Vallejo

Sometime during the early hours of the Big Ass Show, Vallejo will play… maybe. If this year’s Big Ass Show goes like last year’s, the more interesting bands will be scratched from the schedule. The band has actually played at another X96-sponsored event. They were here with Soul Coughing and the no-show Space. SLUG Magazine hooked up with the band through less-than-cutting-edge technology. Vallejo called on the phone. 

These are some southern boys. They were born in Wharton, Texas, and they grew up in Birmingham, Alabama. They moved to Austin after deciding to get serious about their music, and they broke out of that town. There are three Vallejos in the band: identical twin brothers AJ (vocals, guitars) and Alejandro (drums) are joined by little brother Oman. Bruce Castleberry (guitars, harmonica) and Steve Ramos (percussion) complete the line-up.

A little history on the Vallejo Brothers’ background helps explain their music. Their mother is Guatemalan and their father is Mexican-American. They were surrounded by Latin music and culture as they grew. When the band formed, they played hard rock. Gradually, the Latin roots became more important, and today the music is soul/funk/Latin/reggae/rock. They could almost be mistaken for another of the endless series of neo-hippie bands, except when these boys get a groove going, the parking lot hemp peddlers would shred their tie-dye apparel in a mosh pit. 

The first time I heard their self-titled album I was mighty impressed. For me that is a common occurrence because most of the music I receive is completely unknown. Vallejo is becoming known. Here are a few reasons why the CD struck me. Actually while I was writing this I was listening to the CD yet again and my son emerged from his bedroom to inquire, “Who is this?”

The lo-fi vocal techniques heard on “Just Another Day,” the Santana-like percussion jam/break heard on “House (Casa de Amor)” with more lo-fi vocal treatment and guitar crescendos building to a climax, and Vallejo’s ability to dance on the precipice of a cliched cliff and never fall off into the valley of redundancy.

I began my conversation with AJ by talking about Vallejo’s radio station tour schedule. They’ve been on the radio circuit for months, and it appears they are still on it. I learned that these tours aren’t really planned. The band has their own tour schedule which they interrupt to do radio station shows. Vallejo boards a plane and flies to one, and then they might be off, or they might board another plane and head to another city for another one. AJ had just arrived from Tallahassee from a show the night before near Little Rock when he called. “That’s the nature of radio, they sort of just throw you here and there and before you know it… one day you’re here, one day you’re there. The radio promoters just stick you were they want to put you.” 

Here’s what AJ had to say about the reasons for playing the radio station circuit: “It’s a vehicle for bands like us to get exposure they wouldn’t get just by themselves. Radio stations put together five or six bands that they’re playing as a bill and that way they can draw a decent audience. It works real well, it’s a new kind of thing. It gets a little bit weird at times, but it’s cool and it works for what’s happening with radio today.”

Here is what AJ had to say about the reception Salt Lake City gave them the last time: “We got out there, and they’re like, ‘Here’s Vallejo, this new band that we do on the radio,’ and everybody was like, ‘Who the hell is this?’ At the end, it got nuts. It was great. Sometimes gigs like that, where you’re turning heads, are more rewarding than playing in front of a regular crowd that has already been there.” He commented on the downside of the radio station tours. “They aren’t all that great. Some of them turn out to be a mess. You get a clusterfuck like that with a bunch of bands together…” Finally, some dirt. But wait, there’s more. 

Before Vallejo moved to Austin, they played the Southeastern college circuit. We all have favorite bands who broke out of that “scene,” don’t we? We have our own little college circuit right here in the West. I think Bootie Quake is about the most popular band on the circuit, except any hippie band from the Boulder area receives immediate attention. I believe there is one band at the Big Ass Show fitting AJ’s description – can anyone guess which one? 

I asked AJ about the difference between the college circuit and Austin. “They’re bandwagon people; they follow whatever is laid out in front of them. They do like to listen to college music; that’s why they have college stations, but you have to have a buzz to be down with that whole trip. Whereas in towns like Austin, there’s many other towns around the United States that are known as music towns where fans come out. They know they’re going to hear music, they know they’re going to pay a cover to hear an original band play original music, not get in for a dollar and do Jello shots and listen to a fuckin’ cover band. That’s what the Southeast college is.” I love this guy. God damn it. Did he just describe the entire Salt Lake City audience?

During his comments on the college circuit, AJ imparted a bit of wisdom, wisdom a few local bands have hit upon and wisdom the rest should read. “Austin had the reputation for being a real musical town, and it challenged us because there’s a lot of good music coming out of there. It’s good to be challenged. That’s why we moved to Austin. It’s been very rewarding. We got a record deal out of it, but a lot of it we sort of worked on it. Down in the Southeast. It’s not like we didn’t do anything while we were there. We were building a game plan. We went to Texas and executed it. It was the second part of our plan.” Did you get that, Mr. Local Band? They had a plan, they worked on it and they succeeded. They believed in their own talent, and when the local “scene” wasn’t working, they got the fuck out.

Vallejo’s TVT CD is not their first. A tiny Chicago label released the rarity. AJ didn’t have a bad word to say about their first label. It didn’t have the financial ability to take the band to the next level, and that’s why they signed with TVT. The current state of the music industry is such that even the larger independent labels are getting screwed by the chains. That is why we shop at independent stores, am I correct? The big six can go fuck themselves, and so can the chains.

I’m going to finish with these next few words from AJ. Vallejo likes to jam live, and the jams are on their CD, so I asked him if Vallejo would welcome a H.O.R.D.E. tour invitation. “We’d like to welcome that. We like to jam, but we’re not one of those noodle bands, that’s what we call ‘em. We’re into the song and the melody, we like a good hook and we do like to jam, but the way we go about jamming is… instead of noodling around for ten minutes with the same time measure, where most rock bands would go into a 4/4 thing, we just go into a samba or a Latin thing… that’s where the Vallejo sound comes in. That way, when you go back to the melody, it sounds fresh, it’s not like you sat there and noodled around for ten minutes. We’re not that kind of band.”

Fuck yeah! Vallejo is part of the Big Ass Show. Their tour plans might bring them back sometime in August for more than 45 minutes — thank you, see ya, give us your money, buy our CD, we’re gone. I guess I’ll join the rest of the farm animals to see them this time through, but I’m still hoping for a more proper Vallejo experience, and I’m hoping that it does indeed occur at a club later in the summer. —Little Christy

Read more from the 90s in the SLUG archives:
Republica
Stuck Mojo

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