Decades Later, the Mavericks Still Make Music Gumbo

At this point, Raul Malo has lived in Nashville longer than in Miami, but Malo credits his formative years in South Florida for all the success he found with his band, the Mavericks. Those plaudits include three top-ten albums on the country music charts and a Grammy for "Best Country Performance," though Malo points out, "The Mavericks at its core is a rock 'n' roll band. That's always been our attitude, even if we throw jazz, big band, and Cuban music into our gumbo."

Malo first picked up a guitar at the age of 8, and his time as a student at Rockway Middle School in Westchester helped him nurture his budding music career.

"They had a full orchestra at a public school. Can you imagine that?" he says. "In seventh grade, I was playing double bass with a symphony. That first year, we sounded like a herd of cats. By eighth grade, we sounded pretty good."

Throughout his teenage years, Malo took part in several local rock bands, where he played bass and learned to harmonize. At 19, he gained the confidence to start writing songs, and by 1989, he started the Mavericks.

"Our first show was at Churchill's. We played South Beach before it was South Beach. It was on the verge of exploding," he remembers. "You could see it coming, but musicians still had the run of the place. We'd play the Strand, Cactus Cantina, the Island Club on Washington Avenue. My buddy ran a rock 'n' roll club in the basement of where the Delano Hotel now is."

Rich Ulloa, the owner of the local record shop Yesterday & Today Records, caught many of the band's gigs at the Cactus Cantina and was so impressed by the Mavericks' stage presence he offered to have them be the first band on his independent record label, Y&T.

"Raul was very ambitious and had big dreams, but he agreed to do it. We recorded it at Tropical Recording Studio in five weeks," Ulloa remembers. The band's self-titled debut came out in January 1991. "It was the night the U.S. invaded Iraq," Ulloa adds. "Four months later, in May, the Mavericks already had an offer from a major label."
By the early '90s, the Mavericks had decamped to Nashville. There were a couple of short hiatuses, but the band has released a dozen albums over its 35-year history. The band's 13th studio album, Moon & Stars, comes out May 17.

"The record was inspired by world events," Malo explains. "It was written out of the pandemic and is about all the turmoil, the protests, COVID, the divisiveness, the angst. Instead of building a wall, I'd like to build a mirror so we can see what we've become. If you say the sky is blue, someone will fight you on it."

As a songwriter, Malo finds inspiration from the world around him. "Look Around You" was written out of disgust after another mass shooting. "God forbid we have gun control or ban assault rifles," he explains. "It started with the line 'Innocence is more precious than a pot of gold.'"

The Mavericks will perform their new songs along with some older favorites at their first Miami show in years on Friday, March 15, at the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts. "We have too many guys on stage," Malo jokes. Three horns, an accordion, bass, drums — we've got eight people up there."

Regardless of the band's size, Malo is always glad to play in his hometown.

"I'm grateful to all the people who supported us. We had a lot of love and a lot of people rooting for us. We weren't the normal thing down here. This was Gloria Estefan's town back then, and we were doing something completely different."

The Mavericks. 8 p.m. Friday, March 15, at the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts, 1300 Biscayne Blvd., Miami; 305-949-6722; arshtcenter.org. Tickets cost $45 to $115.