Huevos Rancheros honour AC/DC, the Shadows, and Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass on Get Outta Dodge

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON OCT. 10, 1996

By Steve Newton

Last year, Calgary instro-rockers Huevos Rancheros blew my mind with Dig In!, a colossal collection of surf-raunch tunes that took the best elements of Dick Dale, Duane Eddy, and Link Wray and gave them a feisty, prairie-punk edge. The disc made my top 10 of the year, and with its 13 tracks and nearly one-hour running time, it offered quantity and quality.

So when I discover that the new Huevos album, Get Outta Dodge, is a mere seven tracks long, I can’t way to track down guitarist Brent J. Cooper at his Calgary hangout and lodge a complaint.

“I guess we’re lazy,” he says, chuckling. But after further prompting, Cooper goes on to explain how the Huevos felt rushed to deliver whatever songs they had because, after the departure of founding bassist Graham Evans, rumours were circulating that the band didn’t even exist.

“People had been telling us that we broke up,” he says, “and we’d been seeing it on the Internet and in magazines. So when [new bassist] Tom Kennedy came into the picture, we really wanted to get something out quickly.”

I suppose that’s as good an excuse as any for releasing a mini-album. And what Get Outta Dodge lacks in length, it certainly makes up for in spirit. With Kennedy joining original drummer Richie Lazarowich in the rhythm section, Huevos Rancheros are heavier than ever, as local fans will learn when the newly renovated trio headlines the Starfish Room next Thursday (October 17).

They might even get some of that fiery freshness across–as they do on the new CD–with 60 seconds or so of AC/DC‘s scorching ode to the fast life, “Sin City”.

“We all really like AC/DC a lot,” says Cooper. “In fact, we spend a lot more time listening to AC/DC than we do instrumental music or anything. And when we went down the West Coast, that was our opening [song] for the tour.”

Apart from the brief Powerage excerpt, the only non-original track on Get Outta Dodge is a version of “The Lonely Bull”, which was first recorded by Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass in 1962. Most everyone has encountered that tune’s haunting melody at one time or another.

“I’m sure everybody heard it when they were a kid,” says Cooper. “We had played it onstage a few times, sort of a different version, and then we tried it once with Brian Connelly, the former Shadowy Men guitar player. He joined us onstage one night in Calgary, and it still didn’t work, so we thought we’d tackle it in the studio, just for fun. We were gonna call it ‘The Lonely, Lonely Bull’, ’cause we slowed it down and swamped it up a a bit.”

Another standout track on Get Outta Dodge–which almost makes up for the shortness of the disc–is “Shadow of the Apache”, a slightly veiled tribute to the kings of British instro-rock.

“I’m not really an instro buff,” confides Cooper, “and I’ll probably get shot by all those guys in Livewire magazine, but I think the Shadows had one of their first hits with ‘Apache’. In fact, the main riff of the song is kind of a lift from some Shadows number that Richie and I had heard. We didn’t know who would get it and who wouldn’t.”

To hear the full audio of my 2003 interview with Brent J. Cooper, when he was leading his band the Ramblin’ Ambassadors, subscribe to my Patreon page, where you can eavesdrop on over 700 of my uncut, one-on-one conversations with musicians since 1982.