If laughter is the best medicine, then The Mavericks frontman Raul Malo has all the medicine he needs. “It’s funny, people keep telling me, ‘Man, you look great! You look the best you’ve ever looked!’ and I’m like, ‘Yeah I know. It’s the fucking cancer, can you believe that shit?’...
Nothing can stop The Mavericks as they roll into town with Asleep At The Wheel on Friday, September 13 to perform at Smart Financial Centre .“It’s funny, people keep telling me, ‘Man, you look great! You look the best you’ve ever looked!’ and I’m like, ‘Yeah I know.
It’s the fucking cancer, can you believe that shit?’ What does that say about the rest of my life?” asks Malo with a hearty laugh.“So far it's been okay. All the treatments have gone well and I'm honestly feeling great so far so we will see what happens after these next but so far it's been really kind of a blessing because it's really made me realize, holy shit man we spend our lives poisoning ourselves.” Malo and his band had begun to focus on their health as a group which included reevaluating their diet and habits as well as some routine doctor appointments, one of which led to Malo’s diagnosis. As a band, it’s not their first rodeo in terms of taking a punch and riding the wave as a few years ago drummer Paul Deakin was hit twice with a forced break from the road as his recovery from heart surgery uncovered a brain tumor which he had removed last year. “Oh man we've had to,” says Malo of the band's ability to be flexible. “It’s just the reality that we’re not 25 anymore and sooner or later somethings gonna happen but we've been able to fight through it and Paul is doing great.” “It’s just the reality that we’re not 25 anymore and sooner or later somethings gonna happen but we've been able to fight through it."Malo is used to drawing people in with his beautiful baritone voice and natural charisma but now he is using his platform as an artist to encourage fans, friends, family and everyone to look at their own health without fear or avoidance. “It’s tough to deal with but there's people out there fighting the battle who are scared and I wanted to somehow let them know that it was okay. It's okay to have a port and it’s okay to go to chemo and do all the things that the doctor tells you to do and it’s okay to fight.” The bandleader, who says he reacted to his diagnosis as one more thing to deal with is definetly ready to fight. “I’m not afraid of dying, I don't think about death. I think it's not how long you live, it's what you do with your life and to me,I feel good about what I've done with my life. It’s not perfect by any means but I feel satisfied. This is just one more little wake up call to get you off your ass and get you really in shape which I was already doing anyways.” Wake up calls can come in many forms and it’s up to the individual to listen to the messages being sent to them. The title track “Moon & Stars” serves as a sweet little reminder to take the time and look up, appreciate the beauty that reveals itself nightly to all everyone all over the planet. “I don't buy that everything has to be this deep philosophical message, sometimes a nursery rhyme is all we need to remind us of what's in front of us and that's kind of the point of that song,” he says of the title track.adding her powerhouse vocals which take the listener by the shoulders shaking them to awaken. Malo describes Ferrel's vocals as something that was luckily captured as she simply started singing along with the song in the studio during a playback. Malo has always been a fan of taking his band into the studio to see what happens and when setting out to make a new album, he used the same approach. “Even if we go in there and stare at each other, something will come out and we don't operate under any pretense that anything good is going to come out,” laughs the singer. Being on the road non stop and dealing with the million things that the large band has to deal with on a daily basis left Malo with little time or energy to write and as the booked studio time got closer, he remembered some demos he had packed away after the 2010 Tennessee Floods, recalling “Moon & Stars” in particular. “That was a traumatic experience that I really never dealt with because I didn't have time to deal with,” says Malo who lost his home, personal property and subsequently became aware of accounting mismanagement in his financial affairs. “We were literally under water,” he says. “This is funny and this is life too," he says relating the financial wake up call to his recent health awareness. "The flood, that was a big wake up call too because I wasn't paying attention to finances. I wasn't paying attention to what people were doing.” It was during that post flood time that the frontman hit the road solo and wrote and recorded demos of many of the songs which he knew could possibly end up onIronically, as Malo searched for these recordings at home with no luck, he remembered a storage space he had rented out after the flood. The thought of going there filled him with dread and he put it off until he couldn’t anymore “I didn't want to go deal with it because we don't want to deal with shit. We don't want to go to the doctor, we don't want to deal with the uncomfortable or the truth,” he says of human nature. “One day I decided, you know what, I'm going to go to that storage place. I’m going to put on my big boy pants and I’m going to open that locker.” To his surprise, what he imagined would be a small room busting at seams with endless junk to sort through, had only been housing two small plastic storage bins all those years. “I laughed it off like wow, month after month, fear upon fear of not wanting to deal with it at all and look at that,” he says of finding the bins which held not only “Moon & Stars” but a handful of other tracks as well including the dark opener"The Years Will Not Be Kind." “I found “The Years Will Not Be Kind” and it literally rang something to me, the lyrics, the music. I had done a demo and the demo was not terrible but you could hear it in my voice that it wasn't believable,” says Malo of the somber and compelling song which became the first one the band recorded for“That set the tone with this record and I knew at that moment that with the juxtaposition of “Moon & Stars” and “The Years Will Not Be Kind” that we were going to have a record because that’s as brutally an honest of a song that you could have and we are actually living it,” says Malo laughing at the irony of the whole thing.shows The Mavericks doing what they do best, which is anything they want style wise as the band can do no wrong when exploring songs and blending genres, something that Malo admits has made them something of a “nightmare” for record labels who don’t know where to put them. The instrumentation and layers to each song perfectly complement Malo's glorious voice in addition to the refreshing voices of collaborators and as Malo says,"some of their favorite humans" including Malo and his whole team are looking ahead and planning on continuing to give their glorious new album the life on the road it deserves. “It’s been really special,” he says of being on the road this time around where the performances and song material often times take on a new meaning or sense of gravitas. “I think the fans know and everybody knows that, not that anybody is going away any time soon, but this is a friendly reminder that this could all go away and that life is what it is and we should enjoy the moment. If you are here tonight at this show, don't get mad at people because they're standing up, join them in their celebration because that's what we are doing and that’s what's required right now.” The Mavericks will perform with support from Asleep At The Wheel on Friday, September 13 at the Smart Financial Centre, 18111 Lexington, 8 p.m, $49-94., it has been defined as the free, independent voice of Houston, and we'd like to keep it that way. With local media under siege, it's more important than ever for us to rally support behind funding our local journalism. You can help by participating in our"I Support" program, allowing us to keep offering readers access to our incisive coverage of local news, food and culture with no paywalls. is a first generation Houstonian whose obsession with music began with being glued to KLDE oldies on the radio as a young girl. She is a freelance music writer for theThe Houston Press may earn a portion of sales from products & services purchased through links on our site from our affiliate partners. ©2024 Houston Press, LP. All rights reserved.
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