Hello all! It's been a while since I have written a blog! I'm not sure where to start, but I guess I'll start from the beginning of this year. After our first gigs and the release of our first album, the band went through a lot of changes. First, our producer and bass player, Joel Jimenez, decided to leave the project and focus on his newly-open studio in Goshen, IN. This called for the need to find a new bass player, who turned out to be a good friend of mine, Adam Hartung. Since Adam joined the band things have been going great! Our line up has never been stronger, and our sound has improved dramatically. 

Today you'll find Sonny Carreño sitting behind the drum set, guiding us through all the rhythmic travels of his playing. Standing next to him is Adam "Lo-Rider" Hartung, keeping us all grounded to the roots of it all. In the front you'll find more familiar faces; Adam Carter, enhancing the harmonies and embellishing the sounds of the whole ensemble, and Sam "Wassup Daddy" Que, the magical creature that blows the most beautiful melodies you could ever ask for.

Although we all had a summer full of other projects, we knew we would get back together to work on what is becoming a new phase for Lalo Cura. We resumed activities at the beginning of September to work on new songs and play a few shows. We had the pleasure to play at Chicory Cafe and at The Well, both in South Bend, IN. 

Now, we are getting prepared to get in the studio and record what will become our second record. This week we'll be playing at Gateway Cellar Winery in Goshen at 7 p.m., and we hope to see a lot of our friends from Goshen there! In the meantime, keep in touch, "Like" us on Facebook and come see one of our concerts. 


P.S. Happy birthday John Lennon!


-Rafael Chávez y Moreno

It is impossible to describe the excitement we felt during our first two gigs, but I'll give it a shot! First of all, we've been very lucky to have had our first gig with our original drummer, Adam Nussbaum. Last fall Nussbaum moved to Eau Claire, WI, just before we finished recording for our debut album. Since then, it's been a bit hard to line up gigs, but we have done our best to make it work. For our first gig, we had the honor to open for The Main Squeeze, an awesome Funk band based in Chicago. The gig, to say the least, was awesome! We had a blast and although we were a bit nervous, we played our hearts out and everything went well. We also enjoyed playing our first gig with the talented Sam Que, a phenomenal local tenor sax player.

Our second gig was a bit more interesting due to the circumstances in which it came to be. Since we had a short notice for the gig, we decided to put something together as quick as we could! We found out that Adam wouldn't be able to join us for this gig, so we decided to try something completely different. We came up with the idea of playing an acoustic set with the help of our good friends and local musicians Sonny Carreño (percussion) and Nayo Ulloa (charango and kena). We had a chance to do one practice before the gig. We knew things wouldn't go perfect, but we were confident enough to try it out on stage. Aside from a few technical problems, the concert was well-received. We sold a few albums, and people seemed to enjoy the music. The sound that was produced by the combination of the kena with the charango and the tenor sax was very special. We enjoyed it so much, we decided to revisit this line up in the near future. We hope 2013 will bring more opportunities to play, and to experiment with this new sound.