The Mavericks, that aptly named band from Miami, were plugging in for their first performance on the world-famous Grand Ole Opry last weekend when they received a less than ringing introductory endorsement from the Opry’s Porter Wagoner.
“Here’s one of the new groups in country music,” the rhinestone-bejeweled Missourian told the night’s 4,000 or so Oprygoers. “I haven’t heard ’em yet, so I’m looking forward to it. Let’s have a big hand for the Mavericks.”
The average Opry fan tends to be noticeably older than the average Maverick zealot, but scattered youthful feminine screams rose from the seats as drummer Paul Deakin, guitarist Nick Kane, bassist Robert Reynolds and guitarist and lead singer Raul Malo attacked their current hit, Jesse Winchester’s “O What a Thrill.”
As it will again in the Chicago area Sept. 3, when the Mavericks and opening act David Ball perform at Six Flags Over Great America in Gurnee, Ill., Malo’s eloquent tremolo soared in the choruses, evoking more frantic female shrieks. Finishing “Thrill” to applause from throughout the Opry House, the group moved on through the title song of their current, just-certified gold album, “What a Crying Shame.”
Then they waved to the crowd and headed for the wings.
“We’re used to playing a couple of hours (at a time), so the performance (on the Opry) is over so fast that it really doesn’t matter much,” reflected Malo between the group’s two Opry sets. “The big deal is just the fact that you’re there.
“It’s like, `Man! Hank (Williams) stood here. Johnny (Cash) stood here. Buck (Owens) has been here. Merle (Haggard), Patsy (Cline) has been here. Tammy Wynette, Wanda Jackson, all the great ones.’ I mean, it represents so many of our heroes and heroines that that’s pretty much the big deal about it.”
“The history runs through your mind,” Deakin agreed. “The moment that really hit me was standing out there waiting for Porter Wagoner to introduce us. So many (great) people have been there.”
“This was the one night when it wasn’t just another night at the Opry,” summed up Reynolds. “It was our night at the Opry.”
It absolutely was. Out of the usual two dozen or more acts on an evening Opry show, the Mavericks were hands-down this night’s hot one. Television recorded their Wagoner-introduced segment for posterity. A retinue of family members, other well-wishers, big-eyed young women and journalists lined the door and hallway to their dressing room.
Out in the bus afterward, they engaged in so much witty, ribald repartee with a young interviewer that her face was still flaming (happily, it appeared) when she departed. Then, once again, they obligingly focused their attentions on one of the current country scene’s more burning questions:
Why are they becoming so hot now, when two years ago-following the release of their critically worshiped debut album, “From Hell to Paradise”-they hardly could get arrested?
“I don’t want to hear from you that we’ve sold out, OK?” yelled Reynolds, husband of Nashville vocalist Trisha Yearwood. “I’ve had enough of that!”
He was obviously joking, but he could just as easily have been doing it on the square. The Mavericks’ hit second album, which contains a lot of songs Malo co-wrote with hit Nashville songwriters, is noticeably more “accessible” than the dark, complicated and heavy “From Hell to Paradise.” It also is true that lead singer Malo, the band’s central figure, no longer favors a cowboy hat, prompting speculation that he’s making a musical (i.e., crossover) statement as well as one of fashion.
Yet the idea of a sellout by the Mavericks, an aggregation whose very name symbolizes the collective offhand rebelliousness of four guys who understudied in a rock ‘n’ roll bar in Miami’s Little Havana, is pretty laughable.
The Mavericks didn’t sell out; they just wised up. With “From Hell to Paradise,” whose title song described the Cuban Communism that Malo’s parents fled in the 1950s, they established their distinctiveness on the Nashville scene, the fact that they’re a sort of four-man Florida incarnation of Dwight Yoakam. Having established that, they can legitimately widen their reach. By doffing the hat, Malo has rendered the band more visually palatable to mainstream video viewers both in America and on the new cable hookups now taking country music around the world; the move is cosmetic, not substantive.
Of course, that’s not the way the Mavericks tell it.
“I haven’t lost my hair yet, and I figured when I do lose it I’ll wear the hat,” Malo said.
“We thought we’d get lots of pictures with hair, so that when it falls out and he puts the hat on people will say, `He has hair under there,’ ” Reynolds said.
“Seriously, it was kind of getting in my way,” Malo continued. “Traveling with it is a pain, and every time I put it on I’d pretty much smack the microphone, because (with it on) the radius of your head movements changes. So I changed it a lot for performance reasons. It became a big issue, and that’s pretty much why I eliminated it. Because I don’t want to be pigeonholed.”
