June 20th Concert

The time is near for an exciting moment in Mariachi Relampago history. On Saturday, June 20th, we will be accompanying Manuel Vargas at the Mariachi Vargas concert held at the Long Center. We've worked on a few tunes as we geared up for this performance. Manuelito will be perfoming Los Laureles, Popurri de Jose Alfredo Jimenez, and Granada. We may possibly play Gracias Papa.The popurri took a lot of work as we needed to have consistant "adornos" in the piece. For this performance we've added two players to help us out. Jennifer Acosta will be on violin, and Carlton Galvez will be on Harp. Jenn is a former member of the group and is always a fun person to be around. Carlton is making his debut on harp. Our opener will be Amo Esta Tierra.

On top of Mariachi Relampago performing, the University of Texas Mariachi (Mariachi Tejas) will also be performing. As the director of the ensemble I aaembled students of UT, Texas State, Austin Community College, and Texas A&M Kingsville for this performance. Some of Relampago's members are students at a couple of these institutions, so they will be perfoming double duty. UT will be accompanying three of the past winners of the Best in the U.S. Vocal Competition: Victoria Acosta, Esteban Velasquez, and Virginia Steele. Their opener will be El Gavilan. Both, UT and Mariachi Relampago will combine to perform La Negra with Pan Am's Bailet Folklorico to close the first half of the show.

The excitement really gets cooking when "El Mejor Mariachi del Mundo", Mariachi Vargas de Tecalitlan takes the stage for the entire 2nd half of the concert. These guys set the standard and always deliver a Grade A performance.

We Hope to see you there!

Mother's Day 2009

We had one heck of a weekend. The yearly traditional chingasos happened, although it was earlier than usual. In all, we went from 5:30 Saturday afternoon, until 8:30 on Sunday night. We had a couple of small breaks where we would sneak in a 15-20 minute cat-nap. Some guys even laid out on a stranger's lawn to sleep somewhat comfortable. Good thing Alexander was on the lookout for us to wake up. Many happy customers and a tired Mariachi Relampago, but it was all worth it for everyone. Hondo takes home the award for looking the worst at the end of the day. He usually turns red at times, but by the end of the day he was always red and what hair he had couldn't be combed. Plus, that shirt of his was exhausted from all the flexing it did all day.
PAZ!!!

Photo Shoot

We had our photo shoot on a nice and sunny Sunday afternoon. Our website will soon feature a gallery of our current members, so be on the lookout for them. Enjoy a sample of one photo from Chaparral Photo.

SXSW

We had a good time tonight at Serrano's Symphony Square! They hosted an "offsite" SXSW event featuring Rick Treviño, Max Baca, Willie Alvarado, and of course, Mariachi Relámpago. We opened the show and accompanied Willie at the end of our set. We ran to Jalisco's to do our restaurant gig, but came back and did a couple of tunes with Rick and his band. It was a fun night and hopefully we do it again next year.