After a decade of thrashing their guitars and shouting out songs, the members of the punk band the Bronx decided it was time to don their huge spangly sombreros once again and transform themselves into their alter egos, Mariachi El Bronx.
In one of the most unusual double lives of musicians, the punk musicians formed the mariachi band almost two decades ago after trying their hand at the traditional Mexican style for a compilation album. Having grown up in Los Angeles, hearing mariachi music all around them, they felt the song opened a world to them that they were curious to explore. They decided to record a full album of English-language mariachi music and released it in just a few months after their third album as the Bronx. Now they are back with Mariachi El Bronx IV, their fourth full-length under the moniker and their first full-length in 12 years.
Singer and songwriter Matt Caughthran cited Los Angeles’ Los Lobos as a cross-cultural inspiration. In fact, Vincent Hidalgo, son of Los Lobos’s David Hidalgo, plays with El Bronx.
While the idea of hard-core gringo rockers covering the hyper-emotional Mexican genre might seem like a goof, the musicians dove in and took it seriously.
“We create music out of love and out of joy, and it’s about sharing cultures and learning from each other,” Caughtran notes when speaking to PopMatters. “I think people get that and they’re stoked. I’m not trying to be something I’m not, and I’m not trying to put on any sort of fake front. But it’s also honoring the tradition and the history and the culture of mariachi music. You’ve got to be yourself, and you’ve got to be truthful and honest and respectful in the space that you’re in.”
Mariachi El Bronx soon found a new parallel career that led them to places they might not otherwise have gone, from network television talk shows to world music festivals. They even recorded a song for the kids’ TV show Yo Gabba Gabba!. Despite the success, the band members did not abandon their punk roots, so they pursued dual paths, alternating between personas, recording six albums by The Bronx (and, no, they are not from The Bronx) and now four with El Bronx.
Caughthran said that after the last two punk albums, “It was like, ‘Hey, we hit 20 years as a band. We got six albums out. We’ve been touring non-stop as the Bronx. You know, it’s time to, time to put it on the shelf for a little bit, and put the charro suits back on.”
As the members began to think about putting together a new mariachi album, Caughthran was dealing with a volatile swirl of emotions, what he called a “battle between love and death.” He lost loved ones, but also found the love of his life and was getting married.
“As a writer, you feel like, ‘OK, these are the things that I should write about,'” Caughthran said. “You know, I’m in love. I’ve lost these people who are important to me. All this stuff is going on in the world. That, in a way, could kind of turn into pressure, because you want to get it right, you want to honor the people you’ve lost with the exact words that they deserve. The same with your partner, you want to honor them with the love song that they deserve.”
That said, El Bronx is a collaborative effort, and Caughthran found the songs began to take a life of their own.
“It’s the classic story of the album dictating the music. It’s like you’ve got to be able to surrender to the music,” Caughthran notes. “So for me, that whole process is overwhelming … the pressure to write all these songs that I have had building up inside me for 12 years. Some of them, I just couldn’t get out. In a lot of ways, you have to be OK with that. Like, I wasn’t able to write the perfect love song on this album. That part of me didn’t come out. What came out of me is the sadness and the grief and the paranoia and the insecurity … and you have to honor those emotions when they come out. You can’t shut them out.”
On the propulsive opening cut, “Forgive and Forget”, achingly beautiful horns embellish the alcohol-fueled narrator’s tale of a great love lost. “There’s always a price that has to be paid / For desperately dreaming and wasting away / Everyone knows you get what you give / So learn to forget or learn to forgive / Let me drink / Let me drown / Let me sink / and never be found.”
Like something out of a dusky Sergio Leone spaghetti western, “The Takers” clip-clops through a spare landscape. “Out in the west / A pale wind blows / Or so the story goes / The darkness came / And the sickness spread / At least that’s what they said.”
The band’s joyful, partying spirit, though, also guided Caughthran to a variety of stories and themes. “The album just becomes an escape,” he said. “So rather than continue to write about all these heavy things, sometimes you just want to get in the studio with your friends and just write like a traditional love story about a white guy going down to Mexico and falling in love with a Mexican woman, but he can’t get married to her because her family hates him. You know, shit like that.”
So the new song “El Dorado”: “Love conquers all / Her family’s everything / There won’t be a wedding / Without their blessing / I loved her so / But her father told me NO.”
“Every song is a movie with El Bronx,” Caughthran said. “It’s really fun. It’s the coolest way to write lyrics. I think for me, it’s like with punk rock: It’s very obviously energetic, it’s very raw, it’s very just to the point. And I think there’s a little bit more creative writing with El Bronx, a little bit more storytelling. You try to lean into the history and the tradition of mariachi music and write about big things like heroes and villains and love and all these kinds of big cinematic ideas.”
On “RIP Romeo”, Caughthran tells the sad story of a lover and those left behind after his death. “She filled your heart up with lies / And desperate magic / How could this happen to you / It’s cruel, and it’s tragic.” On the final cut, “Into the Afterlife”, the group go deep again. “Death is a song / That everyone will sing / It’s not the end / It’s just the beginning / Dance with me / Until the morning light / Walk with me Into the afterlife.”
As Mariachi El Bronx suit up for a world tour, Caughthran said there are new developments on the horizon. He is learning Spanish so he can sing in the native language of Mariachi. “It’s an exciting thing for me.”
Like Superman and Clark Kent, the two alter egos have never been seen together, but Caughthran said they are planning their first bi-cultural performance in Australia. Called “The Bronx and El Bronx Supershow”, the two groups will go back and forth for sets, complete with costume changes.
“We figured we would try it out there and see what happens,” Caughthran said. “So far, it’s gotten a great response. Since we announced that we’re doing it, a couple of other festivals have shown some interest in having us. So, yeah, I think it’ll definitely be something we end up doing a lot of.”
“It’s amazing,” Caughthran said of the El Bronx journey. “We’ve got a lot of love and respect from the culture with El Bronx, and that means the world to us. We’ve gotten to play with a bunch of mariachi bands from Jalisco and stuff like that over the years, and different festivals around LA. It’s a trip, man. It’s awesome to be part of that.”
“I was a little worried about that coming back to the band after 10-12 years,” Caughthran observed. “Just because you don’t know if you still got it, so to speak, you don’t know if you still got the juice. So when we started demoing the album, [guitarist Joby Ford] was sending me over guitar demos, and they were really cool, and they really felt good. And then when I started putting vocals on it, I was like, OK, this feels great. This feels like El Bronx.
“Then, as we got in a little deeper into the writing process, it was like, man, some of these songs are super, super-intricate and have a lot going on, a lot of layered instruments and a lot of layered vocals. The songs, just as they took shape, just turned really, really beautiful. We kept calling them ‘big boy songs’ because they were like full on, like some real-deal shit.”
