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

We started recording an E.P. this week. Armed with a modest amount of recording equipment we set up in our usual rehearsal room, DOA Studios in Bolton, and recorded a rhythm track to Soup Song. It was captured on film by my friend Ian Brown, who is going to be putting together a small piece about the song. Here’s a very small snippet in which Dick explains what the song is about.

He’s actually serious you know, he really does want do a whole gig that combines music and cookery. It’s not enough for him to play songs about food, he wants to actually serve it during the gig. Not only that, he wants to cook it during the gig. I’ve tried to explain to him various points of Health & Safety, of how it might be just slightly dangerous to have a gas stove onstage, of how using sharp knives in a venue where much alcohol has been consumed (and that’s just Jay and Ben, our trumpeters!) is not a good idea but no, he insists it can be done.

So, I’m leaving it to him. I know he’s going to keep slyly introducing food songs into the set and one day he’ll probably sneak a cucumber on to the stage, disguised as a shaker or something. And eventually he’ll come up with a way to do it that is both safe and practical. When that day comes I’ll be a very happy man as I’m sure it will be a great event, but until that day I’m content to just sing about food, prepare food and eat food; just not all at the same time.

Tags: dick, DOA Studios, Ian Brown, recording, soup song, video

Ay caramba! The website is finally ready. When I say ready, I mean ready enough, in a state of readiness that I think is fit for public consumption. I expect before long I’ll have emails telling me pictures don’t load, text is too small, the shop doesn’t work etc, etc, etc… but you’ve got to start somewhere so here it is.

I encourage you to explore, try to break stuff, see if it all works. You can look at pictures of us, you can listen to us and you can even buy our album (or individual songs if there are some you don’t like – I’m sick of The Burro…). There are links to all of the pages over on the right hand side of your screen so pour yourself a tequila, make yourself comfy and enjoy amigos, enjoy!

Pancho

Tags: info, news, pages, Website

Hola amigos. Welcome to the Pancho Ballard and the Banditos website. I hope you find it pleasingly warm and friendly, and that the desert wind doesn’t blow too much sand into your eyes.

If you don’t know who we are look for the page called About the Banditos where you can read a potted history of all things Bandito. There should be some music lying around the site somewhere – if you can find it I’ve probably not put it up for your consumption yet so keep checking back.

Before long the site will be full of sounds, photos and even things to buy – not just music but badges, fridge magnets, t-shirts, posters and hopefully much more. No Doritos though, which is a shame as I do like a nice, cheesy triangle.

Pancho

Tags: badges, banditos, Doritos, fridge magnets, music, pancho, pancho ballard, photos, posters, t-shirts