The intro music a band chooses to play before they take to the stage can really tell you a lot. Not only does it get the crowd a little more hyped up, but it can also help to set the tone for the evening and maybe even give you a hint of what’s to come for the night. In The Mavericks’ case, their choice to take to the stage to the strains of “Galop Infernal” (aka the Can-Can song) was a rather apt one. No, there were no spontaneous bursts of Can-Can style high kicking involved, but The Mavericks definitely put on a show during their Wednesday night performance at The Danforth Music Hall.
The Mavericks’ current tour sees them celebrating 30 years together and as such, they played a set of songs spanning their entire career, including a few selections from an upcoming collection of covers that the band will be releasing to honour the occasion.
Singer Raul Malo mentioned that after 30 years, they’ve decided it was finally time to put out an album of songs that have been important to them over the years, songs that, as Malo put it, “tell our story.” He then went on to tell a story of his own about driving around Miami with his dad as a kid listening to Freddy Fender’s classic “Before The Last Teardrop Falls” on 8-track. The band absolutely did that song justice, though to be fair, with a singer like Malo, it’s practically impossible to go wrong. The man could sing anything and make it sound fantastic, as he proved on the band’s covers of “Blue Bayou” and “Harvest Moon”, as well as their classic version of “Blue Moon.” None of those will show up on the new covers album, but their versions of Waylon Jennings’ “Are You Sure Hank Done It This Way?” and John Anderson’s “Swingin’” will, and both of those stood out as highlights of their set alongside the band’s own “All You Ever Do Is Bring Me Down” and “As Long As There’s Loving Tonight”.
Midway through the band’s set, an enthusiastic audience member in a cowboy hat and shiny jacket did his best to get the whole crowd up on their feet and while he didn’t quite accomplish that goal, Malo assured him and all of the others who were already dancing that by the end of the set, they’d have everyone up and dancing.
“Resistance is futile,” he joked, adding, “It’s a Mavericks show.” And sure enough, by the end of the show, everyone was indeed on their feet. After all, it was a Mavericks show.