Zubia Brothers set out on their own with new CD, seek new musical territory
By CHRIS HANSEN ORF
Get Out

Tempe musical legends Lawrence and Mark Zubia of The Pistoleros never intended to make a record by themselves, but it turned out to be a happy accident.

“It was something that fell in our laps,” guitarist/singer Mark Zubia says. “We went out to California to get a song into a movie and after we recorded a few songs and Jesse (co-producer and Gin Blossom Valenzuela) said ‘You know what? Let's just do a record.” The end result, the Zubia Brothers’ “Voices on the Street,” is one of the finest records to come from a Tempe band in the past decade.

The disc was liberating for the brothers, who have released two rock records with The Pistoleros over the past few years, allowing them to record country, Mexican folk and pure power pop for this record.

“This is a Zubia Brothers record,” says singer Lawrence Zubia. “Anybody who saw us at Edcel's Attic back in the day for our Sunday night acoustic shows knows we would play a Mexican song, then a Johnny Cash or Van Morrison song. For this record, not a lot of thought went into selection, it was just, if we had a good song, we recorded it.”

“This is more of a singer/songwriter record,” Mark adds.

Raised in a musical family, the Zubias cut their teeth in their father Raul's mariachi band, with Lawrence joining the group as a guitarist at 12 and Mark a year later at 10, and the mariachi music helped give the brothers an understanding of songwriting.

“Mariachi music is just three chords, but it helped us transition into playing The Beatles or a Johnny Cash song,” Lawrence says. “Johnny Cash was my first rock star,” Mark remembers.

“We got into Bob Dylan, Van Morrison, Bruce Springsteen and then some of the things that were going on in those days: The Smiths, U2, that whole thing,” Lawrence continues. “Then when I was 20 and Mark was 17 we started writing our own material.”

The brothers began gigging in Tempe in the early ’90s with Live Nudes, then formed The Chimeras with ex-Gin Blossoms guitarist/songwriter Doug Hopkins. Hopkins left the band in early 1993 and committed suicide in December of that year. The brothers re-named the band The Pistoleros and were signed to Hollywood records later in the decade.

The suicide of their mentor, however, left a lasting impression on the Zubias. Lawrence, who found Hopkins’ body, has just now begun to deal with the emotions he has felt over the years since by writing the lead-off track on the new album, the brilliant, haunting “Voices.”

“I wanted to write a song for people I hadn't seen in a while who would ask me, ‘What have you been doing for the last 15 years?’” the singer explains. “I wanted to put my whole experience of coming down to Tempe when I was 17, meeting the Gin Blossoms — all of those things in the first two verses are what happened to me. I just wanted to get that on paper. It just started writing itself and I was like, oh (expletive), am I really gonna say that? Especially when I got to the Hopkins line. But I was like, (expletive) it!’ “I was put in a precarious situation by Doug on that particular day, so I felt like I had more authority to write about that,” Lawrence explains. “I brought the demo of the song home and I definitely shed some tears. And every time I hear it I'm like, (expletive) it — it's what I had to do. I thought I put it in a diplomatic fashion — no other way to put it.”

While there have been legendary dust-ups between siblings in bands together, the experience of recording the new CD drew the Zubia brothers closer together.

“Recording this record took a lot,” Lawrence says. “It was me and my brother getting in a car and driving to Los Angeles in the middle of the night, just the two of us, staying in hotels in L.A. — you know, we've been through a lot together, and still we found ourselves waking up in L.A. making a record.”

The brothers agree that there will be more Zubia Brothers music released in the future, and it may surprise fans of the siblings.

“The thing is,” Mark says laughing. “We've written a lot of country songs, a whole album's worth.”