ND: But those particular musicians are pretty open to varied acoustic styles, and the smoother, dobro-led sound seems natural for you.
RM: Yeah, that was more my style to do, and everybody agreed it would be a sort of folk album. We sat around and listened to songs, and all had a hand in picking them. I wish we had taken a bit more time — we did it in three or four days — but there’s a vibe about the songs, that sense of just sitting around and playing instruments, which is what it was like.
ND: You also have this big, loose Nashville outfit you play with called the Fabulosos.
RM: Those shows are nights of musical indulgence! It’s me and some of my best studio buddies, with horns and percussion and all — and it’s a big show, where we do big songs. We’ll do some of my stuff, and by the end of the night we could be doing “Danke Shein” — but it’ll be the best version of “Danke Shein” you could hear! The “big song” covers aren’t cheesy karaoke, but serious badass versions. You’ll go, “I can’t believe they’re playing that one!” We call that gig our therapy.
V. A BAND THAT MIGHT DO PRETTY MUCH ANYTHING
ND: At the beginning, what did you figure the Mavericks were going to be?
RM: I thought we were this rockabilly, pseudo-country I-don’t-know-what! The hardest thing for me has been to describe what we do.
ND: How expansive did you think the Mavericks idea could be — a band that might do a bunch of things, or might do anything?
RM: Well, that was pretty much it, from the get-go — a band that might do pretty much anything. I mean, we would do our original honky-tonk stuff — and “Guantanamera”. You should have seen the faces on the gringos trying to line-dance to that! We were booked into some places where that’s all people wanted to do. Though by the end of the night, they were often way into it.
But predicting the future is not something I did, or do. Look at the changes in the Beatles — not to compare us to them, but if you listen to the band that played “I Saw Her Standing There”, and then to “For The Benefit Of Mr. Kite”, you have to figure that those guys weren’t planning to do vaudeville songs when they started out either.
ND: Mavs drummer Paul Deakin and bass player Robert Reynolds have been the underpinning of all of the many rhythms and styles you’ve sung and the band has played. Was it obvious early on that these guys from that “two-chord rock band” could handle everything from Hank Williams to mambos to the ’20s lounge band likes of “Dolores”?
RM: The main thing that equipped them to do all that was everybody’s attitude, which was, “The worst thing that could happen is we’ll have a laugh.” And that’s always been our attitude from the beginning. And I’ll give them A for effort in trying these things, because it is difficult.
ND: In 1992’s From Hell To Paradise, the group had one stunning record — tough-minded, a bit political or at least pointedly social, and basically lean honky-tonk, right down to Hank and Buck covers, not so far from what a band considered “alt-country” like the Derailers has done. Was this what the band really wanted to do?
RM: At that moment, that was exactly what we wanted to do. It was an extension of what we were doing in Miami all those years, because we’d been playing those songs forever.
ND: And some made some statements, as some on the new one do.
RM: Right! For years, we strayed away from saying stuff in a political or social vein, mainly because I didn’t have anything to say, and also because I felt that musicians were getting a bit preachy. We were just entertainers and wanted to entertain, and that’s OK.
But what’s happened in this country in the last couple of years has awakened this thing in me where I don’t want to be silent anymore. I don’t think there’s enough dissent, or enough protest, or enough artists coming out against what’s happening with this administration, and in the world. So I decided it was time to put the gloves back on.
ND: The follow-up CD in ’94, What A Crying Shame, was very different — and actually went platinum. It contained multiple hits in both modern honky-tonk and, in the case of “I Should Have Been True”, an Orbison-like style. How did the Mavericks and the label arrive there?
RM: That record was a product of the commercial failure of From Hell To Paradise, which meant sales of abut 40,000 records. We had been accepted critically, and we had a great reputation as a really good live band, so that saved us. But now the label wanted us to do an album where I didn’t write any of the songs, or use the band at all.
ND: A fairly typical Nashville studio system defensive response — “in that case, we’d better take control of this.”
RM: Yes. They wanted to use only studio musicians, and get all the hot writers to write songs for us. And I remember saying to my manager, “Well then, tell them to leave us alone and we’ll go back to Miami and play in clubs.” I was perfectly prepared to say to hell with it. I probably wouldn’t do that now — but I was 24!
For a more commercial album, my response was that I’d write with some of my own favorite writers of the moment — Al Anderson, Kostas. And then Tony Brown hooked us up with Don Cook, who was having huge success in the country market, and turned out to be a great producer for us. We had a good run, and I learned a lot about how to increase the chances that something might, at least, get on the radio.
VI: THAT “SALSA PARTY COUNTRY BAND”
ND: What happened next was either gutsy or crazy, but the Mavericks never let that massively accepted sound get locked in either, from the next one, Music For All Occasions, on through Trampoline in ’98. What made you so willing to stay adventurous after the big success?
RM: Stupidity? Bravado? Unchecked stubbornness? I wanted to try different things. Music For All Occasions was really our first attempt at a concept album — a sort of pseudo-lounge country sort of thing, for all occasions! You could mow your lawn to it, or clean your house.
