If you run into Sergio Mendoza at HoCo Fest on Sunday and he doesn't stop to say hello, don't take it personally. These days, he's a busy man.
And on the final night of HoCo Fest, he may be the busiest man in Tucson. He will be closing down the four-night festival with his main project, Sergio Mendoza y La Orkesta, and fulfilling sideman duties with both Calexico and festival headliners DeVotchKa.
"It's going to be crazy," Mendoza said. "But it's going to be a lot of fun."
Mendoza is back in Tucson after spending a great part of this year on the road with both DeVotchKa and French-born Tucson singer Marianne Dissard.
"We were in Europe, we were all over the United States, just playing and playing," he said.
Mendoza has been involved in multiple music projects for several years now.
For years, he played with The Jons and had his own jazz-rock outfit, Seven to Blue. He also gigged around with several salsa bands before getting the idea for Y La Orkesta.
"I loved mambo, but I thought we could bring something different to it," Mendoza said. "We play fast and we play hard."
The band formed in late 2008 and has been playing to enthusiastic crowds since.
"People seem to like it," he said.
Mendoza is finishing up the band's first album at Wavelab and hopes to release it early next year, just in time for a tour.
"We want to get out there and show people what we're doing again," he said.
Sideman to solo
Mendoza became a sideman for Tucson's most popular band in 2007.
Nick Luca had been playing guitar and keyboards for Calexico, but he fell ill and the band was looking for someone to fill in for a show in Utah on the next night.
"I knew of Calexico, I knew they were pretty popular," Mendoza said. "Joey (Burns) called me up, he got my number from Nick, and said, 'Hey, we want to see how you play.'
"Then he asked if I wanted to go to Utah and play with them, and I said 'Of course.' "
Burns, who founded Calexico in 1996 with John Convertino, came to Mendoza's house late that night. They listened to records, talked and then sat down to play.
"After playing a bit, Joey asked me to take a solo, and I thought, 'OK, here's my time to shine,' " Mendoza said. "As soon as I finished, Joey picked up the phone, called his manager and told him to book me a flight to Utah."
Mendoza has been playing with Calexico ever since, performing all over the United States, Canada and Mexico. He said playing with the band has been a constant learning process.
"I've been playing with them for four years now," Mendoza said, "and I feel like on my last tour with them, I just then finally realized what they wanted me to do as keyboard player."
Perfect fit for DeVotchKa
Even though DeVotchKa has been recording albums at Wavelab in Tucson since 2003, it took a trip to its home state of Colorado in 2010 for Mendoza to finally meet the band.
Mendoza was playing with Calexico at the Aspen Jazz Festival. He was introduced to the members of DeVotchKa through Burns and Convertino, who had known the band for years.
He kept in touch with DeVotchKa after heading back to Tucson, and several months later, he started getting phone calls and emails from Shawn King, the band's percussionist and trumpet player.
"Shawn kept saying things like, 'Yeah, we're going on tour soon,' " Mendoza said. "And I kept saying, 'cool, I'm going on tour, too.' I had no idea he was trying to feel me out to see if I wanted to join them."
Mendoza was about to head to Europe with Marianne Dissard. When King finally asked Mendoza directly about playing a show with them in Denver, he had to turn them down.
"I was bummed out about not being to go to Denver," he said, "but I had already committed to Marianne, and I had to be professional."
DeVotchKa was willing to wait, however, and asked Mendoza to join it on its tour a month later.
"We realized we were going to need to add a musician for the tour, and Sergio turned out to be more than perfect," said Nick Urata, the singer and guitarist for DeVotchKa.
"When he sits down to play the piano, he'll definitely blow your mind. And he plays guitar and percussion and saxophone, and he does it all well."
No matter how busy he gets, Mendoza said he has no plans to stop playing with good bands and musicians that will have him.
"It's been great, it's been fun," he said. "When I go out on the road with these bands, we're all friends.
"Everybody I play with just enjoys being musicians. And not only that, they're good citizens. It sounds weird to put it that way, but they're just very helpful people and they treat everybody really nice. I think that's the most important thing."
