Calexico, Tucson Symphony come together for long-awaited collab

Joey Burns and John Convertino of Calexico were all set to make the band’s Tucson Symphony Orchestra debut back in early 2012.

But the pair bowed out courtesy of a scheduling snafu, and the Indigo Girls took their place.

Fast forward a dozen years almost to the day, Calexico is making up the missed TSO date on Saturday, Jan. 13.

Calexico — in addition to Burns and Convertino, the band includes Sergio Mendoza, Brian Lopez, Scott Colbert, Rick Peron and Jacob Valenzuela — will join TSO Music Director José Luis Gomez and the orchestra in a special concert that is part of the HSL Properties Tucson Jazz Festival.

“Calexico is an icon of Tucson’s music scene. Having the chance to share the stage with them is meaningful for us and our mission and meaningful also because it ... resonates with everybody in the community, not only our subscribers but for those who’ve never been exposed to the orchestra,” Gomez said.

Tickets for the show at the Linda Ronstadt Music Hall, 260 S. Church Ave., are long gone, and Gomez said he anticipates the audience will include hundreds of people who will be attending a symphony concert for the first time.

Calexico’s program features a couple of songs without the orchestra, including “Sunken Waltz” and “Not Even Stevie Nicks” from the band’s 2003 breakthrough album “Feast Of Wire” and a dozen or so songs that have been arranged for orchestra, five of which were arranged by DeVotchKa’s Tom Hagerman specifically for the TSO concert.

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The other arrangements came from Calexico’s 2013 album “Spiritoso,” recorded with the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra and the Deutsches Filmorchester Babelsberg in Germany.

Burns and Convertino started Calexico in 1996 after playing with Howe Gelb’s Giant Sand and forming their own band, Friends of Dean Martin, with Bill Elm. Calexico, taking its name from the California border town, fused the traditional Latin sounds of mariachi, conjunto, cumbia and tejano with country, jazz and post-rock to create desert noir, a sound that has largely defined Tucson’s music scene since the 1990s.

Gomez said quiet conversations about doing a concert with Calexico started pre-pandemic.

“We’ve been kind of dancing with the idea and I’m glad it is happening finally,” he said, adding that he is not surprised the concert quickly sold out. “I knew that Tucson identifies with Calexico. There was no doubt that this was going to be a hit.”

Calexico is the second Tucson band to join the TSO this season. In September, Sergio Mendoza and his Orkesta Mendoza collaborated with the orchestra as part of the citywide Mexican Independence Day celebration.

Saturday’s concert, which starts at 7:30 p.m., falls on the orchestra’s 95th birthday.