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Current mood:  curious Category: Music
As I spoke with Los Sugar Kings founding member Patino Vazquez, I realized just how remarkable the story behind the formation of the band was. Four players with completely different musical and cultural backgrounds had come together to play the music that was once a staple of peasant workers and African slaves in Cuba. As the Cuban workers melded their folk music to the rhythms of African drums, a vibrant, uplifting sound emerged. This is the sound of Los Sugar Kings...
METRONOME: How did you start Los Sugar Kings?
Patino: It morphed out of another group I was doing called Mondo Sweetie. We were experimenting with playing some traditional Cuban music. One of the members Mik Mersha was involved with me early on. We were talking one day and I said, We should start a little side project that’s more experimental called Los Sugar Kings. He liked it. We didn’t do anything with it right away. It was only about two years ago that we started doing something serious with it.
METRONOME: All four of you guys come from really diverse backgrounds. How did you end up connecting with everyone.
Daniel Abreu was a college roommate of Miks and they played together in a band called Michigan Black Snake. They played alot back in the day. They played alongside Mondo Sweetie. Mondo Sweetie was a side project for everybody. Dan was involved with Mondo Sweetie sometimes too. We were all roommates at one time too. That’s when the idea of Los Sugar Kings really solidified when we were all living in one place.
METRONOME: Was it mainly your idea to play Cuban music?
Yeah. That started back in 1999. I was taking trips to Cuba again and visiting my family and getting involved with the music there and learning about it. I bought an instrument called the Tres. It looks like a guitar, but it’s got three sets of strings tuned in octaves. I was learning that and putting together songs and writing about my experiences. I wanted to give something to my friends that I had made down there so I recorded an album and invited a bunch of musicians from The Boston Horns, Mik was involved and some Rumberos from up here and New York. I recorded it and I was just going to leave it at that and make it a present to my friends and family. Then Mik really encouraged me to push it. He said, “Why don’t you make it a group and play it out?” With his encouragement, we kept on doing it.
METRONOME: Did you grow up in Cuba?
No. My parents left Cuba in the early sixties.
METRONOME: So they have been here for a while?
Yeah. The first place they went to was Puerto Rico and my sister was born there. Then they moved to Miami. I was conceived in Miami and born here in Arlington, Massachusetts.
METRONOME: So you’ve been here all your life?
Yeah.
METRONOME: Did your folks play Cuban music in the house while you were growing up?
There really wasn’t much Cuban music playing in the house. My mother had a really cool record collection of The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Santana...
METRONOME: So they were really hip?
She was really in to that. My father and mother split up when I was really young. My father was in to a different scene. He was in to Frank Sinatra, crooners and lounge music. He had a little bit of Cuban music... Benny Moré. I remember hearing him. It wasn’t until later that I found out that my parents were both Salsa dancers. Not Salsa but Son, which was before Salsa. Salsa was a mix of Pan-American styles. Son was at the roots. It has the same clave. Those are the two sticks that are hit together. It’s also the name of the pattern and also means the key. It has many meanings. Son is country music from way back when Spanish colonists in Cuba were jamming with African slaves. They started blending their music and bringing the African drums together with the Spanish melodies. It started this thing called rumba which touched on everything and every part of the world in some way. You saw that dance movement that was happening in the forties and fifties. There was mambo, and cha-cha-cha. Those dances were popular all over the world. But it started from this very country music, very peasant music made by these Spanish workers with their guitars and African slaves with their drums.
METRONOME: It sounds like you were listening to American and British rock & roll as a kid?
Yeah. I was listening to everything. A lot of British music. I was really digging the records that were in the house that my mom provided. I grew up speaking Spanish primarily in the house and learned English very quickly at school. But I never really thought about being Cuban or anything except for a little bit of racism that we ran in to, my sister and I.
In my twenties, I stumbled across a singer named Silvio Rodriguez. He’s the equivalent of Bob Dylan in Latin America. He fills these arenas with just his guitar and voice. In fact, just recently he was forbidden to enter the United States again, when he was invited to Pete Seeger’s 90th birthday party. Pete Seeger requested that he be there.
METRONOME: Why wasn’t he allowed in, because of his political views?
Apparently, yeah, which I find odd. He’s aging. His songs are slightly political but not really. He’s been critical of the revolution. I don’t know why he’s being shunned that way. I thought the Obama administration was going to bring change in that policy. I don’t think there’s really anything to fear. I don’t think he’s going to sing his songs in Spanish and suddenly we’re all going to turn red.
