La Musica

Here are the lyrics to the song that accompanies our Train float. This song will be sung about once out of every four or five song played during the parade. The other songs will be traditional conjunto songs from the Valley.

Jane and Gary Norian and I met yesterday to work on the music (OK, Gary and Jane worked on the music and I just said I like it). Of course, if you have been reading the blog, this will make sense, since the float is based on that old photo of four bandits who captured an old steam engine and we're gonna have them represented by four pinatas. Imagine Mexican accordion ballad, 12 string guitars, fast pace, drama, etc.):

FOUR YOUNG BANDITOS

Four young banditos took over a train
They went looking for treasure
But weren’t expecting the rain.

One of them said “revolution’s on high”
But he murmured to himself, “I don’t want to die!”

The second young bandit
He spun and he spoke -
“I wanted a life
For a broken cowpoke.
But I’m just a grave robber
No pride on my part.
I’m only the driver
This ain’t no fresh start.”

The third bandit he cried
From his horse and his throat
“I wanted to love
Ever note that I wrote.
But I’m never a poet,
always a clown -
Just a green cowpoke laughed out of town."

I’m the last young bandito
I’m so sad to say.
If my mother only knew
She would die before the day...

So I thought of my mother
and just walked away.

If you need a bandito
And you want a new start
Just go your own way
I’ll take my own part


Too many boxcars
Too much old smoke
Too many lawmen
In love with the rope

Four young banditos went looking for fame
Each whispered to me, “I’m sorry I came.”


Actually, these lyrics have changed a tiny bit, but you get the idea. Jane is on board for singing it during the parade and I've asked Rey, the guy who runs the Conjunto Hall of Fame in San Benito, to line up Gloria Jean and Raymond, who were on last year's float. Gloria is probably the best female accordion player in the State of Texas, no bullshit, and she's no where near 20. Raymond is amazing on the 12 string bass guitar (the baja sexto) but is also pretty crazy at hard-core rock rifts on a stratocaster.

I will know in the next couple of days if they can do it but Rey thinks they will. He also thinks that the whole Conjunto Estrella band might be available (Gloria Jean and Raymond play in that band). We'll see.


Here's the band in a prior performance.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8at46Ws2Cjo

There's also an awesome clip on youtube of Gloria Jean playing a solo with Lil Joe y La Famila, perennial Latin Grammy Winners, and blowing Lil Joe's audience away. She shows up at the 4:45 mark.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_yGy4vrlWuk

And another of her doing an old Freddy Fender song.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZjw9LiQRww&NR=1

I asked Gary to reassure me -- as he was dolling up the bandito song -- that the band could learn the song quickly, but when I told him a little about them, he just dismissed my concerns.  There shouldn't be any problems with that.

I also found the perfect bushel basket in Houston to serve as the smokestack for the locomotive (and to house the smoke machine which I now proudly possess).

Jane and Kristy and Rachel are in Mission on Friday to start the decoration of the floats. Yay!!!

Two Auctions and a Skinned Boiler

So Friday we were all set to go to work and a friend calls and says that there are storage shed auctions all day long.  Judd and I set out to look.  Judd wanted things he could resell.  I wanted to find diaries, great photographs, and Picassos.  

This lady went looking for a new toe.

 But this is all we found.

So we went back to work, struggling to get into the spirit.

The boiler was complete on the outside but needed its first layer of skin.

Forget it.  Time for a late lunch.  We went to a place called Pepe's, where no one spoke a word of English.

However, the food was SO MUCH BETTER THAN EL PATIO!!  (We got it to go.)
  

Danny was still working on the motorized wheels.  The little paint mixer motors didn't have enough power to work the wheels, which we estimate to be about 20+ pounds before any decoration is added.

Judd and I started cutting up the green material for outdoor, above-ground swimming pools.

It scuffed easily because it has been living out in the sun for a long time.

We are regularly visited by Danny's grandkids, and when we are, all work stops.

So I tried showing what the bandit outfits are gonna look like.  I got tired and went home.

The next morning, I showed up to an empty shop.  Apparently the rats had eaten the kids.

One of the kids had left a momento.

Looking at the board carefully, you can see that our plans have changed here and there.

That green swimming pool material was staring us in the face.

But there was a hardware store going out of business in San Juan and everything was being auctioned off.  So we went.  We bought 45 gallons of paint, a truck-load of screws, bolts and other fasteners, and a bunch of other stuff to re-stock Danny's shop.

And most of the candy.

Oh, and we have the first skin on the boiler.  Maybe it's starting to look like a train.

"The Wheel Spun Me"

Today was one of those days where, worse than spinning your wheels, the wheel spins you.  Or at least that was Danny's take on it.  It LOOKED like we were doing stuff.  But a lot of the stuff involved making big boards smaller and then making those same boards bigger.  And while Judd and I did that, Danny tried to get the first wheel on the locomotive mounted and tried to make it spin using the motor from an old paint mixer.   

We did center the final disc into place for the steam engine and we secured the entire thing so that it won't move off center while it's rolling down the road.  Then we turned to building the service ramp (or whatever it is) that surrounds the boiler about a third of the way up the boiler.

We haven't done much with the coal car in a while, except that while I was in Houston, Danny and Judd painted most of it black and got the motors running on all of its wheels.  Believe it or not, most of this trailer is done, except for the decoration.

The floor of the main float (the locomotive) turns out to be pretty rotten so it was jacked up and reinforced.

In case you're ever in Mission and need a small hardware store, drop on by the unofficial Danny McClain Hardware shop, conveniently located in this 18 wheeler trailer.  Specializing in an endless supply of nails, screws, brackets, plates, and other things to make things hold together.

Here's most of the boiler in place and secured (including with a 12 foot screw running through the middle of it).  We ditched the original idea of running 6 12 foot screws through it and just used 2x4s instead.

Sawdust in your eye.

Sawdust in your nails.

Me working on top of the top platform of the locomotive.

The bits of the larger boards that we made into smaller boards and then later made into larger boards (we were recycling wood from last year's float by removing all the screws and staples; after it was all done, we realized that it would have been a good idea to go pay $1.80 a board for new 1x2s).  The idea was to take 72 inch boards and make them 110 1/4 inch boards.  We did it (8 times) but it took most of the afternoon. 

When the screws are too long, we just grind them off.  It turns out that we used a lot of oak last year and you can't staple oak very well.  So you screw it.  And you have to screw all the way through it.  And then you grind off the half inch of screw that protrudes through the board.  Simple. 

Respite.

Doyt's Place