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Los TexManiacs and special guests Texas Tornadoes Legends: Augie Meyers & Flaco Jimenez


The Kessler Theater

Over the last 12 years, Max Baca & Los Texmaniacs have established themselves as the most recognized Conjunto band in the world, delivering a traditional style fused with modern rhythms to deliver a unique and infectious brand of Conjunto. The band is led by premiere "first call" bajo sexto player , Max Baca. Max has recorded on 11 Grammy winning recordings including , The Rolling Stones "Voodoo Lounge" , Los Super 7 , Texas Tornados, etc. During 2009, Los Texmaniacs were selected by Smithsonian Folkways to document Conjunto as a form of American Roots & Folk music.  The subsequent recording titled Borders y Bailes earned a Grammy in 2010.

Nationally, Los Texmaniacs have delighted audiences at such prestigious and diverse venues as:  The Library of Congress; The Kennedy Center (D.C.); New Orleans Jazz Fest; Rhythm and Roots Fest (Rhode Island); The Ford Theatre and Greek Theatre (L.A.); and Garrison Keillor’s nationally-syndicated radio program A Prairie Home Companion’s 40thAnniversary Celebration (St. Paul, MN).

Since 2013, Max and the band have focused heavily on stretching the boundaries of Conjunto both musically and globally touring Worldwide. Los Texmaniacs were designated “cultural ambassadors” by the city of San Antonio, Texas. They have performed in Russia (two tours), China, Switzerland, and Argentina. The band has just completed mini tours of Canada, Italy, Hawaii and was a co headliner with The Chieftains at Hong Kong World Music Festival in November of 2015 . 

In February 2016, Los TexManiacs & individual members Max Baca, Josh Baca and Noel Hernandez will be featured performers and instructors at The Folk Alliance Conference in Kansas City. 

Augie Meyers' style and his Vox Continental has become one of music's most distinctive keyboard sounds around. Augie can be heard with the Sir Douglas Quintet, Texas Tornados, Meyers’ solo efforts as well as on landmark albums by Bob Dylan (”Time Out of Mind” and “Love and Theft”) and John Hammond (“Wicked Grin”). Echoes of the Meyers' style and sound can be heard in the music of the Doors, the Kinks, the Animals as well as the Beatles just to name a few.

Rolling out of San Antonio, Texas in the early 60's, the Sir Douglas Quintet, a musical partnership formed with Doug Sahm, brought such hit tunes as "Mendocino" and "She's About a Mover." By fusing Tex-Mex, Conjunto, and soulful rock together along with the power of Meyers' distinctive Vox organ, an impact that is still being felt in rock 'n' roll today. While the Sir Douglas Quintet never broke up and never succumbed to the lure of the oldies circuit, when Meyers and his musical cohorts decided they wanted to do something different, they did. That led to the formation of The Texas Tornados and a Grammy award-winning South Texas sound. Meyers worked steadily with Sahm until the kinetic guitarist/vocalist passed away in 1999. Meyers has always pursued projects that interest him as an individual and as a collaborator and has long refused to lock himself into one style of music.

Few if any artists in conjunto and Tejano music have received the level of critical acclaim Flaco Jimenéz has enjoyed over the course of a career that's spanned six decades, and it's certain that no one has taken the accordion-fueled Tex-Mex sound to a larger audience than he has. Without compromising his musical vision, Jimenéz has introduced the traditional conjunto sound to mainstream pop and country listeners thanks to his collaborations with the Texas Tornados, Dwight Yoakam, and the Mavericks, and he is celebrated by adventurous rock fans through his work with Ry Cooder, Carlos Santana, Doug Sahm, and the Rolling Stones.

Flaco Jimenéz was born in San Antonio, TX in 1939, and raised in a musical family; his grandfather Patricio Jimenéz was an accordion player who embraced the polkas and waltz tunes that are conjunto's stylistic precursors, and Flaco's father Santiago Jimenéz, Sr. was a pioneering Tex-Mex musician who cut one of the first conjunto records, "Dices Pescao" b/w "Dispensa el Arrempujon" in 1936. Flaco's first instrument was the bajo sexto, a Mexican variation on the 12-string guitar which he started to play at age seven, but after he became proficient enough to join his father on-stage, Flaco's interest turned to the accordion, and he developed a joyous, expressive style that was influenced by zydeco master Clifton Chenier as well as his father and his Tex-Mex peers. At 15, Jimenéz formed his first band, Los Caporales, and the group soon won a sizable following in San Antonio, cutting records for a local label and earning a weekly spot on a local television variety show.

By the early '60s, Jimenéz was already a Texas legend, playing clubs across the Lone Star state and regularly filling dance halls in San Antonio with music that fused the classic Tejano sound with elements of blues and country. Jimenéz gained a loyal fan in Doug Sahm, founder of the Sir Douglas Quintet and a fellow Texas maverick with a taste for crossbreeding rootsy sounds, and in 1973, when Sahm was recording his first solo album for Atlantic Records, he invited Flaco to join him for the sessions (which also included guest spots from Bob Dylan and Dr. John), giving him his first serious recognition outside of the Tejano scene. In 1976, Ry Cooder included Flaco on his album Chicken Skin Music, and the groundbreaking folk and roots music label Arhoolie Records released Flaco Jimenéz & His Conjunto in 1978, finally giving his own music distribution outside of the Southwest.

Jimenéz continued to record and tour extensively, broadening his reach across the country and around the world, and in 1988 Dwight Yoakam brought Flaco into the studio to add an accordion part to a duet he recorded with Buck Owens. The tune, "Streets of Bakersfield," became a major country hit, and as Flaco joined Yoakam on tour, he found himself a rising star at the age of 49. In 1989, Jimenéz and his old friend Doug Sahm teamed up for a new project with country legend Freddy Fender and fellow squeeze box man (and one of Sahm's partners in the Sir Douglas Quintet) Augie Meyers; calling themselves the Texas Tornados, the band scored a deal with Reprise Records and they hit the charts with a re-cut of Meyers local hit "(Hey Baby) Que Paso." A track from the Texas Tornados' debut album, "Soy de San Luis," won a Grammy as Best Mexican-American Performance of 1991, and it would be the first of five Grammys Flaco would receive before the decade was out. Now that Flaco was a bona fide star, he signed with Warner Bros. and released a 1992 solo set, Partners, which included guest appearances from Linda Ronstadt, Emmylou Harris, and Los Lobos.

In 1994, the Rolling Stones tapped Flaco to add an accordion solo to their album Voodoo Lounge, and the same year Jimenéz released a self-titled solo set for Arista, a rootsy effort that included vocals from Raul Malo of the Mavericks. A year later, Jimenéz and Malo appeared on record together again when Flaco added a hot accordion solo to the Mavericks' "All You Ever Do Is Bring Me Down" from their album Music for All Occasions, which once again brought Flaco's sound to the upper reaches of the country charts. 1996 saw the release of the last studio album from the Texas Tornados, but Jimenéz joined up with another super-group in 1998, Los Super Seven, a collection of top Latin American musicians including members of Los Lobos and Joe Ely.

Since then, Jimenéz has continued to maintain a busy recording and touring schedule that would tax men half his age as he upholds his status as one of the world's leading ambassadors of Tex-Mex music

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