Dude Cervantes and The Panchos follow up last year’s live record with their second album: a carefully considered studio effort that blends that live energy with focused instrumental and engineering maturity.
Billion Dollar Art comes out less than a year after their first album, The Ride or Die of Dude Cervantes and the Panchos, a live album recorded in Hollywood in 2023. Listeners who heard the first album will hear a couple of familiar tracks. Both the title track, Billion Dollar Art, and track six, Lesson Learned, were included on its predecessor. There were six songs on the first album and seven on this one, boasting just 5 songs of unheard material here. Although a relatively short track list, it offers enough content due to its prog-rock and psychedelic nature. Track lengths peak at over 9 minutes, so you won’t be left wanting more music.
Dude Cervantes has a strong resume, an impressive body of work, and a wide range of skills in music. He obviously has a massive drive and work ethic. He was quite recently the musical director of a live production of The Last Waltz, after being given the green light from The Band’s estate. He is also releasing this album on his own label, Blind Owl Records. All of this while also being both a live and session guitarist.
The album begins with a nice, feel-good song, Beautiful Day. A nice opener that sets a playful and not-fully-serious tone for the rest of the album. A song all about the little things in life that should be appreciated. This is swiftly followed up by another song of gratitude called Thank You, which is another upbeat West Coast-sounding tune with ethereal vocals and lots of tambourine work. Track three is the album’s lead-out and flagship single, Billion Dollar Art. The driving bass and drums in this one lay an entrancing foundation for Cervantes to go off and do his psychedelic thing on the guitar. In the first half, we have tremolo guitars panned left and right, giving us a very chilled-out, meditative experience; In the second half, the intensity rises to the point where we are reminded of The Doors’ rhythm section trying to keep up with Jim Morrison and Robby Krieger, as Dude Cervantes indulges quite rightly in one of his incendiary solos. He is at his creative best, and the rest of the band just keep on trucking. Saturday Night is a sing-along rock anthem with layered crowd backing vocals, and has the audience punching the air with fingerless leather gloves. Track five is Get In Line. A song with a theme as old as rock music itself. It is all about not being comfortable “working for the man 9 to 5”, and the reason for that being that “time’s ticking”. This song ends with a Free Bird-sounding outro, which boasts a similar tempo and feel to the Lynyrd Skynyrd classic. Track six is Lesson Learned, about how no matter if your day is positive or negative, there’s always a “lesson to be learned“, which has as much guitar work as words in every line of the verses and chorus. The album ends with “Reach Out”, a song that was destined to end an album, a positive message to look forward into a future after this album. The band really takes this track to church as they tell us to “Reach out and tell someone that you love them” and that “you are loved”.
This album has a very nostalgic sound that is cemented in the ’70s. As every song starts, we imagine a group of long-haired rockers walking confidently into the coolest of parties. It is definitely a record orchestrated by a guitarist. The punk-like vocals and direct Lyrics seem secondary to what is great musicianship, arrangement, and recording. It is fun, it is feel-good, and it is very enjoyable.
