Los Lobos perform multicultural rock set at Lowell Summer Music Series

Susan Saccoccia

A recipient of NEA Arts Journalism fellowships in dance, theater and music, Susan reviews visual and performing arts in the U.S. and overseas.

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On June 22, the Lowell Summer Music Series presented multicultural jam band Los Lobos at Boarding House Park in Lowell.

After a set by indie rock musician Dominic Lavoie and his ensemble, Los Lobos took the stage. Surrounded by trees, the park’s gently sloping grove was populated by an audience seated on beach chairs and blankets on this warm early-summer night.

Over about an hour and 15 minutes, Los Lobos performed songs that drew from their melting pot of tastes and influences and demonstrated musical chops honed over more than five decades of performing and recording together. Their covers as well as their own songs were often springboards for euphoric improvisational passages.

While students at James Garfield High School in East Los Angeles, band co-founder, the late Francisco González, and four friends united over their shared zeal for a mix of musical traditions, from the Celtic-tinged, folk-rock of Fairport Convention to American blues, rock ’n’ roll, folk music, R&B, soul, doo-wop and jazz as well as traditional Mexican and Latin American music — norteña and rancheras, bolero and cumbia — they heard as children.

The resulting band, Los Lobos, has gained a global fan base and many awards, including 12 Grammy nominations and, to date, four Grammy wins that include the Latin Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2011. In April 2022, four days after the death of González, Los Lobos won a Grammy for Best Americana Album with “Native Sons.”  In November 2023, the band celebrated its 50th anniversary by returning to its alma mater for a sold-out performance in the school auditorium.

The five-member band was led by vocalist and guitarist David Hidalgo, whose wailing tenor is a voice of joy, loss, longing and grit. Alongside him were guitarist Cesar Rosas and bassist Conrad Lozano, also featured vocalists for ballads in Spanish. All three have been Los Lobos members since 1973. Joining them were Steve Berlin, the band’s keyboardist and saxophonist since 1982; and drummer Fredo Ortiz, who with his kit mid-stage on a raised platform was seated like a king on his throne.

A prism of colored lights complimenting the shifting moods of songs was the one show-biz touch.

Los Lobos opened with its folk-flavored “Wicked Rain,” its refrain calling for “A little more love and a little less pain,” and its melody a base for a high-energy jam. Also sparking a cathartic instrumental surge was the next song, “The Valley,” about early settlers in the Valley of Mexico.

Changing the tempo was “Love Special Delivery,” a song of heartbreak delivered with a dialogue between Ortiz on drums and Hidalgo on guitar, and a pulsing Grateful Dead-style jam with a dark, spooky but danceable undertone. Next was another song inspired by immigrant life in the United States, the infectious “Will the Wolf Survive?” which the five had recorded on their 1984 album of the same name. The band’s first with a major label, the album was number 30 on the Rolling Stone list of the 100 greatest albums of the 1980s.

Switching to Spanish, the band followed with “Chuco’s Cumbia.” A drum solo by Ortiz and long, lyrical passages by Hidalgo on guitar and Berlin on sax sent couples to their feet, as did a romantic, samba-inflected love song, “Maricela.” 

Celebrating the multicultural roots of rock and finding in old hits timeless anthems of hope and endurance, the band performed “Come On, Let’s Go” a 1958 hit by Ritchie Valens; “Georgia Slop,” a funky 1959 party song by West Coast R&B pioneer Jimmy McCracklin; and an intensely percussive rendition of  “Up the Line/Southern Feeling,” a 1963 song by blues artist Little Walter.

Hidalgo pulled out his accordion, introducing it as “my squeeze box,” for the blues-inflected “Let’s Say Goodnight” and two Spanish songs: “Volver, Volver,” its boogie-woogie, salsa groove spiced with Berlin’s Cajun-flavored sax solo; and a slow romantic serenade in Spanish.

After a traditional folk song, “Going Down the Road Feeling Bad,” Los Lobos launched an ecstatic jam exploration of the Grateful Dead hit “Bertha.” 

The band’s triple-medley encore began with a very slow version of its first major hit, “La Bamba,” a Mexican folk song turned into a 1958 hit by Ritchie Valens and recorded in 1987 by Los Lobos as the title track of a Valens biopic. After sampling the 1965 doo-wop classic by the Young Rascals, “Good Lovin,” Los Lobos concluded with a full speed “La Bamba.”