Los Lobos

MAN IN THE MIDDLE

Busy musician-producer Steve Berlin on Los Lobos’ Native Sons

BY LEE VALENTINE SMITH

SOME BANDS STRICTLY AVOID cover tunes in favor of their own compositions, but Los Lobos has included rousing versions of their favorite songs since their inception in East Los Angeles in the ‘70s. Infusing elements of ‘50s rock and roll, country, zydeco, folk, R&B, blues, Tex-Mex and traditional, the band gained international acclaim - and a number one hit - in 1987 with their remake of Ritchie Valens’ “La Bamba.” Since 1984, founding members David Hidalgo, Louie Pérez, Cesar Rosas and Conrad Lozano have been joined by saxophonist-keyboardist-producer Steve Berlin. A fellow vet of the gritty Hollywood music scene, Berlin was formerly in The Blasters, Flesheaters and Top Jimmy and the Rhythm Pigs. His list of production and session credits include a wide-ranging array of artists, including R.E,M., The Replacements, Willie Nelson and many others - including Los Lobos. On Native Sons, the band revisits songs from their favorite Southern California influences. The result is a golden suite of covers that narrate a genre-defying love letter to their musical predecessors. Released in late July by New West, the collection pays homage to a diverse set of artists and composers, from “Love Special Delivery,” originally released in 1966 by Chicano rockers Thee Midniters through the sole original title track. INsite spoke with Berlin by phone from Denver, Colorado.

I hear that during the pandemic, you’ve been trying out some new techniques on your instrument. How’s it coming along? Yeah, I made a pandemic wishlist of things that I’d like to come out with on the other side, and one of those things was proper saxophone technique. So my new techniques are taking lessons and learning how to actually play it, instead of just pretending I know what I’m doing. I have a teacher I do online lessons with and so far, so good. If you’re right-handed, it’s like learning to write with your left hand - more or less. Muscle memory is a hard thing to retrain.

It sounds like you’ve made the most of your down-time, but then you’re usually juggling a number of projects. I like being overwhelmed, I guess. It’s kind of like my normal state. So, that’s where I find myself most comfortable. Besides the lessons I’ve been producing several recording projects remotely. If you’d asked me in 2019 if it was possible to produce a record from a distance, I would’ve said no, you have to be there. But it’s definitely possible. I’m in Denver right now, working on a record for Taylor Scott, a very talented, blues-influenced guitar player. I’ve got a project with John Doe coming sometime later this year on Fat Possum, a new album with Southern Avenue from Memphis, then Fastball, I think.

Were the Native Sons sessions completed before the shutdown? We started February of last year, so it was just as all the craziness was really starting. We had a pretty busy touring I DON’T THINK I’VE EVER BEEN OFF TOUR FOR THIS LONG. I DIDN’T THINK I’D MISS IT SO MUCH. EVEN THE THINGS YOU TAKE FOR GRANTED, I CAN’T WAIT TO DO AGAIN. SEEING THE BAND, PLAYING SHOWS, SEEING OUR FRIENDS ACROSS THE COUNTRY.

schedule planned at the time, so we thought doing a record of covers would be something we could do in drips and drabs. That way, we wouldn’t need the intense sort of non-stop focus that doing a record with originals generally requires. Then COVID arrived and suddenly it made even more sense, because we could just do a song or two at a time, which is kind of how we ended up doing it. Obviously, we shut down in March like everything else. Then in June, we started just doing two, three, four days, more or less, each month. We have a nice, big studio in East L.A. that offers plenty of distance so we don’t have to be on top of one another. We had complete, total freedom to just hand it in whenever we felt like we were done.

When you started the project, was the whole Southern California theme already in mind? When we started talking about it back in 2019, it was more like, ‘It might be time to do a covers record.’ Fans seemed to like the idea of it, but a generic covers record wouldn’t have been a compelling story. Then the idea of doing it basically as our love letter to Los Angeles emerged as an idea. When we did the Christmas record 2019, we reached out to friends and people we knew that were aficionados of both Latin and Christmas music. For that record, we had over 100 songs to pick from. We sort of did the same thing with this one. I reached out to a bunch of record collector friends, people that I knew would understand what we were trying to do and what songs that we could put our stamp on. I think we probably had 100 or so various songs of different vibes, Latin, R & B, soul, just everything under the sun. It was a freeflowing process. It started with just listening to a bunch of stuff. Then other ideas popped in, like the Jackson Browne song (“Jamaica Say You Will”). Then, Conrad [Lozano] is the world’s biggest, or at least the band’s biggest, Beach Boys fan. He was adamant that we do a Beach Boys song. We probably weren’t going to get out of the room alive unless we did something. I think “Sail On, Sailor” came out great. I knew it was going to be a bit of a lift, but I think we pulled it off.

Stylistically, it’s all over the place. But that’s to be expected from Los Lobos. We wanted it that way, to highlight both the variety of stuff that came out of L.A. and the stuff that influenced and informed us. Buffalo Springfield was a huge influence on the guys growing up. So, we knew we were going to have to do something (“Bluebird”/”For What It’s Worth”) by them.

Lalo was obviously an influence, as well. Oh, Lalo Guerrero was a huge influence. He wrote “Los Chucos Suaves” and he was a mentor, an influence and a good friend. We did a children’s record with him many years ago and we knew that one way or another, we’re going to have to do a Lalo song on this album. Likewise, War. We knew we couldn’t do a record about L.A. without doing a War song. So we included “The World Is A Ghetto.” Some of the stuff, we knew we wouldn’t be able to face ourselves if we didn’t at least try.

It’s very cool to see (The Premiers / Don & Dewey hit) “Farmer John” in the track list. We’ve been doing that song forever. It’s been on the edges of the set list from the very beginning, the first days of the band. So that was an easy choice for us, really.

This album’s cover might be the band’s best since ‘Wolf. It’s cool to see you standing in the middle of the shot, that’s new. You know, I mentioned that to my wife. It’s the first time I’ve ever been in the middle of any picture in 40 years. It’s weird, I’m not used to it. That was our photographer’s idea. I would always be on one corner or the other. I much prefer being in the back than the front, but he stuck me there. I just saw the vinyl version and the whole package looks great.

Hopefully you’ll bring some along for the merch table when the tour resumes. Are you ready to get back out there? I don’t think I’ve ever been off tour for this long. I didn’t think I’d miss it so much. Even the things you take for granted, I can’t wait to do again. Seeing the band, playing shows, seeing our friends across the country. It feels strange to be away from it. So yeah, I’m really looking forward to being back on the road. I’m excited to tour this album. These songs are really fun to play live - once we learned how to play them. My road muscles got pretty flabby in the last year and a half. We’ll see how long it takes to get back to it. There are, whatever you call them, ‘gig muscles’ that you have to sort of build back up to the proper level of road intensity. So it might take a minute or two, but I know we’ll get there. I don’t think half the guys in the band have even opened their instrument cases much for a year, so it’s not going to be as tough for me as it’s going to be for them, I’m sure.

Well, sometimes those raw moments become part of the most memorable shows. (Laughs) Sometimes, yes. Maybe not all the time.

You’re all pros. I cannot imagine anyone in that camp turning in a bad performance. Well, if that’s what you think, I’m not here to tell you there’s no Santa Claus, so just keep believing that. I won’t bust your bubble.