Named after a Californian border town, you can find Calexico’s sound lurking around the midpoint between Tex Mex and desert noir. That said, Joey Burns, the band’s lead singer and one half of Calexico’s core (the other half being drummer John Convertino), insists that each of Calexico’s nine studio albums are different – albeit connected by vague threads.
On the cusp of their 2018 release The Thread That Keeps Us, Burns finds yet another ley line through the Calexico canon. “I guess it’s the people,” he says. “We have this band that’s been together for a while, and this lineup in particular has been together for quite a few years. That consistency is important. It’s also a spirit we all share, being free enough to experiment and reinvent who we are and not being precious with trying to remain one way. Really, we look forward with each album to finding something new, a new expression, and that spark and drive is, to me, what connects us all from record to record.”
It’s very important to us that our daughters are strong and stand up and speak for themselves.
Traditionally, the band has released an album every couple of years, but in the lead up to The Thread That Keeps Us, the desire to be productive was all the more urgent. Reeling from the outcome of the 2016 US presidential election, Burns ached to spread a little love and a lot of tolerance along the way as an antidote to Trump’s noxiousness.
With that imperative, the band has had its nose pressed firmly to the grindstone ever since, either touring or, more latterly, recording. The band has a hectic touring schedule and a new album to show for it, and politically, Burns sees a glimmer of hope on the horizon. “I feel like this current administration is nearing its last legs,” he reflects. “I feel like it was a case of, ‘OK, let’s let the child have his time’. He’s just about done himself in. He’s really losing control.
“If anything, the statements and actions of this administration have made other people want to get involved and speak up and protest. I think it’s making everyone realise you can’t take democracy for granted. I feel good about that. I still feel there’s lots of work to do, big and small, and music is still really important. Otherwise, I probably wouldn’t be buying airline tickets to Europe to go and play shows. We need each other. That’s the message that keeps coming back to me.”
Calexico makes no bones about the fact that they love to collaborate, and The Thread That Keeps Us is no exception, incorporating musos from across the globe. However, in contrast to their previous album Edge Of The Sun, which featured a special guest on nearly every song, Burns wanted to smash out the latest album and put the spotlight on band members.
Take the cumbia tune ‘Flores Y Tamales’, which features Calexico’s guitar player, Jairo Zavala, who is from Madrid. “He’s singing about the importance of bridging whatever differences there are, whether they’re differences of the way of looking at life or philosophy, or differences between us physically,” Burns muses. “We can always find common threads: a meal, a cup of coffee, a bouquet of flowers, freshly hand-made tamales. I love the sentiment behind that song.”
Hearth and home feature heavily on the album too. No surprise then that Burns collaborated with his oldest brother John on the album (as he has done for about the six prior) and that his twin six-year-old daughters had some pretty damn sweet input when it came to content. “You should hear the songs and the stories coming from these kids,” Burns quietly boasts. “For one of the songs, ‘Girl In The Forest’, I was sitting on this couch with my daughters, coming up with this melody and this music. I started recording it on my phone and they started humming along by the end of it. I said, ‘Hey, why don’t we go into the kitchen and we’ll finish writing the song. We’ll write some lyrics.’
“Here I was, trying to pilot this song towards environmentalism and protests, inspired by what was happening a year ago or so at Standing Rock with trying to bring in this the North Dakota pipeline into Sioux land – I was really torn up by that, as a lot of people were. My daughters really liked that idea, but then they kind of went deeper, and turned to me and said, ‘Why can’t the song just be about a girl who can speak with the animals, all the animals, all of the things in the forest, even the trees’. That’s beautiful. I’m in awe of that openness and clarity.”
In fact, being the dad of daughters has been something that’s been weighing heavily on Burns’s mind in recent times. He ranks the virtue of patience as amongst the best lessons he’s learned during his career, but with his kids in mind he’s now thinking that maybe the ability to listen tops it.
“The ability to listen has certainly come to the forefront, especially in regards to the treatment of women. It’s very important to us that our daughters are strong and stand up and speak for themselves and don’t succumb to any pressures from the past that are male based. We want them to be independent and fierce. I’m continuing to learn how to be a better listener, but I still have lots to learn.”
The Thread That Keeps Us is out through Spunk now.
