LYNN — The Mavericks are the best live band on the concert circuit. No one else comes close.
Saturday night at Lynn Auditorium, a hepped-up near-capacity crowd braved the season’s first snowfall and danced the night away as the Miami-based outfit was at its swinging, high-octane best. Heck, fans were out of their seats and grooving to the pre-show music.
This was the Mavericks final show of 2017, a memorable year for the band. The criminally underappreciated unit, which has been around since 1989, started its own record label and most-recent album “Brand New Day” received two Grammy nominations, including one for Best Americana Album.
The Mavericks aren’t really Americana, but good luck trying to describe the band’s style. As frontman Raul Malo said from the stage Saturday, their music is indescribable. The foundation is country sass and Latin rhythms, but rockabilly, Dixieland jazz, R&B, punk, roadhouse blues and western swing hijack songs at the drop of drummer Paul Deakin’s hi-hat. Fans of Los Lobos, Tito Puente, Fats Domino, Chuck Berry, Doug Sahm’s Sir Douglas Quintet and Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys will find lots to love here.
There were nine musicians on stage, including accordion, baritone sax and trumpet, pumping out crazy rhythms and inciting dance riots all night. Their smiles were as wide as audience members’. Before the music started, couples staked out their spots on both sides of the auditorium. By song two, the full-speed-ahead “Damned if You Do,” the aisles were filled with gyrating bodies, and the security staff wisely let all shake their groove things. Even those who remained seated risked pulling a muscle due to over-exuberance.
The ringleader for all this wonderment is, of course, smooth customer Malo, whose Roy Orbison-like baritone easily handles songs as diverse as the Bee-Gee’s “How Can You Mend a Broken Heart” (dedicated to the families of those who’ve lost loved ones to gun violence), David Bowie’s “Heroes,” which closed the night (the sixth song of the encore; six songs!) on an unexpected but optimistic note, the ’50s crooning style of “As Long as There’s Loving Tonight” and their own rollicking genre mashups.
Malo stands center stage, lording over the proceedings like the cock of the walk, knowing his band is the best in the land.
Jerry Dale McFadden, the white-suited keyboardist who spins around like a deranged Pee-Wee Herman clone, and Eddie Perez, whose lead guitar work ranges from Eddie Van Halen heaviosity, to Mike Campbell rawness/tastefulness and Dick Dale-life surf freakouts, are both monster players.
And whenever the horn players and accordionist grab the spotlight, the fun quotient jumps off the charts.
Malo took a tumble during the encore, apparently tripping over a guitar cord, but with help from his mates he rebounded in short order. It was the only misstep during the Mavericks’ two glorious hours on stage.
Antigone Rising, a four-piece New York City-based alt-country band, wowed in a too-short opening set. The “all-female self-contained rock and roll band” displayed tremendous musicianship and glorious vocal harmonies in a collection of well-written songs that brought to mind at various times Joan Jett, the Bangles and Those Darlins.