METRONOME: Just look at the troubadours over the last fifty years. They may have chronicled what was going on but I don’t think any of them actually started a full on revolution.
Yeah, I don’t see what kind of harm it could bring to have him come and attend Pete Seeger’s birthday party and sing a song. Especially a character as important as Pete Seeger who is important to American music. It doesn’t make any sense.
METRONOME: Are you the primary songwriter for Los Sugar Kings?
I write most of the lyrics. The last album LSK, which is the first Los Sugar Kings record, has a lot of the original songs from the Mondo Sweetie thing. The ones that sound most traditional are the songs I wrote for Mondo Sweetie. There’s also five cover songs on there; one is a George Harrison tune. We’re planning on hooking up a link so that when you download that song, we’ll donate the proceeds from that song to relief efforts in New Orleans.
METRONOME: Did Mondo Sweetie play strictly Afro-Cuban based music?
Initially my intention was to emulate Silvio Rodriguez so I was getting in to that style called nueva trova.
METRONOME: Does that style of music translate electrically with a bigger band?
That was the thing. I was doing the solo thing and I was adding instrumentation and building the songs and making them a little bit bigger. After that, I started getting in to the dance style. I was listening to Son and listening to Mambo, listening to Afro-Cuban jazz. Mik and Dan really got of on that. Benny too. When he heard that element of the band, he identified with it completely.
METRONOME: The music is so fun and uplifting...
Yeah. It was just the best thing to do to make that move. I was very concentrated on the lyrics and creating this message because I was talking to people in Cuba but it didn’t quite translate up here.
METRONOME: To hear you guys play this music... it is so authentic. It surprises me that you’re an American kid that grew up here, yet you play the music so well, especially since you all come from different backgrounds. How did you meld it all together?
I don’t know. I just wished for it. They’re all talented musicians. That’s the main thing. It’s a challenge for them. Like for Benny, he’s Irish. He was born in Limerick, Ireland. There are three generations of Benson musicians. His father is a saxophone player. His mother is Spanish. He had this part of him that was curious about that half of himself. We called him in to do a gig one day as a substitute and when he heard it, he just gravitated towards it. He’s got a lot of talent so it was a challenge for him. It was another part of his palette that he hadn’t really developed yet. I think that’s what drew Dan in too. Danny is a tremendously talented musician. He plays the piano and the saxophone in the group. He’s very learned, very sophisticated, elegant musician. I have a lot of respect for him. He brings alot to the table. He was drawn by that aspect too. The possibilities in this music are endless for self expression. That became the idea for Los Sugar Kings. We’re not going to do anything pure here but we’re going to keep that foundation, that root and everyone will bring in their own voice. Everybody got on board with that.
METRONOME: The music is really happening!
I love playing in this group.
METRONOME: I imagine you’re being well received locally. Do you ever venture outside of the Boston area?
Not yet. Right now we just do whatever is close by; the Northshore has been our homebase.
METRONOME: What clubs on the Northshore do you play?
We play at a place called the Edgewater Cafe every Friday night. The owner, Dennis Moustakis is really responsible in a way for this group being able to survive. For the past two and half years he’s been keeping us there every week whether there’s ten people or one hundred people. He keeps us playing. We’ve become friends too. He’s very dedicated to keeping music alive in Salem.
Another place we play is In A Pig’s Eye in Salem. We play in Gloucester at Latitude 43, play in Portsmouth, Nashua, Salem NH, we’ve been to Rutland, Vermont and Providence Rhode Island. We want to get down to New York. We’re working on a new record this summer. This one will be primarily in English. We’re going to be exploring a wider variety of rhythms. The parameters that we’re setting for ourselves is that it’s got to be all acoustic. It’s going to be just like the last record because with LSK, we went in the studio for one day and played it like we were playing a show. All the tracks that you hear on that album are first takes with the exception of two songs that were two takes. All the solos that you hear are the solos that we played except for two songs where we overdubbed.
METRONOME: Playing every Friday night allows you to get the music tight. Was LSK basically recorded like one of your sets?
Yeah. We played it like it was a show minus the audience, so we’re going to keep doing that with this record, except we’re going to do it acoustic and in English. Those are the primary changes.
METRONOME: Where did you record LSK?
That was recorded in Stoughton, Massachusetts at a place called Solstice.
