It’s Friday night at the Door Community Auditorium in Fish Creek, Wis. This small, scenic Northwoods town, on the shore of Lake Michigan, is a far cry from Los Lobos’ gritty East LA beginnings.

After 37 years together, Los Lobos continues to play about a hundred dates per year, ranging from fancy concert halls to rough and tumble bars, from The Tonight Show to A Prairie Home Companion, from state fairs to The White House. The band is currently supporting its new back-to-the-basics album – its fourteenth – titled Tin Can Trust, released just a few days after the gig.

Later, during the show, guitarist/singer Cesar Rosas tells the audience how nice it is to play here for the first time, then immediately backpedals: “Have we played here before?” The room was in fact new for the band and has previously hosted such legends as Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, Chubby Checker and Ray Charles, among others.

A little more than an hour before show time, guitarist/lyricist Louie Pérez and adjunct drummer Cougar Estrada are sitting on a couch in the backstage lounge surfing the Internet and talking about their ancestry. None of the other band members are around. Meanwhile, the group’s small road crew is sound checking.

I can find neither singer/guitarist David Hidalgo nor keyboard/saxophonist Steve Berlin for a scheduled, pre-show interview. The band’s tour manager is confident that it will still come together, somehow. (As it turns out, this is something of a recurring mantra for the band).

A few minutes later, Berlin walks in with a small bag, after a flight delay while traveling from Portland, Ore., where he lives with his family. And Hildalgo is soon located at the pizza joint and bar across the street where he’s run into friends. Berlin and I head across the street to meet up with Hildago. It’s less than an hour before official show time and no one seems to be in a hurry to do anything.

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While most people assume that the band began with its 1984 breakthrough How Will the Wolf Survive? the three-time Grammy winners actually got their start in 1973 when they hooked up in high school. The original four members, children of working class parents – Hildago, Rosas, Pérez and bassist Conrad Lozano (Steve Berlin joined in 1983.) – grew up in East LA. At home, they heard cumbias, norteños and other music from Mexico. Yet, the youngsters were inspired by rock and roll, Chicano R&B and brown-eyed soul bands of the ‘50s and early-‘60s.

According to Hidalgo, a few weeks after the Fish Creek gig, “Out of [those influences] came, Cannibal & The Headhunters, The Premiers and others in East LA. They were recording and having regional hits. There were bands everywhere. My brother was in a band. Every other block had a band.”

One day, Los Lobos decided to learn a traditional Latino song as a birthday present for somebody’s mom. The music had always been a part of life while growing up, but learning this song was a whole new experience. It allowed the band to expand its boundaries and bring its Latino roots more firmly into the band’s consciousness. The ability to play such a wide variety of music also helped them get work early on.

“In those days, if you played a wedding, you had to play current hits – cumbias, boleros, folk songs and then a jazz tune,” Hidalgo adds. “You learn to play everything. That’s how we came up. It developed our taste in music. We’re sort of a wedding band that made good, but louder.”

The band’s 1978’s debut, Del Este de Los Angeles_, which featured all Spanish language tunes, was met with indifference, perhaps out of step with the late-‘70s Los Angeles music scene, which was in the throes of the punk movement.

_Los Lobos in 1992 – photo by Aaron Rapoport

Six years later, How Will the Wolf Survive? achieved what the debut couldn’t. This time around, the band managed to keep its Latino roots/identity intact while writing beautiful original rock tunes that took the band out of the barrio. Critics loved it, college radio embraced it and the band made a name for itself outside of LA, having established a strong presence in Southern California.

Since then, Los Lobos has tended to make four different types of records. There are the straightforward roots-rock affairs like How Will the Wolf Survive? and Tin Can Trust. There are the studio efforts where the band transcends its humble beginnings to create sublime post-psychedelic music that is often dark and moody – the pinnacles of this style are the landmark album, Kiko (1992), in addition to the excellent Colossal Head (1996) and The Town and the City (2006). Then there is the acoustic material – La Pistola y el Corazon (1988) and Acoustic en Vivo (2005) that draw heavily on traditional Mexican-American musical forms. And finally, there are the children’s albums, including Los Lobos Goes Disney (2009).

