You
heard of the New
Kids on the Block?” asks 56-year-old Vox organ tamer August “Augie” Meyers.
“We’re the Old Farts in the Neighborhood!” Everyone’s reuniting this
year: KISS, the Sex Pistols, the Misfits, Radio Birdman, the Bay City Rollers.
There’s so many damned corpses getting out of their graves and walking around
nowadays, you fully expect George Romero to walk out with his clapper at year’s
end and announce, “Cut! That’s a wrap!”
So, why not the Texas Tornados? It’s been awhile since their presence was
felt, crankin’ out infectious, Anglicized Latino party hits like “Who Were You
Thinkin’ Of.” It’s a fusion which could have only resulted from 120 years of
collective history: The post-“She’s a Woman” roller-rink & roll Meyers and
Doug Sahm pioneered in the Sir Douglas Quintet; the countrified Latin lover
R&B of Freddy Fender hits like “Wasted Days and Wasted Nights”; and
Leonardo “Flaco” Jimenez’s distinctive, driving accordion, as idiosyncratic and
instantly familiar as Keith Richards’ rhythm guitar. Why not the Return
of the Texas Tornados? It’ll certainly be less of a cartoon spectacle than the
return of the aged Sex Pistols.
Well, for one thing, there was nothing to “reunite.” The Tornados’ fade to
black was less a dissolution and more a vacation, a chance to reshift
priorities, recharge batteries, and explore other options: Meyers and Sahm
issued solo albums, both steeped to the eyeballs in the blues, both nominated
for Grammys. (“They put me in a category with Babyface,” Meyers notes, wryly.
“‘Course, I didn’t win.”) Fender went through an aborted solo deal with Arista
Texas, and continued selling out houses in Vegas and Tahoe; and (“The chicks
were screamin’ at Freddy when he was 20,” says Sahm. “He’s almost 60, and
they’re still screamin’!”) Jimenez released a few albums through his own Arista
Texas deal (including his brand-new Buena Suerta, Senorita), continuing
the covert guest forays into white-boy territory he began with Ry Cooder in the
Seventies — most recently with the Mavericks.
Besides, the label, Reprise/Nashville, wasn’t happy. “The second album, they
wanted it to be less Tex-Mex and more country,” recalls Meyers. “We told them
that we do country, but we didn’t get this band together to do country.”
“I remember by ’93 or ’94, we were pretty tired already,” says Sahm, who’s
usually so 12-year-old-on-a-candy-and-soda-diet manic, it’s hard to picture him
being tired. “But that was [from] really hard touring. `Who Were You Thinkin’
Of’ was a single, and it did get some of them funky country stations. But at
the same time, so much of country is based on radio and young guys, let’s face
it. Some are good, some are manufactured. I try not to bad-rap nobody, but the
truth’s the truth.” And when Sahm’s and Meyers’ cowboy hats couldn’t sell the
Tornado’s Tex-Mex juju to the line-dancing crowd, a loss of faith resulted with
the label. After four year’s hard work, the Texas Tornados took a break.
Once Sahm had written a batch of tunes that gave him a creative woody, he and
Reprise’s National V.P. of Publicity Bill Bentley (a man who by law has to have
his name printed in these pages at least once per week) began hatching a plan
with maverick Reprise A&R Director David Katznelson (the evil genius
responsible for making Warner Bros. the home of the Boredoms and Mudhoney) to
shift the Tornados’ home base away from Nashville and into Reprise’s Burbank
office. The hook ended up being a stunt straight out of every apocryphal tale
of rock & roll auditions you’ve ever heard: Doug Sahm sang his new tune “A
Little Bit Is Better Than Nada” to Reprise President Howie Klein from right
across the executive’s desk. American Hot Wax, anyone?
Sessions began in Austin this past December with veteran Memphis iconoclast
Jim Dickinson, as notorious a character as they come, one who has played
sessions with the Rolling Stones, the Cramps, and innumerable Memphis R&B
artists, and produced acts ranging from Alex Chilton to the Replacements.
Needless to say, the results were occasionally volatile.
“I don’t think he did us any favors,” Meyers remarks curtly.
“Dickinson, we’re both a couple of hippies,” says Sahm. “He and I got it. Him
and Augie didn’t get it! They damn near clashed. He criticized Augie a
few times. He’s one of them old guys that makes profound statements. Jim’s out
there.”
“I knew Jim since when I started recording with Ry Cooder, man,” says Jimenez.
“I would say he did a real good job. I think he’s a real good producer, and
he’s got real good ideas, and whoever helped besides Jim, I think they did it
right, man.”
“Our third album, I was not happy with,” reflects Fender, echoing a sentiment
he apparently shares with the other Tornados. “The second album, I was not
happy. The first one is my favorite. This one is very close, or maybe even
with, the first one.”
They have reason to be proud. 4 Aces rocks and swings with a verve the
Tornados haven’t displayed since the “Who Were You Thinkin’ Of” days. The
Tex-Mex elements are prominent, “but it still has an edge to it,” Sahm
explains. “You hear `4 Aces'” — a humorous bit of self-mythologizing Sahm
claims sprang out of a long-standing joke shared with Bob Dylan that Dylan
should “cut a Tex-Mex record” (“And since he didn’t, I did!”) — “and
it’s got that good drum sound, there’s some good rock & roll stuff to it.
It’s not totally conjunto, where it turns off the white world.”
There’s also a particularly strong brace of Sahm originals present. “I’m
really on a roll, right now,” he says. “I’m really proud of what I wrote on
this album. We really stuck in that Mexican groove on this one.” Especially
catchy is the album’s lead-off song/single, “A Little Bit Is Better Than Nada,”
which is also seeing some mass exposure through the new Kevin Costner film
Tin Cup, which Bill Bentley jokes is sure to become “the Bull
Durham of the golf set.”
“`…Nada’ is really commercial,” says Sahm. “Commercial is not a dirty word,
to me.” He starts singing. “`A little bit is better than nada’: You hear that
one time, it’s in your head. It’s got that hook.”
Fender even chipped in with his first writing in many years, the
buckle-polishing ballad “In My Mind,” which he’s hoping will resuscitate his
long-dormant career as a country music hard-hitter. Sahm echoes that the entire
band, despite having gold records, chart hits, and Grammys in their past, would
like ’em in their present too. And who knows? The band certainly draws large
enough crowds for Sahm to joke that they’re “the Tex-Mex Grateful Dead.” (“I
don’t know why he says that!” huffs a clearly exasperated Freddy Fender.
“We’re not the Grateful Dead or the Beatles or whatever! We’re the
Texas Tornados, man!”) If they could translate those crowds and movie
tie-ins and whatnot into record sales, they could possibly break in the same
fashion as Metallica: not bowing to commercial pressures, but bending the
commercial world to their whims via sheer, overwhelming sales.
Still, as Freddy Fender puts it, “I think we already had the respect of the
music world before we were the Texas Tornados. We already had individual
reputations. I think the union of the Texas Tornados has given us a solidarity
that we might not have had before, or maybe enough to have what we have now.
“Maybe we can all get together, go to the bank, and get a loan!” he laughs.
“`We’re the Texas Tornados, and we have solidarity! We’re solid, man!’ `Well,
all of you can get real solid and walk out of here, right now!'” n
This article appears in July 5 • 1996 and July 5 • 1996 (Cover).