Preston Frazier sits down with Dennis Javier Jasso and Randy Sanchez to discuss exciting new music from the New Mexico-based Latin band Nosotros:
PRESTON FRAZIER: I enjoy the first single, “Mentiras,” and I know “Esperanza” is coming out relatively soon. Could you talk to me briefly about how “Mentiras” came about?
DENNIS JAVIER JASSO: Yeah. So the song was inspired during the, you know, I guess we’re going to get political right off the bat, but it is a song of political with a political message. And the idea for the song came to me during the Trump era. I feel that don’t speak the truth. And to me, the most significant truth that is not spoken is that there’s so much money in politics that we can’t get anything done. Everything from gun control to healthcare to income inequality in education is rooted in money and politics. And I, I genuinely feel like if we get that out of our political system, we’ll start to see real significant change. The ones that are ruling power, the ones that are sitting in that Oval Office in that seat, they’re the ones that, that need to, to look our nation in the eye and say, you’re we’re going to start making some fundamental changes about this. And so, to me, that was the inspiration behind and the idea for the song.
RANDY SANCHEZ: When we start songwriting, we’re trying to be socially aware of things coming out. This is some new material we’re putting out, and it’s been a few years since we did something new. The timing is what it is. We’re in a political atmosphere at this point. Dennis was already thinking about this song a few years ago; by the time it manifests itself, gets recorded, produced, all this kind of things, it just so happened, you know, that we’re sort of landing in this sort of, this period right now where this elections, you know, especially during the presidency, seems to be the focus of everything. We should be voting in everything down to your local elections, even school boards, even if you don’t have kids; we need to come together locally but also keep that same sort of intensity when it does come to these more significant sorts of elections.
PRESTON FRAZIER: It is a political song, but there’s nothing wrong with being aware socially. There’s nothing wrong with talking about these issues. I don’t speak Spanish. So, for me, one of the things that I enjoy about the music that I’ve heard is that it is captivating. It is universal. It will bring the listener in and allow them to explore the music and the lyrics more deeply, even if they don’t speak the language. You did bring in a rapper, Daniel French. How did that come about?
DENNIS JAVIER JASSO: Daniel French is a part of the group Las Cafeeras, and we’ve been a fan of the band for several years now. And every time they’d come through the area, we’d check them out. We’ve shared the stage with them a few times. So just through those interactions, we’ve gotten to know a few of the band members, you know, pretty closely. Musicians always say, yeah, we should get together, we should collaborate. When I would talk with Daniel, I just felt like I would hold Daniel to it. When this song came about, I was like, this is, this is the song that that Daniel should be on because Daniel is also very much an activist and politically involved, as is his entire band. He generously and graciously agreed. And I think this addition to the song just brought it up and said exactly what we wanted to say.
RANDY SANCHEZ: Like yourself, who doesn’t speak Spanish, you know, we’ve had that sort of reaction to our music throughout the years. We have a lot of non-Spanish speaker-speaking fans. They’re drawn into it for the same reason. You mentioned something about the rhythm of the melodies that draws you in. Even though you might know what it’s talking about. You’re not getting everything out of it, but I think what’s incredible about this song working with Daniel is an English crossover. You do get, not necessarily, a summary of what’s been going on, you got his take, but something, and it’s cool because it’s coming out of this sort of thing of talking about lies, politicians lying, lying, lying. And then Daniel’s message is one of positivity a little bit. It’s reinforcing what we need to do as a society. So, being in English opens that song up to many more people. And I think that’s what they’re going to hear.
PRESTON FRAZIER: If I could go back a little bit, you could speak to the writing process for the song and how that writing process may differ from other work that you’re doing right now.
DENNIS JAVIER JASSO: That’s an excellent question. Yeah, because of what we’re doing right now. I had written the chords and the melodies and put them together in this midi demo form. I was humming along the melodies and had some lyric ideas about what I wanted the song to be about. I’m Chicano, and my first language is English, but I grew up around a lot of Spanish; I can speak Spanish, but it’s not how a native Spanish speaker would say. Manuel Ramirez, our sax players, and I co-write many songs. I passed these ideas on to Manny, and he wrote the lyrics. And once that was done, we got together with Raul Pacheco. Raul Pacheco is a member of Ozomatli, and he produced these songs. And Raul, Randy, and I sat here in this room; we’re in, we’re in our studio here in Santa Fe, and just went through the song, the idea, and then just started kind of putting the arrangement together, piecing it together. Once that was done, once the three of us had an arrangement that we felt good about, we brought in the band and started recording it.
