Raul Malo at The Coach House

We came to see Raul because Maria loves his voice. I was a bit concerned after seeing his show in Austin at the ACL Festival. It opened with a bang and closed with a bang, but the middle section was a bit slow. The problem it turned out was that RaulMalo needs more than an hour to get all of his musical ideas into play. And so, Wednesday night, we got to see the real show, and what a treat it was. Opening with a couple of Mavericks classics (sorry, I didn't write down the song titles), he then settled in to perform music from his latest CD. For those of you who don't know about Raul or his CD... First, imagine a voice somewhere between Elvis Presley and Roy Orbison, with all the passion that goes with it. The new CD contains classic 50's songs with a country attitude. It is a slow paced CD that isn't for everyone. But, as I've said before, RaulMalo can sing the dictionary and it will sound great. So, this portion of the show was similar to the ACL show until he started to venture out again, singing songs like "Besame Mucho ". Maria was in a puddle on the floor after that one. Moving into his solo portion of the show, he took some requests and really showed off his vocal talents, only accompanied by his guitar and a harmonica played by a member of the horn section. The rest of the show mixed up his material, playing more Spanish classics like "Volver" and plenty of Mavericks tunes containing that great Tex/Mex sound. He finished off with Van's "Bright Side of the Road". The band behind him was tight and helped fuel the passionate energy that comes from Raul's voice. The band consisted of Raul was on guitar with drums, keyboards, bass and a sax and trumpet horn section. In the end we did everything we could to stay seated, but the music finally was just too much for us and when he came back for his encore we forgot to sit down, instead we did what you are supposed to do at a RaulMalo or Mavericks show: Dance the Night Away. We will not miss him the next time he comes around.