Mavericks play full show — and it’s a special one
Something truly remarkable happened Wednesday night in the Cultural District: The Mavericks played an entire show in Pittsburgh. The curse is over!
It started just after 8 p.m., ran, with an intermission, until just after 10:30 p.m., and it was glorious, like Christmas Eve and Christmas morning wrapped in one package.
As Mavs fans well know, the genre-defying band from Miami via Nashville had two opportunities in the past 16 months with a pair of free outdoor concerts to show all of Pittsburgh what they’d been missing. Hartwood Acres July 2017 was knocked out by a thunderstorm just a few songs in, crushing a joyful, festive scene, and Three Rivers Arts Festival July 2018 found them stranded by yet another storm in Chicago while we all waited soaked at the Point.
“Thank you so much for coming to see us after…” singer Raul Malo began only to be greeted by a chorus groans and laughter from the Byham Theater crowd. “We feel like we owe you one,” he noted, saying it was as heartbreaking for them as it was for us. “Now you get a Christmas show.”
That it was, and not like the garish ones he had spotted on the video monitors in the Byham lobby.
“This is for people who almost like Christmas,” Malo said, “so if you almost like Christmas, you came to the right place … There’s no storytelling or Christmas elves or [expletive] like that.”
The Mavs, as it turns out, are as good at Christmas as they are at everything else, which is to say, among the best on the planet.
They treated us to their new long-overdue “Hey, Merry Christmas!” album, a mix of originals and classics that span the band’s range of jangly E Street-style R&B (”Santa Does”), zydeco (“I Have Wanted You for Christmas”), devilishly vampy blues (“Santa Wants to Take You for a Ride”), Tex-Mex rockabilly (“One More Christmas”) and Chuck Berry-style rock ’n’ roll (the title track).
Malo, who might just be the world’s greatest living (nonclassical) singer, also channeled The King on “Blue Christmas” and did Darlene Love proud on the wondrous “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home).”
He wore a smile and a gleam in his eye — no hiding under a hat and dark glasses — from the moment he walked on stage, and why not? He’s got guitar shredder Eddie Perez, in a red sequined jacket, to his right, boogie-woogie piano man Jerry Dale McFadden to his left, a swinging rhythm section led by Paul Deakin, a flashy accordion player and four horns of fire. It all seemed effortless and natural in the hands of that ninepiece band.
After that Christmas cheer, you just knew the second set would be all killer — the very best of the Mavericks — and it was, starting with an “All Night Long/(Aquarius) Let the Sunshine In” that got people jumping out of their seats from the first notes.
As they swung through “Back in Your Arms” and “Dance in the Moonlight” and bounced through the ska of “What You Do to Me,” it felt like we had been transported from a Downtown theater on a cold November night to an intoxicating island paradise.
Picking up on the energy in the crowd — this wasn’t the usual shtick with some people dancing, some sitting — they kept the dance party going for more than a halfhour over seven songs before slowing it down.
When they did, Malo melted us with his stunning interpretation on “How Can You Mend a Broken Heart.”
“We started playing this song after the Las Vegas shooting,” he said, while acknowledging Pittsburgh’s own tragedy. “We keep playing this song not to bring you down, not upset you, just to keep the conversation going.”
As conversations go, it was a beauty, leading into what — in my humble opinion — was the transcendent concert moment of 2018. “Every Little Thing About You” was a BIG powerful grind, as slyly funky as the Neville Brothers and almost as heavy as Slayer, and with the Mavs bathed in dark red, with lights flickering and Malo and Mr. Perez exchanging nasty reverbed licks, they seemed the devil’s house band.
Then, in the blink of an eye, they shifted gears into the bubbling zydeco of “Rolling Along” and percolating ska of “I Said I Love You,” leading up to a one-two punch of the maria chidrenched “Come Unto Me” with one of Malo’s finest vocals and the showstopping “All You Ever Do is Bring Me Down,” with joyous solos all around — and around. They circled back and put a bow on the evening with “Christmas Time Is (Coming ’Round Again).”
Granted, it wasn’t free — let’s hope another festival books them this summer — but it more than made up for the rainouts, and it was more fun than anyone should have on a Wednesday night.
If you missed it, do yourself a favor today and treat yourself to “Hey, Merry Christmas!,” a new holiday classic.