Interview: Gaby Moreno on “Dusk” and Van Dyke Parks

It is time for americana to welcome more latin influence.

Guatemalan artist and Los Angeles resident Gaby Moreno is on a mission to bring more of a latin influence to americana, building on the pioneering work of Los Lobos and Linda Ronstadt. Gaby Moreno is using her standing as a Grammy-winning indie latin artist to bring her music to an americana audience. This is evident on her new album ‘Dusk’, which received a 9 out of 10 Americana UK review and builds on her collaboration with Van Dyke Parks, ‘¡Spangled!^’ which included a cover of Ry Cooder, John Hiatt,  and Jim Dickinson’s ‘Across The Borderline’ and guest slots from Ry Cooder and Jackson Browne, as it tracked the movement of songs across the Americas over the last century or more. Americana UK’s Martin Johnson caught up with Gaby Moreno at home in Los Angeles over Zoom to discuss ‘Dusk’ and why she thinks americana needs to include more latin influences. She also explains why she loves collaborating with other artists, and the particular pleasure she got working with Van Dyke Parks. While she still thinks of herself as Guatemalan and is keen to keep true to its culture, she explains how she gave herself a crash course in American music of the 20^th century.

How are you, and where are you?

I’m fine and at home in Los Angeles.

You were born in Guatemala, how has this heritage influenced your music?

I’ve incorporated some instruments into my music, the marimba for example, which is our national instrument, and I’ve included a little bit of that just to pay tribute, a little nod to Guatemala. I always want people to know I’m a Guatemalan artist and I’m very proud of who I am and where I come from. I just want to spread that joy which is my music and my culture and share it with the world. The fact I am a Guatemalan musician who mixes blues, rock, and folk, I am an artist who is between the cracks which is very americana.

Why did you go to Los Angeles, is there a big Guatemalan diaspora?

Outside of Guatemala, Los Angeles is where you find the most Guatemalans. It is very close, it is only a four-and-a-half-hour flight, and there are also lots of immigrants from South America and Mexico. It’s nice as well because I also have Guatemalan friends here in Los Angeles that I get together with, and that keeps me close to my Guatemalan roots.

You’ve collaborated with a range of musicians, including Ry Cooder, Jackson Browne, Marc Ribot, and Van Dyke Parks, and you’ve written for films and television. How do you see your own career?

I love collaboration, that is something I never want to stop doing. It not only makes me grow as an artist, it really inspires me. All the collaborations I’ve done throughout the years have been so different and I’ve really loved that, each one has brought in something new. It’s been wonderful, and I feel very fortunate to have had those opportunities, and a lot of the time I wasn’t seeking them out, they just came to me and I said yes to a lot of them, because why not? From a collaboration with Hugh Laurie years ago when I was part of his band, and I toured the world with him, which was one of the most satisfying touring experiences I’ve ever had, to collaborating with an artist who is very well-known in Latin American, Ricardo Arjona, and he is like the Bruce Springsteen of Latin America. I collaborated on a song with him which was a massive hit for him, on YouTube it has a billion views already. They were very different styles of music, Hugh Laurie to this guy Ricardo who is more latin pop, and Hugh Laurie who is much more jazz and blues, but it reflects me. I have all these styles that have influenced me from living here in Los Angeles, and I have this other side that really loves latin folk, music that comes from Latin America. So, I will always want to collaborate, if there’s a chance,  with people from these various styles because I think it is a beautiful thing and it makes each artist grow and evolve.

For someone who maybe isn’t that familiar with your music, how would you describe your new album, ‘Dusk’?

I was trying to do an album that would get me more into the world of americana music. I’ve been making music for a very long time, this is my 9^th album and yet because I am still considered a latin artist by a lot of people, it has been pretty hard to get into that whole universe. For me, I believe the whole americana genre needs a bit more representation from latin artists. We’ve seen some incredible artists like Los Lobos and Linda Ronstadt, and even here in the United States there are bands like Making Movies, amazing artists with a latin background making great music who I think deserve their space in that genre. That’s something I really wanted to achieve with this album, just get in there with my little flag thing and go hey, hey, hey. I’m a latin americana artist, and that’s what I’ve been doing forever, but with this album I deliberately made that flag fly a little higher. So, there are more songs in English than in Spanish, and there’s a bit more rock blues, this is music I love doing and I’d done before on my second album years ago, and I wanted to bring that back on this album. There’s a song called ‘Solid Ground’ which has a bit of a Stones vibe, and there’s another song, ‘Ain’t That The Way It Goes?’, that has a Leon Russell Randy Newman kind of vibe. I don’t know, they are just different styles that I have latched on to and that have inspired me that I wanted to reflect with this music.

