Carlos Medina and Meow Wolf make a mariachi album
Carlos Medina produces mariachi album through Meow Wolf
Carlos Medina was used to taking a homemade approach for producing his work.
During a recent interview at his Santa Fe home, the performer pointed to his old Casio keyboard in his living room. He said the set-up is similar where he used to lay down different beats and rhythms for his regional Mexican-style music, invite other musicians to play over the click track, and record his lead vocals and accordion. He would then mix and master the tracks himself.
“It was very DIY,” he recalled. The northern New Mexico performer — known for both his music and a comedy career — until recently had recorded most of his albums that way.
He made three albums as part of a trio, two with a full band, and then three comedy albums. He used to stroll table to table marketing the trio’s CDs.
Looking back, he says it’s interesting to think about how his history of self-producing ran parallel to that of a group of DIY artists in Santa Fe: the founders of Meow Wolf.
“Probably the same time I was doing these recordings, they were diving through dumpsters looking for stuff for their exhibits,” said Medina. “And then our paths crossed and here we are.”
Medina, who officially joined Meow Wolf in February 2018, debuted his first professionally produced studio album through the now-burgeoning arts corporation this month. “El Cantador,” a 10-track mariachi
set, as well as a music video for one of his original songs, was released earlier this month.
This is Medina’s first mariachi album. Over the years, he’s been playing other genres of Mexican music, such as ranchera.
“I grew up listening to it; I guess it was always a dream to have a mariachi album,” he told the Journal just a few days after he and his backup band returned home from a five-state tour.
The tour opened Medina’s eyes to the number of people outside of New Mexico who have had heard of his music or comedy. At a gig in Pioneertown, Calif., in the desert east of San Bernadino, he met a couple who’d traveled an hour from Indio to see him live.
He also described the tour as an opportunity to share mariachi with a different, younger demographic. Medina and his band played in venues and clubs, and with bands that normally wouldn’t be part of the scene for traditional mariachi.
But “at the end of the day, when we did our set, it was interesting and it was a beautiful thing to see people who had never heard this music fall in love with it and think, ‘Oh my gosh, this is so cool,’ ” Medina said.
Meow Wolf CEO Vince Kadlubek said he believes Medina is bringing the genre “into the next generation.”
“I want Meow Wolf to be a platform that supports people’s authentic expressions,” Kadlubek said. “So this is a perfect example; here’s an artist with a type of music that people wouldn’t normally think Meow Wolf would put money behind or our name behind, but why not?”
Medina, 44, has played music for nearly his entire life. He was born in Las Vegas, N.M., but grew up about 30 miles away in El Coruco, which he described as a “suburb” of the small village of Ribera. The son of a musician, he started playing accordion at age 7 and was a member of his family band. His dad, two brothers and cousin would play regional shows.
Music became his full-time career about 15 years ago, when he left behind the construction business. He made his first CD of dance music with a fourpiece band. Before that, he had already performed and produced music with his acoustic trio — Los Gallos — with which he still performs on occasion. To date, he’s performed as a musician in nearly 40 states.
“El Cantador” consists of six originals and four old standards that Medina grew up hearing. His originals, all based on personal experiences, dated back to his teenage years. Some have been recorded before, but not as mariachi songs.
“First off, the songs I write are really horrible,” Medina said about his music. “It’s the songs that come through me that are decent.”
What’s the difference? According to Medina, it’s about the process of trying to write a song versus what comes to him on its own.
“It’s interesting when you sit down and try and write, there’s just so much distraction,” he said. “But I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been driving down the road and I hear a lyric or I hear a melody, and you just let it come through and it happens.”
One of the album’s originals, “Que Dios Te Guarde Madrecita,” was a song he wrote for his mother.
“The reality was I didn’t have enough money for a Mother’s Day card,” Medina explained. “So I wrote the song for her and it turned about to be better than any $2 card.”
The album also has a song Medina wrote when he was about 14 or 15 years old, which he described as his first “decent” composition. He wrote “Tus Dulces Labios” — “Your Sweet Lips” in English — for a teacher he had a crush on.
Asked if he ever gave the song to that teacher, Medina responded with a laugh, “I got an A in that class.”
His tune of heartbreak, “No Le Digan,” is the subject of his first music video, which can only be described as a psychedelic take on mariachi. Last month, it won a Best Music Video award at the Dam Short Film Festival in Boulder City, Nev.
The video is full of quirky features. Most notable are puppets, the idea of video director Ryan “Kron” Thompson. There’s also an ice skater, a folklorico dancer and clips of President Donald Trump’s inauguration playing on a TV above the bar where Medina’s character is sitting. Medina said the video team thought the inauguration clips would be thought-provoking and add another layer to why he’s so sorrowful in the song. “Not just because I lost my love but because, well, you know,” he said.
Falling into comedy
His first major project with Meow Wolf was a musical one, but Medina’s first introduction to his current colleagues was through his other line of work: comedy. Though he’s developed a fan base through his act that touches on the quirks of northern New Mexico culture — he has more than 20,000 followers on his comedy Facebook page and does a regular comedy show at the Jean Cocteau Cinema — he doesn’t label himself a comedian per se.
“Music will always be my first love, and the comedy just honestly something that happened quite by itself,” said Medina. “I could never have planned it. To say I did would be a lie. It was just meant to be, I went with it, and it paid off.”
It all started with a video he made about eight years ago, recording two voices he had been hearing in his head that day. The voices were of two cousins, “Graviel de la Plaga” and “DonnaMick.” Medina said those names, actually Gabriel and Dominic, are the names he heard mispronounced the most growing up. He continued making videos and has since developed nearly 50 other characters — based on real-life people, mainly relatives — that exist in this imaginary world.
“It’s like the Chicano Simpsons,” he joked. Back in 2014, he got a call from a Santa Fe promoter putting together a stand-up comedy show asking if he would come do 10 minutes at the then-Skylight nightclub. He had never done stand-up before.
“At the time, I was living Portales, so I timed my trip just with enough time to get here, park, do my 10 minutes,” he remembered. “I had already recorded my first comedy CD, so I brought 10 copies of that.”
He posted on social media that he would be doing the show, and when he got to the club there was a line out the door of fans wanting to hear him live. The promoter asked him to go last and do 30 minutes instead of 10.
“And I didn’t have anything to lose and said, yeah, let’s do it,” said Medina. “And the rest is history.” The gig is where he was introduced to Meow Wolf’s Kadlubek for the first time, pre-House of Eternal Return.
“Carlos is a rare superstar,” said Kadlubek. “He lights up a room. He’s politically savvy. He’s an amazing entertainer. He’s hilarious. He’s kind. He’s just a superstar. Ever since I met him, I knew I wanted to support him as much as I possibly could.”
At this stage of his career, Medina feels “empowered.” He said he feels the support to do what he was doing before, but now on a larger scale, without having to change or filter his material.
But he emphasized the Meow Wolf partnership was a result of several years of honing his work “non-stop.”
“I just did it all; from driving, to roadie, to songwriter,” Medina said. “But that’s what it took. Now, I’m seeing the return on that work.”