Raul Malo: Reaching out for an eclectic mix

The way his latest album turned out was one of those "happy accidents" for Raul Malo.

The former front man for the country band the Mavericks cut the basic tracks for Sinners & Saints at his home studio in Nashville - playing most instruments himself and, for the first time, working without a coproducer.

"I was in the studio recording 'San Antonio Baby,' " Malo recalls from his Music City home, referring to a jaunty Tex-Mex number. "And I wanted an Augie Meyers-type of keyboard sound. I kept messing with what I had, trying different things, and it just wasn't working. Then it hit me: 'What am I doing? Why don't I just call Augie?' So that's how that started."

When Meyers, famed for his work on the Vox Continental organ with the Sir Douglas Quintet and the Texas Tornadoes, agreed to play on the track, Malo headed to his friend Ray Benson's studio in Austin. There, he ended up working not only with Meyers, but also with guitarist Shawn Sahm, son of the great Doug Sahm ("Sir Douglas"), and with accordionist Michael Guerra and the Trishas, a female vocal quartet.

The result is perhaps the most richly rewarding album of the 45-year-old Malo's distinguished career - and it is as hard to categorize as anything he has ever done. The big-voiced singer, capable of both Orbison-esque balladry and Sinatra-style crooning, mixes rock, pop, country, and sounds from his Latin heritage, this time with some added Tex-Mex spice.

"At a certain point, you just have to go for it, and it worked out great," the Miami native says of how his Lone Star sojourn turned out to be more than he had planned. "Just getting out of that bubble" of working alone at home "was really nice." Ultimately, however, he believes the album is his most personal: "It's all me."

One of the highlights of Sinners & Saints is a killer version of the Rodney Crowell ballad " 'Til I Gain Control Again." It's a favorite for Malo, who will play three solo acoustic shows in the area in the next two weeks. But there's more behind its selection for the album.

Before the Mavericks went on to become a smart, tradition-minded-yet-progressive country act - much like Crowell - Malo remembers leaving the group's first rehearsal feeling discouraged.

"You've got to remember, this is 1989, in Miami, Fla., and we're just getting over Flock of Seagulls and all that bull- of the '80s. We're a country/rockabilly band in Miami. I left that rehearsal not sure what I was going to do."

Crowell happened to be playing in South Beach that night, and Malo went to see him.

"When I saw Rodney that night, it blew my mind," Malo recalls. "He had the greatest band . . . and he rocked. He was part rock-and-roll, he was funny, he was a storyteller, he was country - but not the kind of country I hated. It was the country I loved.

"It changed my life."