Mapache
I am in this perpetual state wherein I hunt for new artists to explore, and new genres to delve into.
At Huichica, a music festival at Gundlach-Bundschu winery in Sonoma, California
I was fortunate enough to be introduced to a variety of bands and musicians from a plethora of genres and backgrounds.
Some sets I was able to watch fully, while others I only caught glimpses of. Mapache
was one of those bands. I heard the group play part of a song titled “I Love My Dog.” It was a song I soon
realized was unreleased after an unrelenting search to find it on streaming. I
loved it, the crooning vocals and the 60’s americana created a warm musical
experience. After the festival, I listened to the entirety of the group’s
discography, and was lucky enough to start listening to them right in time for
their November 2021 album 3.
A few weeks later, the booking company that put on the festival FolkYeah advertised a Mapache show at the Sebastiani theater in Sonoma. I purchased my ticket and waited to see more of this enigmatic band that felt straight out of the 60’s. I reached out to the band for an interview after the show to discuss Los Angeles music culture, recording their new album and the structure of their live performances.
I was eager to learn the affect of Los Angeles and the music culture there on Mapache’s music. Their apple music profile picture shows the front men, Sam Blasucci, and Clay Finch, sitting in an almost liminal space, a donut shop wearing cowboy hats, looking out of place. “as far as music, living in LA is very special because there is a lot going on, its one of the biggest cities, and there’s people there from all over the world. You can hear that just by flipping around on the radio.” Clay Finch explained that the cultural diversity and the rich musical history of LA helped shape their sound and expose them to a variety of styles. Sam Blasucci mentioned that his dad was in a movie called A Mighty Wind, which focused on folk music, and that the first songs he ever learned on guitar were from that film. “I would go to his gigs at the coffee shop and sit in when I was five or six and watch him play A Mighty Wind songs on his acoustic guitar.”
The second song on their most recent album is a cover of Stevie Wonder’s “you are the sunshine of my life” but with no vocals. “It’s such a good song, I listened to a lot of Stevie wonder growing up, he was one of the main artists I listened to as a child. I just wanted to learn that song on the piano without having the intention of covering it. It turned out to be a cool idea, it’s another one of those things that comes from childhood.” When making the cover, the Sam and Clay expressed that no matter what genre that they cover, songs come out in their own style because it relates to where they are from. Its not that they try to arrange it in a different way, but they are so in tune with their own style that it naturally occurs. “we connect with so much music that is not americana related and I think naturally when we tap into other kinds of music that we like, it comes out in a way that relates to where we are from.”
I asked how their album 3 came about, and how the pandemic affected their creative process. “We were hitting the road quite a bit. We had an album come out and a big tour planned, so that’s where Mapache 3 album came from. A week or two into full lockdown we figured it would be good to still use the time constructively. We decided to go into the studio and do something, so we decided to record a bunch of covers. The songs weren’t too curated, we weren’t like ‘oh this is our covers album, this is what we are going to do’ initially we were going to do these three song releases of covers, but then we recorded a bunch and eventually we figured we should make it an album. It was like ‘well what do you want to record next?’” 3 came completely natural to Mapache, unplanned but unfolding in a completely natural way. The unintentional way that the album was recorded also allowed for experimentation as they explained. “We’ve been recording with the same guy, Dan Horn, for the last few albums, so this last tine especially because the recording process wasn’t intentional, it was like ‘let’s go in because we have some time’ or to do some covers. We were the most apt to mess around with different sounds and play different instruments.”
I was intrigued by Mapache’s two set format for their recent live performances. The duo came out on stage and played acoustic, then after a short break were joined by the rest of the band. I asked Clay and Sam the reasoning for doing two sets, independent of each other, during a singular performance.” We’ve always played acoustic, but we also wanted to get a band going but we didn’t want to give up what we’ve always done so we thought it’d be a good way to do both with two sets. A lot of the bands we really admire do concerts in that format, that was the dream in the beginning.”
Before departing from the interview, I asked the band what music they had been listening to recently. They named acts such as Babe Rainbow, Lucinda Williams, Bill Evans, The Oh La Las and Watchhouse. A diverse mix of artists from jazz piano to Australian psychedelic rock.