RANDY SANCHEZ: It’s been an amazing past year or so with what we’re doing. Our band has been around for a little bit, but right now, we’re fortunate to have been surrounded by some fantastic talent and some people that have become excellent friends, like Raul Pacheco, you know, coming in and sort of this producer mindset. And right now, like Dennis was saying, we did that process, we set everything up, we worked that out. We’re songwriting right now, we’re sitting in the same room here, and we’re pressing play on the pro tool session. We’re like, what kind of chords … we’ll come up with some stuff cool, you know, we’re cutting and pasting. Oh, you know, we’ll do multiple performances of something that’s an okay take, you know what we take that, put that in here. Let’s sing a melody.
We laughed because it reminded us if you’ve seen the, you know, what is it, The Greatest Night in Pop, the making of “We Are the World.” Yeah, like Bob Dylan, you know, Bob Dylan is having a hard time. We all had our Bob Dylan moment. We’re just like, we can’t do anything. But it was enough, you know, we got this little bit, we took our little ideas from melody just improvising, what do you feel? And we put that together, found the melody. We sat here for, I don’t know, maybe an hour before we even started this session. And we would talk about what’s going on in your life. You know, we’ve all had some significant things going on in our lives, and it’s catching up as buddies, too. But you know, with the intent of, like, maybe there’s some stuff we can throw down. And a lot of us have written notes, you know, throughout here. So, as some of our conversations lead into, ‘Oh, I remember…’ which might refer to something I wrote, then try to see if we can fit it into the melody. We did these last two songs, and I’m very inspired now. I think the band feels inspired by moving in this direction.
PRESTON FRAZIER: It’s a fascinating process because it’s a ten-person band. It’s a big band. So, coming up with the concept of the song, writing the song, and then making the arrangement seems to, that would seem to me to be a challenge.
DENNIS JAVIER JASSO: Yeah, It can be, and you know, and for better or worse, we don’t have a formula or an equation. I think every song and everything we’ve done has taken on a life of its own uniquely. That speaks a lot to the guys in the band and how open-minded and easygoing they are. It’s pretty awesome to work with such a flexible, great group of individual musicians.
PRESTON FRAZIER: Regarding the essential tracks, do you start with your drums and then rhythm guitar and bass? Or how does that work?
RANDY SANCHEZ: It’s a little different than the recording process. Dennis pretty much had an entire midi track, somewhat laid out for “Mentiras,” our tempo established, the sections, the form set up, we went into the studio, and then we would just start to sort of minus some things, right? We went to the Kitchen Sink, which is a renowned studio here in Santa Fe, and we recorded drums. They have a great room, a big room. We wanted a big sound on these drums. So we went in there; Dennis first laid his drum tracks. And even then, there was a creative process going on. Dennis had, we had the idea of what the drums were going to be, but we need to now, as we’re laying down the track, it has to have its own life, and it has to have some intent to it. So, little things, how do we arc the song? I mean, it won’t be complete on drums right from the beginning. There’s this sort of orchestration that starts to come together. Dennis laid his drums, we got that part sounding good, percussion came in, I think we did bass next, the string instruments, guitars, and those same concepts that started from the beginning would carry through.
I had a tres part that’s there. I get my little creativity on it, but I do have parameters to stick in. But even then, it’s like, well, what about this? Let’s pull this back. Alright, let’s get a bit more here until we have it all laid out. And then we add vocals. Once everything’s done, we add the vocals so the performance can happen with the vocals, with everything on there. And that also takes finessing and how you want to arc it here and there. It might not have been like that in the original recording, but the intent was there. But you now need to nail it on the recording. So that’s kind of what that process was. I assume once we get what these other songs, sort of the form and everything there, will be similar to what goes on. We’ll have our tempos established. That’ll be our click track, for lack of a better word. You know, and we’ll kind of build from there.
PRESTON FRAZIER: I’ll ask a music geek question: Randy, were you thinking about the tres part before when you heard the song demo originally? How did you decide to use the tres?
RANDY SANCHEZ: With “Esperanza,” Dennis pretty much had an idea laid out for it. I think he recorded it. He knows we have to stick to specific parameters. If we’re doing this salsa song, things have to line up because there are 10 of us. There are two percussionists, a drummer there, there’s two guitar players. All this stuff has to line up; everything has a particular part. It’s not doubling up on certain things or just overplaying. So all this has to sort of lock in there. When I get time for my tres part, I’m like, this is what I have to work with, and I’m going to stick these parts here, and then here’s some parts that I hear that I might, with the transitions, I might be able to add some of the little flavors that I have.