“I think we kind of surrender to the process,” Berlin says at the bar before the show. “We show up to the studio with nothing. We don’t rehearse. We try to come with a few basic ideas but that’s about it. It’s usually one or two songs. It usually starts out very humbly.”

The band recorded Tin Can Trust, its first album of new material in four years, over five weeks at Manny’s Estudio, a funky little room in the East LA neighborhood of Lincoln Heights with a great sound.

According to Berlin, “Our engineer had worked there quite a bit. He said: ‘Don’t freak out when you walk in. It’s not much to look at, but trust me it really sounds amazing.’ And it does. It has this sonic footprint that got into every track. The air in the room and the sonics made everything really inspiring. We’ve been in some of the most expensive studios in the world and sometimes you really have to try. It’s like they foil your attempt to vibe – it’s almost like vibe repellant.” [Laughs.]

Given Berlin’s notable production work and session work outside of Los Lobos – he’s recently produced records for Susan Tedeschi, Rickie Lee Jones, Sierra Leone Refugee All Stars and Jackie Greene – the band chooses to produce itself. “There’s not anything missing at this point, so I don’t see us bringing in a producer,” says Berlin. “Plus, the nature of the process would drive anyone else crazy. To an outside observer, it would look like we were insane or something. To not rehearse, [to not do] pre-production, [but] just show up one day with nothing and do that every day for five weeks – it would take a special kind of cat to go through that.”

The band generally begins the recording process with whoever is writing that particular song leading bass and drums. Rosas may be working with the guys on one of his songs, while Hidalgo will work on another song somewhere else in the studio, pulling in other band members as he needs them. Hidalgo also cuts demos at home, playing all of the instruments himself before the band fleshes them out. In the case of Tin Can Trust, Rosas led off the session with a cumbia titled “Yo Canto.” From there, Hildalgo developed the album’s opener, “Burn It Down.”

“It’s a democracy in this band and if somebody doesn’t like something, it’s not going to happen,” Hidalgo points out. “The highest authority is the five of us and usually it has to be unanimous. If one guy doesn’t like something, it probably means that there is something wrong with it.”

Rosas, for his part, will also write with outside collaborators – for Tin Can Trust’s “All My Bridges Burning,” he worked with Grateful Dead lyricist Robert Hunter. The album also features a cover of the Dead’s “West L.A. Fadeaway.”

“Our first gig with the Dead was a weekend [July 30-31, 1988] at Laguna Seca in Monterey [Calif.],” Hidalgo says. “Jerry was sitting behind the amps smoking a cigarette watching us. Afterward, he said, ‘Good set.’ And I was like, ‘Eh, OK.’ And he said, ‘Nothing ventured, nothing gained.’ I’ve never forgotten that.”
“I remember that,” Berlin adds. “He was like a roadie crouched down behind the amps waiting for a string to break.”

The group in 1990

According to Berlin, the Dead did a lot for Los Lobos when it offered those opening slots to the band in ‘88. At that point, Los Lobos was best known for its covers of “La Bamba” and “I Got Loaded,” which were both hits from movie soundtracks. Garcia not only lingered behind the amps, but also came out and played with the band on “Georgia Slop” and a few other songs. Hidalgo returned the favor by sitting in with the Dead on “West L.A. Fadeaway” and “Little Red Rooster.”

Since then, according to Hidalgo and Berlin, Los Lobos “half-assed” their way through “West L.A. Fadeaway” a few times until Rosas proposed that the band actually learn the song properly for Tin Can Trust.

The forgotten band member in all of this may be bassist Conrad Lozano who Hidalgo is quick to champion. “He isn’t just the bass player,” he says. “He’s the bass player. When he plays, it’s Conrad. When it’s right, there is nothing better. When I think of stuff and write, I have him in mind. I try and figure out what would be a good [bass line or rhythmic dynamic] thing for him.”

