Teamwork to set the tone for Los Blancos show at Brackins

By Steve Wildsmith
of The Daily Times Staff

Colin Aberdeen may be the singer and guitarist for Los Blancos, but don’t let that take away from the other band members — when it comes to rocking the joint, it’s a team effort.

The band prides itself on teamwork, keyboard player Mark Nanni told The Daily Times this week. That’s what sets Los Blancos apart from other bands — that, and the group’s penchant for blending a little bit of everything in with its frothy mix of blues.

“I think so much of what you see out there is ‘Somebody and the Somebodies’ — a front guy with hired sidemen, and we are not that,” Nanni said. “We have three songwriters in the band, and we all contribute and bring our own colors to the mix. The fact that it’s musically democratic is what keeps it going. If you’re a side guy, nobody wants your input, and it’s harder to keep that steamroller going when nobody feels like they’re a part of the thing.

“We all get to put in our 2 cents worth as far as composing and writing our own stuff, and that shines through — it never looks like just a front guy with everybody else playing behind him, bored. We’re out there, and we’re hungry — we’re Los Blancos, and there aren’t a whole lot of those kinds of real bands out there anymore.”

The team also includes drummer Mark Tiffault and bassist Steven T. Winston. The band, which draws comparison to such acts as Little Feat, The Radiators, the Grateful Dead, The Band and other groups whose classic fusion of rock and roots and Americana made for a diverse and tasty repertoire, comes right out of the gate swinging, Nanni said, and doesn’t let up.

“We’re just a live band — we do about 200 shows a year, and we’ve been doing that for about 10 years now,” he said. “With us, you get a blend of all of that American roots music. We used to do about half covers and half originals, and the covers we do play are more obscure — some people who have heard us many times still don’t know the difference between our originals and our covers.

“Lately, we’ve been pushing more originals, like 60 or 70 percent. If we feel like we need to grab the audience, we’ll bring out something they might recognize and then when we have them in the palms of our hands, we’ll bring out our original stuff. It’s just high-energy, very roots-oriented, song-is-king music that has some real extended improvisations over it, but not the formless improvisation of a jam band — for us, the song form reigns all the time.”

The band has been together going on 12 years, Nanni said, and the emphasis for much of that time was on the live show. The group’s most recent album, “Just This Once,” is the band’s first effort in several years — and for fans of the band, it’s a much-coveted commodity. Although it doesn’t capture the exuberance and energy of the group’s live performance, it does paint an accurate picture of what kinds of musicians the members are — talented, with an innate ability to turn simple blues-based songs into gold of every imaginable karat.

“Backbeat Rhythm” kicks off “Just This Once” with some swinging zydeco vibes, and the band scours the kitchen cabinets for every available ingredient to toss into the pot from there on out — a little soul on “I’ll Be Waiting,” some lounge-style piano on “Changes,” a little greasy blues on “Memphis Woman and Chicken,” the Sonia Dada-esque “Willie Got a New Leg,” the slow and spicy burn of “Get Along.” It’s all there, and the end result is a dish that’s as tasty as it is musically palatable.

“I think a lot of what our sound really is, is that it’s a melting pot between the four of us,” Nanni said. “Throughout the ’90s, there was this big blues revival, and a lot of the more mediocre bands have fallen off since then. Here we are 12 years later, still going — because we follow our influences and we’ve never stayed just a straight-up blues band. If you listen to us, you’ll hear all kinds of stuff — zydeco, R&B, you name it.

“When I’m asked to describe it, I like to lift Colin’s answer — it’s a mongrel mix of American roots music. And then when people look at us cross-eyed, we tell them it’s blues, funk, soul, R&B, zydeco and jam — and we do a little more than that, too.”