METRONOME: How did you hook up with them?
Mik had the contact. He had done an album there with another band, good friend’s of ours, Two Adam Twelve. He met the engineer Joe Clapp and got along really well with him. It tuned out great. We loved Joe. By the end of the session it was 75% mixed.
METRONOME: So, this album was recorded very quickly?
Yeah it was recorded in one day for all the rhythm tracks. It took us a little while, because I wanted everybody singing. I had to teach everybody (laughs). Mik especially. He really wanted to get involved in the singing, so he’s doing it all phonetically. I would write down the lines and spell it out phonetically and tell them what they were singing.
METRONOME: So were they actually in front of the microphone with the pieces of paper you had wrote out for them?
Yeah. Then for sitting down and doing the three part harmonies for the call and responses which is called Coro. I’m singing the Soneo. The Soneo part is the main lead vocal part and the coro is the response. Sometimes live I sing the lead and the call and response and I’m out of breath (laughs). So I said, You guys got to pick up some of the slack here and learn the Coros (laughs). That’s what really brings the spirit of that music out. We spent a lot of time just doing that but they were all up to the task.
In the past year, we built our own studio in Dan’s house so we’ve got it rigged state-of-the-art gear and some great microphones. We’ve set it up so it’s perfect for us to rehearse and record now. We can take our time and do it the way we want. We’re also starting to write more as a group now.
METRONOME: How many songs do you have written for the new album?
We have twelve tunes. I think twelve is a good number. I like albums to be under an hour. For this one, instead of solos, we did composed melodies with Dan and I doing harmonies with one another. We’re creating additional horn parts for some of our other horn players and we’re going to bring in a string section this time.
METRONOME: How will it translate in the live arena? Will you bring additional players to shows?
Absolutely, and that’s what we’ve been doing. On LSK there’s a tune called “Mondo Sweetie Mambo” and that Garret and Henley on it from The Boston Horns. We have a great relationship with those guys. They’re always welcomed. We have this great, “open door” with the music community. We always invite musicians up that we respect and admire to take part.
METRONOME: How did you meet the other guest on your LSK album, Miguel Beato and Yahuba?
Yahuba is another friend of Mik and Dan. He went to college with them. He’s from Puerto Rico. Miguel, who did a majority of the percussion work with us is from the Dominican Republic, Santo Domingo. I met him through another musician friend of mine, a bass player called Henry Terrones. He plays with us alot. They’ve played in Salsa bands in Boston for the last twenty years.
METRONOME: So they know this material really well...
Oh yeah. They play with really big band; 14 piece, 17 piece bands. They have this way of playing ensemble really, really tight. They just create this machine and this groove. They lock on to the groove and they just stay there. That’s really what we’re looking for with the percussion. Benny is a bit more free-form and more expressive on the drums, so it’s good to have that groove which is firmly rooted on the Latin music and have Benny who does interpretations off of that.
METRONOME: I noticed that Benny is listed on the album as Benny Benson Sena. What does the Sena stand for?
Sena is his mother’s last name. In Spain they have this tradition where they put the mother’s last name at the end of the father’s last name.
METRONOME: Do you have a tentative name for the new album?
Nothing yet (laughs).
METRONOME: Have you actually started recording?
No, we’ve been doing preproduction demos. Dan wrote two songs that were a bit more complex rhythmically. It’s taking us a while to figure out how to play it. We haven’t had the guts to play it live yet. That’s what we’re waiting for. When we’re able to play all the songs live comfortably, that’s when we’re going to feel like it’s time to record it.
METRONOME: Will all the songs be originals?
Yes, everything’s original on this one.
METRONOME: How many songs did you write for it?
I wrote ten. The band contributes with arrangement ideas. Mik could write but he’s got his hands full. He does all our web design. He’s been doing alot of the marketing, handling the email list and really being the spokesperson on that front. He designed the LSK CD jacket. It won an award... some kind of New England printer’s award.
METRONOME: Do you have any big shows lined up for this summer?
The next event will be another Johnny D’s show on August 1st. Last year we headlined the Salem Jazz & Folk Festival. That’s really what we’ve been grooming this band to be; a festival band. Those two types of venues have been where we felt the most in our element. The crowds are very responsive. I think that’s where we belong.
by Brian M. Owens
Brian Owens
Publisher/Metronome Magazine
since 1985
Metronome Magazine
POB 921
Billerica, MA. 01821
8:12 PM
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