That happens for all the other instruments. I even think when we had the horn line written initially for “Mentiras,” it had a particular swing. Once it came time to record the horns, a different swing was added to emphasize specific movements in the song’s rhythm. Very cool, very cool.
PRESTON FRAZIER: Correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe you’ve self-produced some of your work before. You worked with Chris Trujillo, a fantastic percussionist, and now Raul. Is there any change in what Raul did for you versus your self-production or Chris?
DENNIS JAVIER JASSO: Yeah, Chris produced us; gosh, it’s been a long time. In 2004, so 20 years ago, and we were 20 years younger. We were kids, for lack of a better word. And I, I think it was our first time working with the producer, and I think we just all learned so much and grew so much musically from that experience and just really saw working with Chris what it takes to make an album. Making an album differs significantly from getting on stage and playing music. I think just sitting there and, and working with Chris, that album took us about, I think, six months to make. We thought we would go in there and knock an album out in two weeks. And then it ended up being this huge process. That’s just how naive we were at the time. We just grew a lot as individuals, and Chris just really really mentored us. He was, he is, and was a perfect friend.
He just brought his experience, his studio experience. He’s a session L.A. cat; You name it, he’s played with them. He is on platinum albums.
He was coming into us and was like, “Hey, look, this is what I learned from my Toto or Rick Rubin.”
When we self-produced, we took everything we learned from Chris and just brought it into the studio with us and learned to be self-critical because we didn’t have like a producer. We bounce ideas off of each other depending on, like, who’s tracking at the time. It’s been a nice evolution for us because Raul, what I loved about working with Raul is he knows the band and he knows our abilities, and he’s going to push us up to that point, not to the end to we, we start feeling like, I can’t do this, you’re asking too much of me. But just to that point, I can do this, and I will do this.
RANDY SANCHEZ: He sets parameters. Ego-wise, you always want to be the best musician there is. Sometimes, you have limitations, and this is okay; this is what I’m learning a lot from. I’m always going to strive. I still practice, I’m still always trying to be a better musician, but Raul was like, well, we’re going to take what you got, and we’re going to make that work. You feel inspired, and it gives you that maybe that extra little 10%. Having somebody like, that’s won a few Grammys and things like that, you know, it’s easier to hear these kinds of things and see what his direction might be. He sees our potential, and he’s played with us a few times, too, so it’s not like he’s coming in cold and doesn’t know who we are. We’ve developed personal relationships, too, which I think happens in a producer, artist collaboration.
PRESTON FRAZIER: What’s next for the band?
DENNIS JAVIER JASSO: Well, it’s yet to be determined whether we’re completing an EP or an LP, but there are a lot of ideas out there within the band that we’re all putting together and working on. It could be a situation where we have too much, and we need to pick the few that feel like they fit together on a completed work. You know?
RANDY SANCHEZ: It’s always nice to put out a full-length album. The landscape’s changed for some of us sort of working-class musicians still doing this art. It’s cool to release a single; we’re not waiting a year or two on the material.
DENNIS JAVIER JASSO: We will perform with the Santa Fe Symphony Orchestra on July 9th. It’s going to be a free show here in Santa Fe. They’re celebrating 40 years of the Santa Fe Symphony Orchestra. We’re celebrating, you know, 30 years, but last year, we were commissioned by the San Juan Symphony Orchestra in Durango, Colorado, to perform with their orchestra. Our good friend Michael Hood arranged these pieces. We managed to get scores of about 10 songs. We’re working on 12 songs for a 40-piece orchestra at least. We’re excited about presenting that in our home state and area and having this fantastic orchestra back us up. San Juan was a unique experience having that kind of pop thing happening in this orchestra. And now we’re coming to a place that’s a little closer to us. You know, we, we thank Durango and San Juan for having that kind of vision for us, but that allowed us to end up with these scores. And that’s, that’s a big thing coming up for us in July as well.
Nosotros also selected their Top 5 Albums (though “this was really hard to narrow down”): ‘Ozomatli‘ by Ozomatli, ‘Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band‘ by the Beatles; ‘Kind of Blue‘ by Miles Davis, ‘House of the Holy‘ by Led Zeppelin and ‘Musas’ by Natalia Lafourcade.
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