By Brian Baker

As if the Mexican wrestling masks didn’t serve as something of a tip-off, semi-instrumental surf guitar maestros Los Straitjackets, who play an early kids’ show in addition to their regular gig at the Beachland this Saturday, have always had a soft spot for the music and culture emanating from south of the Rio Grande. Just as importantly, the quartet (initially based in Nashville but now scattered throughout the country) have always found a way to diversify within its narrow sonic parameters, adding guest vocals on 2001’s Sing Along with Los Straitjackets, going holiday on 2002’s ’Tis the Season for Los Straitjackets and covering their idols and influences on 2004’s Los Straitjackets Play Favorites.

For their latest release, Rock En Español Vol. 1, Los Straitjackets have combined several of those concepts into a single album that pays tribute to some of the great but obscure Mexican rock bands of the ’60s. As guitarist Danny Amis notes, Los Straitjackets are uniquely qualified to act as ambassadors for a style of music to which very few people have ever been exposed, primarily because of their popularity south of the border.
“We do very well in Mexico,” says Amis via phone from his home in California. “We were there two years ago and we had 70,000 people come to see us in the main square in Mexico City. I think we’re going to go back later this year.”

Given the nature of Rock En Español, a Mexican jaunt for Los Straitjackets would seem as automatic as a Kobe Bryant free throw. The album finds the masked foursome recreating the Spanish translations of contemporary hits that were recorded by popular Mexican rock bands of the ’60s, including groups like Los Teen Tops, Los Ovnis, Los Locos del Ritmo and Los Rebeldes de Rock. In fact, when Los Straitjackets christened themselves back in the late ’80s, the band members, longtime collectors of this obscure branch of rock, adapted their name in tribute to the unsung Mexican bands of the ’60s.
“It was a homage to the early ’60s rock ’n’ roll bands, having the Spanish article with the English noun,” says Amis. “Like Los Teen Tops and Los Rockin’ Devils.”

For Amis, his love of Mexican rock ’n’ roll predates his membership in Los Straitjackets in the late ’80s.

“I heard it once in a Mexican restaurant in Nashville and I went, ‘What is this? It’s the best!’” recalls Amis. “There’s just something about rock ’n’ roll sung in Spanish that just really works, it sounds good in that language. I’ve never heard rock ’n’ roll in French or German that I thought sounded as good as it does in Spanish. There’s something about the sound of the language itself that really works. I made my first trip to Mexico in the hopes of finding some of those records I’d heard, and when I ended up in Mexico City, I not only found the records, I found the bands were still active. So I’ve seen most of them.”

Rock En Español is a project Los Straitjackets have wanted to pursue for a long time but never seemed to find an opportunity to work on it until last year. The seed was planted years ago when vocalist Robert Williams, better known as Big Sandy, joined Los Straitjackets for a few tour dates and the backstage banter turned to their mutual musical appreciation.

“Several years ago, we were doing a show with Big Sandy, I think it was in Canada, and somehow we got on the subject of Mexican rock ’n’ roll and I didn’t realize he was a fan of that stuff, too,” recalls Amis. “I immediately thought, ‘We should record something like that.’ A few months later, we happened to be at a friend’s recording studio and we invited him to come over and did a single of ‘La Plaga’ and ‘Que Mala.’ That single did so well that when we did Sing Along with Los Straitjackets it was obvious to do a few more of those on that album. We went out and toured to support Sing Along with Big Sandy and quite a bit of the show was Mexican rock ’n’ roll, and we had so much fun playing it and the audience liked it so much, we knew we had to do an album of it. We were just too busy to do it.”

Everything happens for a reason, as they say, and Los Straitjackets’ schedule opened up last year at the fortuitous moment when Los Lobos guitarist Cesar Rosas was available to produce. Los Straitjackets manager Jake Guralnick had suggested Rosas, who was excited by the concept of the album.
“He was the perfect producer for this,” says Amis.

Long before the reality of doing Rock En Español, Amis and his cohorts in Los Straitjackets (guitarist Eddie Angel, bassist Pete Curry and drummer Jason Smay) had compiled lists of favorite songs that they each felt would work within the Mexican rock concept. The problem was that they’d done their homework a little too well.

“The combined list was way too long,” says Amis. “There were quite a few things we thought would be good to do that we didn’t do. Hopefully, this will be one of many.”

The songs that didn’t make the cut on Rock En Español are clearly the inspiration for the “Vol. 1” bullet attached to the title, and Amis says the band is already thinking along the lines of what they might do with a second installment of the Mexican rock ’n’ roll theme. Although the jury is still out on the critical reception being afforded Rock En Español, Amis insists nothing will stop the band from Volume 2.

“I don’t think it will hinge on the success of this one,” says Amis of an Español follow-up. “The live shows are already going over so well and we’re having fun doing this, so we’ll do it again.”

Just like Sing Along, Los Straitjackets utilized a variety of vocalists to realize their sonic vision on Español, although not as many. Rosas stepped out from behind the console to lend lead vocals to a trio of tracks (and background vocals to several more), legendary Chicano vocalist Little Willie G. (of the iconic Thee Midniters, who joined the project at Rosas’ request) fronted three more, and the rest were handled by Big Sandy (other than the disc’s lone instrumental, Thee Midniters’ classic “Whittier Boulevard”). As the band didn’t have any preexisting ideas about who should sing what, the singers themselves determined who should represent each song at the microphone.
“Cesar really wanted to do ‘El Microscopico Bikini’ [the Spanish ‘Dizzy Miss Lizzy’] and ‘Dejenme Llorar’ [an original hit for Los Freddys], and there were a handful that Big Sandy had wanted to do all along,” says Amis. “In fact, as I recall, we had the backing tracks recorded before we even knew who was going to sing which one.”

While Los Straitjackets hit the hat trick with three terrific vocalists on Español, there’s one choice they would have loved to include but were sadly prevented.
“We really wanted to use Freddy Fender on this one,” says Amis of the Tex-Mex superstar who passed away last year after a long bout with cancer, and whose early career featured some of the band’s favorite Mexican rock hits, including Español’s closer, “Tu Te Vas,” Fender’s Spanish version of “You’ll Lose a Good Thing.” “By the time we came up with the idea, his health was pretty bad so we never even had the chance to ask him, but I think he would have done it.”

One of the hallmarks of the Mexican rock versions of contemporary hits of the ’60s were the bands’ tendencies to play things fast and loose with the translations; the aforementioned “El Microscopico Bikini” converts literally to “The Microscopic Swimsuit,” not “Dizzy Miss Lizzie.” The Mexican rockers were intent on putting their own unique spin on the material, and that’s the quality that Los Straitjackets most wanted to celebrate on Español, which is why they covered their selections as closely as possible.

“We followed them faithfully from the Mexican versions, except for ‘Gimme Little Sign’ or ‘Dame Una Sena,’” says Amis. “We couldn’t find a Mexican version of that, and we got our friend Luis [Arriaga, of Lil Louis y Los Wild Teens] to do a translation of it for us. After we recorded it, I was down in Mexico and found out there was a Mexican version of it and, by the strangest of chances, I found a copy of it. And I like our version better.”

Los Straitjackets, Big Sandy
1 and 8:30 p.m. Saturday, April 28
Beachland Ballroom
15711 Waterloo Rd.
216.383.1124
Tickets: $8-$15