“But also his head was growing at such a rate that he had to buy new hats and couldn’t afford them,” Reynolds said, reducing everybody to prolonged yucks.
Somewhere in the merriment, a serious point got subtly made. Reynolds said the band didn’t discuss Malo’s hat “until people started asking about it,” at which point “we’re all going, `Are you going to wear the hat? It seems like we won’t have a hit record unless you wear the hat.’ “
Reynolds didn’t have to add that despite his colleagues’ concern about the possibility of an adverse effect on their career, Malo persisted in not wearing the hat.
As to the difference between “From Hell to Paradise” and “What a Crying Shame,” Malo said they went into the making of the second album “with the intent of selling records.” The idea was to “keep this band and this music alive.
“That was always on the back of our mind, but you try not to let that cloud your judgment too much,” Malo continued. “The so-called integrity thing is so subjective, but I know that we have integrity. I know that we can sleep well at night with what we’ve done.
“I think this record appeals to a broader group that just happened (to be drawn in) because of the songs. The first album had some very personal songs on there that perhaps some people didn’t understand. It didn’t appeal to the massive audience. `Hell to Paradise’ is a song pretty much about oppression and what my family had to go through to come here. Its statement was no big deal to us at the time, but looking back on it now, we go, `God we were nuts.’ “
Nevertheless, Deakin said, he sees a similarity between the two records. Even though the two albums are different, the band that recorded them isn’t doing anything “that much different.” The important thing is that they “aren’t going away” but, rather, are “sticking to (our) guns and what (we) feel is working.”
“It was like this,” finally observed the close-mouthed Kane. “The new record, the first time I heard it, struck me as being a collection of really good songs. No big concept (like its predecessor), just plain old good-listening music.”
“And the next album’s going to be dark,” threatened Malo, with his rebellious grin.
They talked some more about the Grand Ole Opry and the Mavericks’ country roots, about their reverence for country performers such as Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, Hank Williams, Jimmie Rodgers, Bill Monroe, all of whom made legends by being iconoclasts.
Soon it was time to go back in for the second set, where the person scheduled to introduce them was none other than Monroe, the 82-year-old “Father of Bluegrass Music” who, although beginning to look his age as he shuffled around the microphone, still led his Blue Grass Boys through the cold-chill, uncompromising music the Mavericks revere him for.
At the appointed time, Monroe brought on his young admirers with another of those equivocal Opry introductions (“We’ve got a group to entertain you now, the Mavericks. Give ’em a hand.”), and they started into “There Goes My Heart,” off the new album.
It was getting late; the TV cameras and most of the print reporters had gone off to meet deadlines. The Mavericks, however, remained the Mavericks.
“There Goes My Heart,” steeped in the traditional country sound, fit in perfectly on the Opry stage and evoked both the scattered high-pitched young screams and the generous mainstream applause that together define the group’s direction. When the song was finished, Malo spoke to the crowd.
“It has been a great honor and pleasure for us to play here with all the great legends, like Mr. Bill Monroe, and we’d like you to give him a round of applause,” he said.
The applause for Monroe came down and, looking a little surprised, the old master waved a hand. Then Malo spoke again, this time with a Maverick glint in his eye. The band wanted, he said, to conclude their Opry debut with a Hank Williams song, “Cold Cold Heart.” He added that they were going to do it Maverick-style.
With Deakin’s crashing cymbals, Kane’s and Reynolds’ blazing strings and a frantically tinkling piano behind him, Malo began doing the classic ballad to a boogie-woogie beat, shaking his tangled hair, laughing and making the most irreverent head motions to the rhythm.
It couldn’t have been much more shocking if Elvis Presley, who made a single unappreciated visit to the Opry’s venerable stage in the early ’50s, had returned and was rolling his hips to “Rock of Ages.”
On one side of the stage, Monroe stared blinkingly for a few moments. Finally, looking around and smiling at members of the audience, he began pantomiming a dance in time to the Mavericks’ furious rhythm.
The group came off to cheers from the crowd, which seemed to realize it had just witnessed another of those historic Opry moments that are distinct departures from the ordinary. As they hustled toward their dressing area, somebody caught up with Malo, tapped him on the shoulder and exclaimed that the Mavericks certainly had a lot of, uh, manhood.
“Uh huh!” he replied with a vigorous nod and a flashing, I-told-you-so grin. “Uh huh! Uh huh!”
Uh huh. And so much for selling out.