The experience of seeing Mapache was amazing, sitting alone in an old theater, listening to the sounds of Americana. I was entranced by the soothing dual acoustic guitars and then blown away by the full band accompaniment. During the electric set, a variety of couples sprung up from the crowd and danced by the side of the stage and in the back by the exit. There was a comradery between the band and the audience, a conversation going back and forth between songs. The small theater felt warm and full of life as the crowd stood and applauded at the end of the show.
A few weeks later, the booking company that put on the festival FolkYeah advertised a Mapache show at the Sebastiani theater in Sonoma. I purchased my ticket and waited to see more of this enigmatic band that felt straight out of the 60’s. I reached out to the band for an interview after the show to discuss Los Angeles music culture, recording their new album and the structure of their live performances.
I was eager to learn the affect of Los Angeles and the music culture there on Mapache’s music. Their apple music profile picture shows the front men, Sam Blasucci, and Clay Finch, sitting in an almost liminal space, a donut shop wearing cowboy hats, looking out of place. “as far as music, living in LA is very special because there is a lot going on, its one of the biggest cities, and there’s people there from all over the world. You can hear that just by flipping around on the radio.” Clay Finch explained that the cultural diversity and the rich musical history of LA helped shape their sound and expose them to a variety of styles. Sam Blasucci mentioned that his dad was in a movie called A Mighty Wind, which focused on folk music, and that the first songs he ever learned on guitar were from that film. “I would go to his gigs at the coffee shop and sit in when I was five or six and watch him play A Mighty Wind songs on his acoustic guitar.”
The second song on their most recent album is a cover of Stevie Wonder’s “you are the sunshine of my life” but with no vocals. “It’s such a good song, I listened to a lot of Stevie wonder growing up, he was one of the main artists I listened to as a child. I just wanted to learn that song on the piano without having the intention of covering it. It turned out to be a cool idea, it’s another one of those things that comes from childhood.” When making the cover, the Sam and Clay expressed that no matter what genre that they cover, songs come out in their own style because it relates to where they are from. Its not that they try to arrange it in a different way, but they are so in tune with their own style that it naturally occurs. “we connect with so much music that is not americana related and I think naturally when we tap into other kinds of music that we like, it comes out in a way that relates to where we are from.”
I asked how their album 3 came about, and how the pandemic affected their creative process. “We were hitting the road quite a bit. We had an album come out and a big tour planned, so that’s where Mapache 3 album came from. A week or two into full lockdown we figured it would be good to still use the time constructively. We decided to go into the studio and do something, so we decided to record a bunch of covers. The songs weren’t too curated, we weren’t like ‘oh this is our covers album, this is what we are going to do’ initially we were going to do these three song releases of covers, but then we recorded a bunch and eventually we figured we should make it an album. It was like ‘well what do you want to record next?’” 3 came completely natural to Mapache, unplanned but unfolding in a completely natural way. The unintentional way that the album was recorded also allowed for experimentation as they explained. “We’ve been recording with the same guy, Dan Horn, for the last few albums, so this last tine especially because the recording process wasn’t intentional, it was like ‘let’s go in because we have some time’ or to do some covers. We were the most apt to mess around with different sounds and play different instruments.”
I was intrigued by Mapache’s two set format for their recent live performances. The duo came out on stage and played acoustic, then after a short break were joined by the rest of the band. I asked Clay and Sam the reasoning for doing two sets, independent of each other, during a singular performance.” We’ve always played acoustic, but we also wanted to get a band going but we didn’t want to give up what we’ve always done so we thought it’d be a good way to do both with two sets. A lot of the bands we really admire do concerts in that format, that was the dream in the beginning.”
Before departing from the interview, I asked the band what music they had been listening to recently. They named acts such as Babe Rainbow, Lucinda Williams, Bill Evans, The Oh La Las and Watchhouse. A diverse mix of artists from jazz piano to Australian psychedelic rock.
The experience of seeing Mapache was amazing, sitting alone in an old theater, listening to the sounds of Americana. I was entranced by the soothing dual acoustic guitars and then blown away by the full band accompaniment. During the electric set, a variety of couples sprung up from the crowd and danced by the side of the stage and in the back by the exit. There was a comradery between the band and the audience, a conversation going back and forth between songs. The small theater felt warm and full of life as the crowd stood and applauded at the end of the show.
