Peacemakers celebrate year of music, fun and Mexico — and bring in New Year with a bash
By CHRIS HANSEN ORF
Get Out

Through his travels south of the border, Roger Clyne has brought home many souvenirs, but none more painful than a chipped tooth earned the hard way in his beloved Mexico.

“Some giant of a human being tried to teach me to open a beer bottle with my teeth,” Clyne laughs. “I tried to pop it and it went, ‘Kunk!’, and I just said, ‘Anhhh, I chipped a tooth.’ And the bottle didn't even open.”

The singer/guitarist/songwriter/ leader of Roger Clyne & The Peacemakers is fortunate enough to have a place to live in Puerto Peñasco, where the hardscrabble Sonoran desert runs smack-dab into the Sea of Cortez. It's the inspirational setting where Clyne has composed much of the material for his band's three studio albums and one live set.

“I wrote ‘Leaky Little Boat’ down there one morning when I woke up from a dream,” says Clyne, who feels that he is a conduit for a higher power when he writes. “I went outside on the patio so I wouldn't wake anybody and sang it into a tape recorder, trying to get it all down before it got away. (My friend) Andy (Hersey, fellow Arizona singer/ songwriter) came out, and I said, ‘Shhh, I'm trying to get this.’

“I don't know where it came from, but I woke up with the melody and the chords already figured out.”

“¡Americano!,” his band's latest disc which came out last January, features Clyne's best songwriting work to date and elevates him to the upper echelon of the Americana field. The album, written as the war on Iraq was imminent, focuses largely on Clyne's struggle as an American in a time of war, and no song on the album illuminates this undertaking more than the plaintive, beautiful “Your Name on a Grain of Rice.”

“‘My second home is a Third World cantina,’” Clyne says, quoting the song. “I want that reunion, I want wholeness and I want integrity. Do I curse (the American fighter planes) or cheer them on? I still can't decide. Why can't I live in wholeness? Why am I contributing dollar bills to bullets, Washington lead that's flying in directions that I cannot sanction? I cannot endorse that. I can’t in my conscience say that this is a good thing.”

The release of “¡Americano!” kicked off a big 2004 for the band, which also includes drummer P.H. Naffah, guitarist Steve Larson and bassist Nick Scropos.

Former bassist Danny White left the group in the spring to concentrate on building a recording studio in Nashville and was quickly replaced by ex-Gloritone bassist and Naffah's childhood friend Scropos, who had to learn the songs on the fly as the band kicked off a tour that took up the better part of 2004.

The self-supported treks are where Roger Clyne & The Peacemakers win over new fans across the country. The singer relishes the opportunity to earn fans one at a time and the strategy is paying off.

“Rock ’n’ roll is supposed to be that way,” Clyne says. “The audience doesn't serve the band, the band serves the audience, and that's what all poets, all entertainers, everybody who creates should strive for. We're tallest when we kneel and that's what I want — put me there and I'm happy.”

What is fast becoming a Southwest tradition are the band's bi-annual shows in Mexico, an event that is getting bigger every year as Peaceheads, as the band's fans call themselves, from all over the world descend on the Sunset Cantina in Puerto Peñasco to see Roger Clyne & The Peacemakers play a marathon concert. The next Mexico show will be held on May 14 and the crowd is expected to be the biggest yet.

“The legend of the Mexico shows is growing as fast as the band,” Clyne explains. “The first year we had 175 people watch us, and 2,500 to 3,000 people come to see us down there now. Mexico is the most pure element we can play in — adventure, the living frontier. Give the folks the opportunity to go to Mexico and buy a $20 ticket and drink margaritas and watch a four-hour show — somebody give me that opportunity and I'll go!”

Another tradition in the making might be the band's New Year's Eve shows at the Celebrity Theatre, such as the one they'll play on Friday. Those old enough to remember singer Jerry Riopelle's shows in the round there in the ’70s and early ’80s know that such an event can become a huge holiday custom. “I would love it to be so,” Clyne says. “I would love to do that every year if we keep getting invited back.”