Wednesday, March 31, 2010

Calexico Headlines Festival in El Barrio Viejo

Posted By on Wed, Mar 31, 2010 at 11:48 AM

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Just Press Play: Calexico performs at the Backyard, Austin, Texas, on May 5, 2004


You know where you want to be this Saturday, April 3: Festival en el Barrio Viejo! Calexico is headlining the all-day music festival in the streets of downtown's Barrio Viejo to benefit KXCI. The show will include Sergio Mendoza y La Orkesta, Crawdaddy-O, Tom Walbank, Naim Amor, Salvador Duran, Fourkiller Flats, Silver Thread Trio and other special friends. Details here.

Whet your appetite for the show with our latest release from the Secret Files of Jim Blackwood, the KXCI morning DJ and KUAT-KUAZ engineer extraordinaire. As we mentioned a few weeks back, Blackwood has posted a select number of live performances by the likes of Calexico, Giant Sand, and Al Perry at archive.org, where you'll find all sorts of obscure and cool digital artifacts.

One of them is this 2005 show from The Backyard in Austin, where Calexico performed along Ozomatli and Los Lonely Boys. It's s tight set that includes "Jesus and Tequila," "El Picador," "Not Even Stevie Nicks," "Crystal Frontier" and an epic "Guero Canelo."

Calexico's Joey Burns:


I remember the early day in May 2005 as being very warm and sunny as we pulled up to the beautiful location of the Backyard Music Venue outside of Austin TX. The place was surrounded by trees and plenty of natural space, surprising for a rock venue. The Backyard was

definitely unique and had the makings for a really good environment for both audience and band members. We immediately recognized some of the local crew and met the crew for both Los Lonely Boys and Ozomatli who were very helpful and down to earth, it was day two of the week long mini tour, and we were just finding our feet with the crowd and flow of variety between all three bands.

We wound up having plenty of time to hang out at the venue and become very relaxed thanks to the delicious catering and familial like feel from the kitchen staff, so by the time we got onstage, we were in a really positive mood and the Austin crowd was very supportive from the get go. I suppose that since we only had 30 minutes we filled the set with the more upbeat numbers, so I think this set in Austin was one of my favorites from the tour. We stayed the whole night to see the other bands play since our drive in the van and trailer was a short one to San Angelo TX the next day. We were really impressed with the diversity of all the bands on the bill, from the complexity and interlocking polyrhythmic grooves of Ozomatli to the minimalistic effectiveness of the power trio of Los Lonely Boys. Nothing like looking out into a crowd and feeling like you're surrounded by a forest of trees. A fine night of music and partying to be remembered for a long time.

Find the whole concert for download here.

You can buy Calexico's latest live album,Ancienne Belgique: Live In Brussels (2008), at Casa de Calexico.

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