Los Super Seven is a Mexican-American all-star band
whose album offers a magical journey into the roots of
Mexican music, gathering together musicians of different
generations, genres and styles in a rare and wonderful
sense of musical and cultural harmony. It features
Tex-Mex music legends: Freddy Fender and Flaco
Jimenez, David Hidalgo and Cesar Rosas of Los Lobos,
Texas country-rocker Joe Ely, country star Rick Treviño,
Tejano music veteran Ruben Ramos, surprise guests like
Doug Sahm, and such top Texas musicians as bajo sexto
player Max Baca, accordionist Joel Guzman and the
mariachi group Campanos de America; it is an experience
of rediscovery and renewal for many of the musicians
involved.

They take traditional Mexican songs - along with an American folk song of solidarity, Woody Guthrie's "Deportee" - and revive
these roots through their considerable talents and love for the music. As the influence and impact of the Mexican-American
community grows within the culture of the United States and the world, this album returns to the musical wellspring of Chicano
music in a delightful and infectious celebration of its deepest and strongest roots.

Recorded in Austin, Texas in April, 1998, the album was the brainchild of artist manager Dan Goodman, who produced a show of
Tex-Mex music at the 1997 South By Southwest. This intimate acoustic show at Austin's famous Las Manitas cafe featured
artists like Texas Tornados Doug Sahm and Augie Meyers, Joe Ely, Rick Treviño and Rosie Flores. It reflected Goodman's
growing fascination with border music and it's Tex-Mex offshoots.

The resounding success of the event peaked Goodman's imagination. Shortly thereafter, he began exploring the notion of enlisting
some acclaimed artists to record traditional Mexican music in a laid back setting without commercial pressures. Goodman
explains, "Steve Berlin was great for this project, in that he created a perfect studio vibe. Everybody was relaxed and ideas were
free-flowing. The result was great music made for all of the right reasons."

Goodman began contacting the artists involved, and even spent a week in San Antonio combing the record stores for traditional
Mexican music to suggest for the project. Then he convened the gathering of players at Austin's Cedar Creek Recording studio
for a unique set of sessions in the world of modern recording.

"The coolest thing about it was that everybody tuned into the spirit
right away," says Steve Berlin, the saxophone and keyboard player
with Los Lobos who produced this album (and has also done
production work with Los Lobos, The Tragically Hip, Sherri Jackson,
Crash Test Dummies, Faith No More, Dave Alvin and a host of other
acts). "They all just jumped in and were excited enough about the
prospect, and it made the whole thing amazingly pleasant. Everybody
had a great time and it all sounded wonderful."

Although the material consisted of traditional Mexican songs, the
musicians and singers injected their own sensibilities into this roots
music. "Another really enjoyable thing about it was that we weren't
real parochial about it," Berlin recalls. "We tried to experiment with
stuff a lot, and use the old song forms, but apply some different
instruments and parts."

For the artists involved, the resulting music touched some deep and
rich personal places. One number Fender performs, "Piensa En Mi,"
is a song by the premier Mexican composer Augustin Lara which
Goodman presented for the project in a version by Tex-Mex music pioneer Lydia Mendoza. "She was very much one of my idols
from back in the 1940s," explains Fender, who as a child first encountered Mendoza's music on his family's battery-powered
radio. "You would hear Lydia Mendoza with her rambunctious 12-string guitar and her strong voice, and she was sort of an earth
mama, a really strong woman."

"When I listen to a song like that which focuses, in my case, on the memories of my childhood, it reminds me of my mother and
how our lives were back in the 1940s, and the way my town was, and the people who were there. It touches the cultural aspects of
what Mexican American life was like in the 1930s, '40s and '50s," explains Fender.

His other song, "Un Lunes Por La Mañana" ("One Early Monday Morning"), is one Fender first heard back in the 1950s in
Matamoros, Mexico, in the early days of his recording career. A friend had told Fender that he should hear "this old man who has
a little beer joint there, and played guitar and sang. I went in there and this white-haired man was sitting there by the table with a
guitar. He started plunking on the guitar and singing about 'one early Monday morning,' and it was very exciting. And I always
remembered the song, though I never wrote it down. But when I went to sing it, the verses came to me like someone was typing
them to me."

The project had a similar cultural and familial effect on Rick Treviño, the country singer and songwriter who is many decades
younger than Fender, yet found the music touching his life and soul. "I had never really liked the old Tex-Mex music," explains
Treviño, whose father was a Tejano musician who gave up playing to support his family.

"There were nights when I was a child when my father would have a few beers, and then put on Tejano music and play it really
loud. And he would start getting really melancholy, so the music had these very sad associations for me." Treviño had recorded
Spanish-language versions of his country material, but it was singing with the mariachi band Campanas de America at SXSW '97
that ultimately brought about a change of heart towards Mexican-American music.

"It was just so amazing to sing with them," enthuses Treviño, who began to hear the music of his Tex-Mex heritage in a new light.
In fact, after recording with Los Super Seven, he's "practically worn out my copy."

Likewise, Fender feels much the same way about the results from this
Chicano and Tex-Mex summit meeting. "Oh man, I love it. It's just
about unplugged, you know? All of the songs lean towards that plain,
raw, primitive, what-you-see-is-what-you-get music that people used to
hear years and years ago, being passed from one generation to the
next. Even with the stuff of my own that I do, I maybe listen to it one
or two times and then get bored. But this one I've been listening to ever
since they sent me a tape."

Flaco Jimenez expresses a similar enthusiasm for the project. "It felt
like a family reunion," he notes. "It had that feel of jamming, but like a
really professional jam. There was no pressure at all, which is how I
love to do things. On this project everyone was in harmony. It was like
a big fiesta."

That spirit can be felt on all 13 of the songs this super group of
musicians recorded. One can hear in the grooves the deep influences
that have informed the music of most everyone involved, from South
Texan musical heroes like Fender and Jimenez, to Los Angelenos Los
Lobos, to a Texas Panhandle-reared Anglo like Ely. It is more than a mere record, but rather multi-cultural journey to the
proverbial borderlands where differing peoples and musical styles come together in harmony.

"I love the language, that soft bastard Latin, Which melts like kisses from a female mouth." - George Gordon, Lord Byron

Rob Patterson