Toombs: B-Side Players release CD, Kelly Clarkson at fair

B-Side Players (Courtesy photo)

The B-Side Players probably thought they’d made the A-list when they released the infectious “Fire in the Youth,” their seventh album, two years ago. Along with fellow cross-cultural musical warriors Ozomatli, San Diego’s nine-strong Players were now on Concord/Picante, an imprint of respected jazz label Concord Records.

Things haven’t worked out exactly according to plan, according to lead singer and multi-instrumentalist Karlos “Solrak” Paez, who formed the group 15 years ago in an African Drum class at Southwestern College.

“Our kind of music, Ozomatli and B-Side Players, it’s hard to sell records right now. I understand that the record companies need to make money, and they’re holding back right now,” he said. “But that’s never slowed me down. I’ve been studying the whole record business forever and I can survive without a record company. I mean, I’ve done it my whole life.”

Indeed, the B-Side Players have self-released their “new” album, “Afro-Méxica.” (Actually, Paez explained, this is the recording that “pretty much got me a record deal” with Concord/Picante. “They gave me the option to release that record or to record a whole new one. And, of course, me being a studio rat, I wanted to go in the studio.”)

Related: Read more from Mikel Toombs | SDNN’s Music page

“Afro-Méxica” is an apt title, since the band incorporates both African rhythms and traditional Mexican influences, as well as elements from Brazil, Cuba and Jamaica.

“African drumming is the root of it all. That’s where we all met,” Paez said. “And as far as the culture thing, I’ve always been fascinated with the whole pre-Hispanic culture, so I do a lot of studying on that. I try to put that out in the music, as far as the consciousness of all our ancestry.”

Paez’ immediate ancestry prominently includes his father, Ezequiel Paez, a trombonist and songwriter who spent 17 years in Tijuana’s Los Moonlights and 10 more in La Banda el Recodo, pioneers of the horn-forward banda style from Mexico’s Sinoloa province.

“He never forced me or anything,” Paez said, “but he always left instruments around the house, so that was something I picked up by myself. My dad always offered to give me lessons, but I went a different route and self-taught myself, because that whole pressure was there and I never wanted to be a part of him steering me in a direction of what kind of music to play.”

The senior Paez has spent most of his life in Mexico and his son “grew up as a border kid, crossing back and forth, having two families separated and two cultures,” he said. “So, I just noticed the whole different way of living, over here and over there, and how I balanced it and the things I witnessed.”

Paez’ cultural consciousness translated easily to the reggae that pervades much of the B-Side Players’ music, and that has been embraced in Mexico and all over Latin America the past few years.

“Reggae was born out of the ghettos, out of the shanty towns. So in any Third World country and with any oppressed upbringing you’re going to identify with that music,” Paez said. “It came from struggle and from protest, so a lot of the youths in Mexico are really relating to it. It relates to the culture. They don’t really know much about the whole Rastafarianism, but they love the music and they love the dreads and all that.”

Today’s reggae “is not the typical one-drop from Jamaica,” he added. “It definitely has adapted a whole global sound as far as incorporating different rhythms and different genres.”

On “Fire in the Youth,” the B-Side Players acknowledge the evolution with the “reggae español” of “Nuestras Demandas” and reggaetón of “Alegria,” which are mixed with the traditional sounds of cumbia (”Mascara”) and jarocho (”El Comal”). Ever moving forward, Paez promises to draw from an album’s worth of new material when the band performs Friday at the Wave House in Mission Beach.

“It’s a really cool spot, because it’s right on the ocean. People can sit on the boardwalk, and don’t have to pay to watch the whole show.”

Event info
What: B-Side Players, with OPM and Tribe of Kings Soundsystem
When: 8 p.m. Friday, July 3
Where: Wave House, 3125 Ocean Front Walk, Mission Beach
Tickets: $10 ( 21 and up); (858) 228-9291

Ai! While it’s usually all about the Glambert here at SDNN, it’s time to show some love for the original American Idol, Kelly Clarkson. And in particular, for her much-maligned quarterlife-crisis CD, “My December,” where she briefly lived up to the (song) title of “Miss Independent” before scurrying back to the safety of hit-factory-made fare. In a late-’07 show in Seattle (Bill Gates also was there, with his wife and their 11-year-old daughter, but I failed to get their assessment) Clarkson scored with “boy bashing” rants like “Never Again” (”probably the most bitter song I’ve ever written,” she said) and the whiskey-soaked “Chivas” (she apparently decided against calling it “Miss Chivas”), as well as on a touching version of Patty Griffin’s “Up to the Mountain (MLK Song).” She’ll barely miss Independence Day when she performs July 5 at the San Diego County Fair.

Calling it a “Beautiful Day”: When Charlie Robison split with his wife, Emily of the Dixie Chicks, the Texan took a familiar country route: Robison started living across the street from the San Antonio bus station and writing a batch of songs about the breakup. The subtle irony of the Southern California-sunny title song of his new album, “Beautiful Day” (Dualtone), only hints at it, but there’s a bracing honesty to the subterranean homesick blues “She’s So Fine” and the bittersweet “Feelin’ Good,” whose open-road sense of freedom is echoed on a touching version of Springsteen’s “Racing in the Street.”

Mikel Toombs writes about music for SDNN.

Tags: Afro-Méxica, B-Side, B-Side Players, Charlie Robison, Karlos "Solrak" Paez, Kelly Clarkson, SDNN

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 1st, 2009 at 3:52 pm and is filed under Music . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.