PORT TOWNSEND — Listen and hear the living, rocking, twangin’ proof: Music transcends time and difference.
This true story starts a little while back, as a band called Los Lobos opens for the Blasters, a roots-rock outfit, at the Whisky A Go Go in West Hollywood, Calif.
The latter band had Steve Berlin, a Jewish saxophone player from Philadelphia. And on this night, he was as smitten as just about everybody else around; Los Lobos — the Wolves — blew this Blaster’s mind with their revved-up rock ’n’ roll straight out of East L.A.
Discovering Los Lobos “was an amazingly powerful experience,” he recalled this week. It was like an explosion at the Whisky: though the Lobos had been together a good seven or eight years already, that club gig turned them into an “overnight” sensation.
“My exposure to Latin music was zero,” Berlin added. But there was a mutual attraction nonetheless, and then the guys in Los Lobos said: “There’s a sax part in some of these songs. Wanna learn?”
Oh yeah, said Berlin, who started out as a self-described “jazz snob” and then became an “R&B snob” when he moved to Los Angeles.
The Lobos — Louie Perez, Cesar Rosas, David Hidalgo, Conrad Lozano — did add Berlin’s sax to their sound. And that sound would stay hot, like a bluesy-rock-Mexican salsa, for the next 30-plus years.
Yes, it was a whole generation ago, circa 1981, that the guys met and, as Berlin puts it, found they belonged to the same musical tribe. And some 20 albums later, Los Lobos are going strong, touring the continent — and arriving in Port Townsend this Sunday.
The 7:30 p.m. show in Fort Worden State Park’s McCurdy Pavilion is the finale for the Centrum Foundation’s season of music festivals; tickets range from $25 to $55 at www.Centrum.org and 800-746-1982.
The band aims for a “kaleidoscope of sound,” Berlin says. “We start out with acoustic stuff, and then we traverse a lot of our disguises,” which range from fiery blues band to Mexican folk ensemble to Latin love-song crooners.
There’s a deep river to draw from, including the Lobos’ first major-label record “How Will the Wolf Survive?,” the pop-flavored “By the Light of the Moon,” the soundtrack for the movie “La Bamba,” the traditional Mexican record “La Pistola y el Corazón” and the dreamlike “Kiko.”
When asked what has kept him inspired all these years, Berlin said the band shares a fierce desire: to try something new every time.
“We treat every [record] like the first one. We try hard to challenge ourselves,” he said. “We try hard not to coast.”
“Kiko,” the subject of the “Kiko Live” concert DVD to be released Aug. 21, marked one of these departures.
The men sought to let their imaginations run, and to do “whatever felt right,” Berlin said. The attitude was “Let’s see what happens when we mix everything together; let’s see what kind of soup we can make.”
The soup bubbled over, as did critics.
“A landmark, then and now, ‘Kiko’ is mystical and mysterious, earthy and elegant,” critic George Varga wrote last December in the San Diego Union-Tribune.
The album “mixes Los Lobos’ vibrant roots-rock approach with elements of New Orleans funk, Cajun music and various Afro-Caribbean styles,” Varga noted.
Los Lobos will soon mark its 40th anniversary. For these men, the key to longevity has been artistic freedom for all, and not too many months in the tour van.
“We’re like any other family,” Berlin said. “We have good days and bad days. We have arguments that every other family in the world does.” But “we understand that this thing we make together is much greater than the sum of the parts.”
And they try for the “sane” touring schedule, say three weeks at a stretch, rather than the months on end they once did.
At the same time, nobody here is hindered from pursuing other projects. So Hidalgo has played on Bob Dylan’s three most recent albums, including “Tempest,” to be released Sept. 11. Perez is a playwright, and Berlin is a producer who spent much of May in South Africa, making a record with the Cape Town band Freshlyground.
And the fact that Berlin does not belong to the dominant ethnic group, that “we celebrate different holidays,” as he says, is so not a big deal. “Our mutual affection for much of the same music,” Berlin said, “superseded that” a long time ago.
As a band, Los Lobos has played with a galaxy of musical luminaries, from Mavis Staples to Elvis Costello. Their current tour includes the Kitchener Blues Festival in Ontario, Canada, this past Thursday and the NedFest in Colorado on Aug. 25.
So how does a band with four decades of music make a set list?
“That’s my job,” said Berlin. “I take a look at the room,” to rough out an agenda — but the Lobos are about flexibility.
“Fifty percent of the time, the band will vacate the list. It’s there if we get stuck,” he said. But “if anybody wants to go somewhere else,” they do, just like always.