However, it’s the songwriting team of Hidalgo and Louie Pérez that sets the tone of the band. Pérez’s lyrics have weightiness to them as he draws upon populist, religious and cultural themes, often celebrating the lives of the downtrodden. The original drummer in the band, he’s switched to playing guitar in recent years and occasionally singing. Though he’s the group’s lead singer and lead guitarist, Hidalgo says the creative process is always a collaborative one.

“Louie and I try and come up with the ideas for the songs,” he says matter-of-factly. “If I’m writing, I can generally come up with some lyrics or some ideas, but Louie is really good at it. I trust that he’s going to come up with something that is fitting and great. We might talk about it [before he writes lyrics], we might not. It’s the same thing with Steve. We might work on something together and then I’ll come back the next day and go, ‘Yeah. Right on.’ The way it happens, it shouldn’t – but it does.” [Laughs.]

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Fifteen minutes after Hidalgo and Berlin leave the bar, the band walks out onstage – they’re, a little late, but the crowd doesn’t seem to mind. Consisting of mostly of retirees or vacationers with a smattering of younger locals mixed in, the crowd remains sitting for the first set, applauding politely but not giving the band much. Rosas handled the stage patter as the band switches instruments were switched off. The only references to the crowd demographic are a few comments about how the band hopes it wasn’t too loud. Some fans call out to members by name in between songs and even Cougar Estrada gets a shout out.

The band opens with Kiko’s upbeat “Dream in Blue,” and go on to touch on all parts of its catalog. A faithful version of “Will the Wolf Survive?” sends a ripple of recognition through the crowd early in the set. As Berlin and Hidalgo promised, the new songs sound great live. Rosas’ “Yo Canto,” a straightforward cumbia, is the first of the night. A few others pop up in the set as well, including “Tin Can Trust” and soon to be classic “On Main Street.” The band closes out the first set with the Bobby Freeman-penned ‘50s classic “Do You Wanna Dance,” which The Beach Boys had a hit with in the ‘60s.

Hidalgo says the band has learned to follow the audience more. “Sometimes we want to play things that we don’t get to play as often, but if the audience wants to go to a certain place, we’ll go with it,” he says. “Sometimes we throw in stuff that is out of the ordinary and if people are along for the ride, then we are going somewhere together.”

One high profile set that ran aground was Woodstock ‘99. “It was the one time we had to follow [a setlist],” Berlin recalls. “I thought, ‘No big deal. I’ll just write one up.’ I don’t know what I was thinking. We walked out onstage at 2:30 p.m. the next day and [setlist] was totally wrong. They had to do clearances [for television] or something. You could just tell that the festival was a mess and evil was brewing. We did it anyway, but it was just bad.”

The band takes that slowly brewing energy from the end of the first set at Fish Creek and builds on it during the second set. After repeated requests for the audience to dance, a few dozen people answer the call. Pérez jumps behind the drums for a few tunes, tackling another of Rosas’ Spanish gems as well as a slower waltz with Hidalgo on accordion. The band soon follows it with “La Bamba” at which point the majority of the crowd finally got to their feet.

From there, the band delivers a rocking version of “Not Fade Away” that sounded more like the Grateful Dead than Buddy Holly. Holding onto the Bo Diddley backbeat, the band segues into a loose version “Good Lovin.’” The band closes out the set with a screaming version of “Bertha,” a live classic that the band recorded for the Deadicated compilation.

The band doesn’t play an encore but does participate in a meet-and-greet in the lobby where members sign autographs and chat with fans. Within a few minutes, there is a line a few hundred feet long that begins at an empty table with five chairs.

When you hang out and bullshit and take some pictures, it creates a bond," says Hidalgo later. “It’s nice to get to know the people and make it more personal. We erase the line where ‘we play for you.’ It’s like The Flaming Lips – the concert is like a birthday party where the band and the audience are one. That’s what you want. When you get close to that, it’s great.”