The guys at Whippoorwill posted a great review of our Sheffield gig on their Facebook page. Here’s the review in full;

Whippoorwill’s successful blues and country night came to the Green Room on the 17th, showcasing two very different groups of musicians.

Tongue placed firmly in cheek, mariachi band Pancho Ballard and The Banditos kicked off the evening with a song about a Mexican wrestler. Complete with sombreros, “Ay Carumbas!” and cardboard cacti, you (almost) felt transported to the streets of Guadelajara.
“We’ve travelled a great distance to be here tonight…We’ve come from Bolton”. The most authentic mariachi band to come out of the North West of England you’re ever likely to see.
Pancho Ballard set the tone for the evening, ensuring everyone was in high spirits for the main attraction; The Water Tower Bucket Boys. The guys from Portland, Oregon, had folks on their feet dancing to their toe-tappin’ bluegrass Americana, turning the Green Room into a small scale barn dance! It was a real coup for Whippoorwill to catch the Bucket Boys on the European leg of their tour, however, these events have seen a fair few big names take to the stage, having brought C.W. Stoneking to The Stockroom in May, and they’re looking to attract the best blues and roots artists to the city very soon.
To hear about upcoming whippoorwill events, go to their myspace page: www.myspace.com/whippoorwillsheffield

The article was published on Exposed magazine. I’ll post some photos of this gig as soon as they’ve been developed.

Tags: Facebook, sheffield, whippoorwill

Hola amigos!

We’ve been designing t-shirts and have come up with two designs, each potentially in two different colours. We’re looking to sell them at gigs but need a bit of info before we place an order.

Firstly, have a look and tell us your favourite design and colour. Then tell us what size you would be buying. Please note that this is by no means an order, it just gives us an idea of what might be popular. We’ve not decided on a price yet but it will definitely be under ten English pounds.

Here are the designs;

Yellow logo

Blue logo

Yellow Fandito

Blue Fandito

To tell us which you like, sizes etc, just comment on this post. Gracias!

Tags: merchandise, t-shirts

Things have been a little quiet on the Banditos front in the past month or so but we have a couple of gigs coming up in August that are worth mentioning.

First up we’re at Whippoorwill’s night in Sheffield supporting the Water Tower Bucket Boys, all the way from Portland, Oregon in the old U S of A! They start their tour of England and Ireland on August 9th and on the 10th they’re appearing on Mark Lamaar’s Radio 2 show.

We support them in Sheffield on Tuesday August 17th. The venue is the Green Room on Devonshire Street. Click HERE to see a map to the venue. Doors open at 7.30 and we’re on sometime between 8.30-8.45. Tickets are £4 and can be purchased here – http://www.wegottickets.com/event/87597

The following Saturday (August 21st) we’re appearing with Tramtown Junction at Preston’s Bitter Suite venue. As far as I know, admission is free. Tramtown Junction will be on first with the Banditos closing the evening. Doors are probably around 8-ish with the first band probably on around 9pm. Doritos may be making an appearance for those of you who are fans of genuine Mexican cuisine…

Tags: gigs, preston, sheffield

We recently played the Hole Note acoustic club which is held upstairs at Hole In’t Wall, Hebden Bridge. It was a great, fun gig with a fantastic audience, some great acts and just an all round brilliant atmosphere.

The whole (hole!) night was reviewed by Andrew Sugden of the Yorkshire Gig Guide. Here’s our bit;

Then it was time for Pancho Ballad (sic) and the Banditos, a great band featuring drums, spanish guitar, two trumpets a trombone and lots of fun!! They play a sort of Mexican Scar from Bolton with a BIG BIG SOUND. Fun songs, Mex-Bolton Perkins soup Song with funky rhythms, story telling donkeys, cut throats and war, haircuts and hats. They have a fun boozed harmonic appeal cut from superb tight musicianship; and the hole Note Audience loved them, dancing spontaneoulsly, cheering, shouting and clapping to the collision of Mexican Bolton rhythms.

I love this review, he was obviously taking a lot of very quick notes. It comes across like a William Burroughs gig review (if he ever did them). You can read the whole article at the Yorkshire Gig Guide.

Even better, he also filmed our first two numbers and here it is for your pleasure!

Lucha Libre, the opening track from Five Songs For Oscar, has been featured on the CD Baby Music Discovery podcast - http://musicdiscovery.cdbabypodcast.com/

This podcast showcases the best of the music that can be purchased at CD Baby and we’re honoured to have been included. Go listen, maybe even subscribe through iTunes.

And don’t forget, if you like that song, there are four more that are just as good on the E.P.! Click here to buy it…

A few months ago I put the word out that the Banditos were looking for an animated video for The Cut-Throat of Old Mexico. By complete chance, an animation studio called Pew 36 were looking to make a video in the Spaghetti Western genre – perfect timing!

After a few emails between Adam Comiskey (the producer and director) and I, we agreed to put the project into motion. Done as a trailer for the as yet unmade movie, ‘Pancho’, the video shows zombie gunslinger Maverick McGore battle against a town overrun by cactus monsters and an evil sheriff.

