The Mavericks Bring Latin-Infused Genre-Bending Music to Joliet's Glorious Rialto Square Theatre

by Julian Spivey

Julian Spivey Photo

 
The Mavericks brought their Latin-infused brand of country music/rockabilly/Americana (there are so many genres and subgenres of music these days and this group fits these and more) to the beautiful Rialto Square Theatre in Joliet, Ill. on Thursday, May 18.
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As an out-of-towner seeing the show on vacation, this was my first experience at the Rialto Square Theatre and it’s without a doubt the most picturesque venue I’ve ever seen a live show at. The venue opened nearly 100 years ago in 1926 and was originally designed and operated as a vaudeville movie palace. It’s designed in the Neo-Baroque style and according to the American Institute of Architects it’s considered one of the “150 great places in Illinois.” The theatre was renovated in the late 1970s and now hosts concerts, musicals, plays and stand-up comedy.

The Mavericks seem like a perfect band for such a wonderful theatre and they put on one helluva show musically, though I was disappointed in the vocal sound – which I’m not sure if that was a venue issue or a soundboard issue having never seen a show at the Rialto Square Theatre before. But it made many of Raul Malo’s vocals a bit unintelligible, especially on songs I didn’t know as well and those with a more country-rock or rockabilly vibe. The words were much easier to make out on ballads like “Blue Moon” and “Amsterdam Moon,” which really show off Malo’s vocals. Malo has often reminded me of a modern-day Roy Orbison with his silky smooth voice.

The group opened their two-hour set with “All Night Long,” one of the highlights on their 2015 album Mono. It immediately got the crowd energized for what was ahead of them during the evening.

The crowd was interesting for me as it was mostly age 50 and older and white, which maybe isn’t too surprising given the more upscale style of the venue and the age of the band – they’ve been around almost 35 years and have styles of music that skew toward older audiences – but I figured there might be a more eclectic audience for The Mavericks. I especially figured there’d be more Latin flavor to the audience. Again, I was an out-of-towner for Joliet, but driving through the area it seemed to have a decent Hispanic demographic and a basic Google search shows the city to have an almost 34 percent Hispanic population. Ultimately, the demographics of the audience have no impact on the performance, but I found it noteworthy in its surprise.

The Mavericks charted 13 times on the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart during the ‘90s, so I had known some of their stuff as a younger man. Surprisingly the group never had a top-10 country hit. But the band’s terrific 2013 release In Time really familiarized me with their work.

The group would perform seven tracks from that album on Thursday night, including the aforementioned “Amsterdam Moon,” “Forgive Me,” and some obvious crowd favorites in “As Long as There’s Loving Tonight,” “Dance in the Moonlight” and “Back in Your Arms Again.”

The band would perform a couple of numbers from their Spanish-language album En Español, from 2020, which some in the audience, unfortunately, took as the time to use the restroom or get refreshments. Though I don’t speak Spanish and didn’t understand a word (so it truly wasn’t much different from some of the other songs throughout the night) “La Sitiera” and “Recuerdos” sounded nice musically.

The Mavericks saved my favorite two performances of the evening for their encore.

They opened with “Come Unto Me,” which is my favorite track on In Time. It’s a song I’ve always wanted to see the group perform live and have often said it has such power to it, especially Malo’s vocal, that it makes me want to fight a bull as if I were a matador.

The group finished its set with an awesome performance of their biggest charting hit, “All You Ever Do is Bring Me Down,” which hit No. 13 on the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart in 1996 from the group’s 1995 album Music for All Occasions.

Malo is one of the best vocalists in any genre of music, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out the other fantastic members of The Mavericks. Eddie Perez plays a masterful lead guitar in the band, alongside Malo also on guitar. Paul Deakin holds things down on the drums and Jerry Dale McFadden plays the keyboard and has an awful lot of fun doing so, always grooving along with the sound. Malo and Deakin are original members. McFadden joined the band in 1994 and Perez in 2003. The group also has a horn section that really puts on a show consisting of saxophonist Max Abrams and trumpeters Julio Diaz and Lorenzo Molina. But the group member who dropped jaws the most on Thursday night was probably accordionist Percy Cardona, who makes the instrument look sexy.