The Mavericks (L to R: Paul Deakin, Eddie Perez, Jerry Dale McFadden and Raul Malo) Photo: JR PR
There’s no scientific study to back up this assertion, but take it from someone who’s attended more than a few Mavericks concerts: There’s no way to leave whichever venue the band fills and feel anything less than unadulterated joy.
When I put this to Mavericks guitarist Eddie Perez during a recent phone conversation, he responded with appreciative humility.
“That’s a really high compliment, and I don’t take that lightly,” he said. “We regrouped in 2011, and we realized we’re probably going to have to do this ourselves in our own way. … But what we have found in the process, this time around, at least, is we’re much more connected. I think that we’re all getting much more satisfaction and joy out of it, and that’s one reason that music hits people in a joyous way.”
There are worse gigs in life than to tour the world, bringing smiles to faces and swivels to hips. Perez, along with Raul Malo, Paul Deakin and Garland native Jerry Dale McFadden, forms the core of the Mavericks, the wonderfully indefinable act whose sound slides from country to folk to rock to jazz to Tejano to Americana and back again.
The band, currently touring behind En Espanol, its 2020 foray into Spanish language music, will perform Sunday, outdoors at Strauss Square, in downtown Dallas.
Perhaps most remarkably, The Mavericks, originally formed in 1989, is in the midst of its second reunion. The Miami-founded and now largely Nashville-based group first split in 2000, briefly reunited in 2003, split again in 2004 and reunited once more in 2011.
The second reunion seems to be sticking, as the band has, to date, been active as long as it was the first time around, with no plans to slow down any time soon. Perez said the band is both booking new dates as well as working back through pandemic-related postponements — the Mavericks’ touring schedule is full through the summer — and work has begun on a new studio album, tentatively due at the top of next year.
“The last couple shows that we just did were just so incredibly off the hook,” Perez said. “I feel like we’re really locked into something … People still love what we’re doing. They still find the beauty in it. I think that the people that come to see our shows are not really interested in genre as much as they’re interested in the feeling that they get from being at one of our shows.”
Preston Jones is a North Texas freelance writer and regular contributor for KXT. Our work is made possible by our generous, music-loving members. If you like how we lift up local music, consider becoming a KXT sustaining member right here.
