a big fan of melodies, and if they have a good lyric, that’s even better. ‘Welcome to My World’ certainly fits that mold. It’s one of my favorites, and I’ve loved it since I was a kid.”
2. (Now and Then There’s) A Fool Such As I (William Trader): “One thing all these songs have in common is that they can be arranged in any number of ways, which to me is always a sign of a good song. Elvis did a version of this one, and we wanted it to rock it up a little bit.”
3. For the Good Times (Kris Kristofferson): “Oh, man, that song we just had to do, especially on an album called After Hours. There isn’t a song written that embodies the sentiment of this record more fully than ‘For the Good Times’—it’s so honest and beautiful and riveting. There have been many great versions of it, but we just thought maybe we could bring something just a little different to it.”
4. Pocket of a Clown (Dwight Yoakam): “Part of the reason for doing this one is that we wanted to not just do old songs but also show that even in the modern era, there are songs that lend themselves to this sort of treatment. Dwight is one of my favorite artists, and a very influential one, and his songs lend themselves to any number of treatments because of his melodic sense and his lyrics, and I think this song proves that point, because it’s considerably different from his version. We felt that we hit our stride in arranging that song.”
5. Crying Time (Buck Owens): “I wanted to do ‘Crying Time’ not only because I love the song and I like our arrangement of it, but also because it’s a tribute to Buck Owens, who recently passed. So it’s my homage to him.”
6. Cold, Cold Heart (Hank Williams): “We had to have a Hank song in there. I’ve always been a big fan of Louis Prima, and I heard a version of Louie doing ‘Cold, Cold Heart’ that just knocked me out, so we borrowed from that a little bit. He’s certainly a big influence on what I do—his vocal style, his abandon, the way he would arrange songs.”
7. You Can Depend on Me (Charles Carpenter – Louis Dunlap – Earl Hines): “That’s an old standard and the only non-country song on the album, but we took it from Brenda Lee’s version from the early ’60s. People always talk about wanting country to cross over, but country music has always tried to cross over, and vice versa. Here’s Brenda Lee covering a pop standard, and her version is just beautiful, so we modeled our version after hers.”
8. Husbands and Wives (Roger Miller): “Roger Miller wrote a lot of little ditties like ‘Dang Me’ and ‘England Swings,’ but he was a heavy dude, and this song is the dagger in this whole set of songs, along with ‘For the Good Times,’ and I think you’ve gotta have songs like that on a record like this one.”
9. It Only Hurts Me When I Cry (Dwight Yoakam – Roger Miller): “That was on a Dwight album called If There Was a Way, and I thought, ‘Man, here’s a song from the modern day that fits into this little set, and coincidentally, it’s written by Dwight and Roger Miller.”
10. Take These Chains From My Heart (Hy Heath – Fred Rose): “The original version of this song was by Hank Williams, and Ray Charles did it on Modern Sounds. Our version came out of just jammin’ in the studio, and I don’t think it’s too derivative of the Ray version—there’s no way I’m gonna even come close to him. But we did a sweet little arrangement, and it’s a beautiful song, so I thought it fit the record.”