We’d like to thank Adam and his studio for the great work they did on the video and are keeping our fingers crossed that the movie gets made, as we’re going to try to persuade him that we need to do the whole soundtrack! Enjoy the video below.

Free music anybody? Certainly amigos, as our debut album is now completely free to download from our website (and Five Songs For Oscar may well follow it). All you need to do is right-click on El Bandito Muerto to download it.

We’ve decided to make it free because it doesn’t really cost us anything to let you have a digital download and we’d like as many people to hear it as possible. With that in mind, you’re welcome to share the album with your friends, on file-sharing networks, torrents – whatever!

This leaves me feeling slightly guilty about the people who have actually paid money for the download. When we work it out we’ll try to sort of some sort of special gift to those of you who’ve already paid money for it. Also, the CD version is still for sale over at www.cdbaby.com/ballardmusic2 if you’d rather have a proper physical copy.

Speaking of recordings, we’ve been busy writing songs for the next E.P. The subjects range from a child neglected by his father, to a drunken soldier trying to forget painful memories all the way through to an Argentinian tango about Parkinson’s Disease. So far it’s going really well and we’re all very excited about it.

We’ve also been looking for a studio to record Mexican Boy in the Snow in. The song has been a live favourite for quite a while now but we’ve never recorded it. We intend to release it as a Christmas single this coming December and so decided to go somewhere nice to lay the tracks down. We’ve found a few awesome looking places and I personally am extremely excited about going into a studio for a couple of days and being a proper band!

Keep checking the site and don’t forget, you can follow us on Twitter (@pbandbanditos) and we have a Facebook page – just search for Pancho Ballard and the Banditos.

Oh, and before I forget, we’ve got a merchandise store! It’s over at Reverb Nation and it’s got a few great t-shirts with more on the way – http://www.reverbnation.com/store/index/artist_458517

And that, I promise, is everything!

Gracias amigos.

Tags: Christmas, Facebook, free download, Parkinson's Disease, Reverb Nation, Studio, t-shirts, Twitter

Ay caramba, it’s all been happening recently!

I’m proud to announce that Five Songs For Oscar is completed and on sale now. It has five songs (obviously) and has a picture of a donkey on the front – Oscar. Hence the title.

Meet Oscar...

The full track listing is;

1. Lucha Libré
2. Soup Song
3. The Cut-throat of Old Mexico
4. Two Caballeros
5. The Painter

You can preview some of the tracks over at our MySpace site. The E.P. is available as a digital download from our online store and comes as a ZIP file complete with artwork. We’re hoping to get a PDF online which will have full lyrics, credits and photos, but it’s not quite ready yet. We’ll also make a physical CD available on the site, once technical stuff about shipping is sorted. Be patient amigos, be patient…

Not only have we released the E.P. but we’ve filmed our very first video. On a cold December afternoon, Dick, Luke and I sat down at Dick’s kitchen table and ate soup. Lots of soup. The result can be seen in the video below. Our thanks go to Ian Brown who filmed and edited the whole thing. Great work my friend.

And finally, as if that wasn’t enough, we had a great stroke of fortune last night. We were lucky enough to play at the Bitter Suite in Preston with Darwen band, Tramtown Junction. Unknown to us, in the audience was a DJ from Radio Lancashire. After the gig he came over to buy a CD and asked us which track he should play on his show! I told him to take it home and pick his favourite. The show is called On The Wire and our track will be played sometime between 10 and 12 on Saturday night (23rd Jan). I’ll post a link to their listen again page next Sunday for those who miss it (including us, we’re playing at a private charity gig).

So, a busy couple of months so far. An excellent couple of months.

Pancho

Tags: Five Songs For Oscar, MySpace, radio, video

Hola amigos.

I’m very excited this week because the work on our new E.P., Five Songs For Oscar, is almost done. All that’s left to do is the mastering process, which I’m doing myself so fingers crossed and hope I do a good job.

The recording process has been remarkably stress free and the Banditos did a great job recreating our unique sound on record. To celebrate we had our Christmas outing last night and my head’s still a bit sore. Many things were discussed (most of which I can’t mention on this public forum due to reasons of taste and common decency) but one thing we were all in agreement with is what a great year we’ve had. Just two gigs but a lot of changes, a lot of work and now an excellent E.P. to prove that we were actually doing something all the while we were away from the gigging scene.

We should be a lot more visible next year as we try to put as many smiles on as many faces as we can. Hopefully the E.P. will continue to provide the smiles once we’ve packed up and gone home. Speaking of which, here’s something that I hope will also bring a smile to your face…

If you don’t want to miss news of the E.P.’s release I suggest you look over at the columns to the right and join the mailing list. You also get a free song to download and just as soon as I pull my finger out there’ll be a special Christmas tune to all subscribers.

Thanks for reading,

Pancho

Ay caramba! We did our first ever photoshoot yesterday, in a field near Preston with Oscar the donkey. Unlike our song, this burro behaved perfectly and did exactly what he was told – stand still and eat carrots.

You can see some of the results here by clicking on the Oscar picture;

Mmm, carrots!

Tags: donkey, Oscar, photoshoot