You are also a producer and you co-produced ‘Dusk’ with Dan Knobler. How did you share production duties?

There were a few songs where I said, no you produce it, I just want to do my thing and sing and play guitar then get out of your way. I love producing for other artists, but I also want to be produced, I want someone else to bring in their point of view otherwise it gets too boring for me if I’m always producing my own music. I want someone to come into my world and I think I really hit it out of the park choosing someone like Dan Knobler. I was co-producer on some songs that I’d already started on my own, songs I’d written a few years prior so even though they were demos I already had an idea how I wanted them to sound, and I brought them to him and he finished them, and that was the co-production aspect of it. For the most part, I was like, take these songs and do as you please, and I don’t recall not liking anything he did. He’s a true gem, it was really wonderful working with him.

Who picked the songs that you covered on the album?

Bob Dylan’s ‘I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight’ was because I performed it live with Van Dyke Parks a year before, and you won’t believe this, but I’d never heard that song, I’m not really proud of that. Van Dyke said let’s do this song for this concert we played in LA, and I was, whoa what is this song I love it, and it was such a blast when we played it live. I knew I wanted to bring Van Dyke in, so I said why don’t we do that song, and he did and it was such a wonderful time. That little intro is just how it happened, Dan Knobler was in the control room and he was like, OK Van Dyke, take it away and he did. He started that piano part and we didn’t rehearse it, and he just kept going and we were like, whoa where is this going? It was just magical, and that take your hearing we didn’t rehearse it we just played it because we sort of remembered how we played it live at the concert but I wanted that fresh take, let’s see what happens and where it takes us, and that’s what you hear.

And you have a Guatemalan song on the album I believe.

Yes, I’d already released ‘Luna de Xelajú’ on my acoustic EP that I put out last year, but I really wanted a full-band version. So, we took the acoustic version from that EP and Dan took it to Nashville and added everything else, all those beautiful layers. I’m really excited about the way that came out, and I’m going to be singing that version on Jimmy Fallon this Monday night.  Of course, I did that with Oscar Isaac.

You’ve worked quite a bit with Van Dyke Parks, what have you learnt from him?

Oh man, aside from so much music that he introduced to me because I started working with him in 2008. We met because of a mutual friend of ours called David Piltch, who is a wonderful upright bass player, who was doing a residency at this club called Largo here in Los Angeles and I was the singer. Every week we would invite special guests to come and join the night, and because he knew them he would invite artists like Victoria Williams and Joe Henry, and one time he invited Van Dyke. I was just this Guatemalan girl and I didn’t know who Van Dyke was, goodness me.

So, I met him and we started talking and he asked me where I was from and I told him a little bit about the music I grew up listening to, and he told me that that was the music he fell in love with in the 1960s. He told me that with his brothers they would tour up and down the coast of California playing those songs, songs from Mexico, Peru, Paraguay, Cuba, boleros, rancheras, mariachis, all of that. He learnt how to play the requinto, which is a traditional instrument from Mexico. We really hit it off and we started talking about all this music, and then he started sending me song ideas and saying we need to do something together, I don’t know what but let’s keep sending each other song ideas that we can work on.

He started sending me some songs from Latin America that I’d never heard, it was just unbelievable the knowledge this man has of music. So that is one thing I’m very grateful I got from him, aside from his musicianship. It is wild to see him arrange a song, or present an arranged song, and him telling me it was something he’d just done in the last hour. It was mind blowing, and seeing how his brain works was fascinating, and I’m so grateful to have met him and to have him in my life, and to have worked with him because he is just an absolute treasure to the world.

Who are your musical heroes?

So many, but I always tell this story that I discovered blues and jazz when I was 13 because I made a trip with my family to New York on vacation. They took us to see musicals because at the time that’s what I was into because growing up in Guatemala I didn’t listen to blues, soul or jazz because that music wasn’t on my radar, it was music you couldn’t easily hear, I don’t recall any radio stations playing that kind of music. So I’m in New York and we’re walking down the street after seeing one of these musicals, it was Times Square, and there was a woman singing on the street and it stopped me in my tracks. My mom tells the story because I vaguely remember it, and she says I stopped and listened to her for a good twenty minutes and then I went up to her and asked her what music she was singing, and she told me it was the blues, honey.

I was like, wow, blues, what is that? I got my mother to take me to a record store, which wasn’t far, and I went to the blues aisle and bought all these CDs. I took them with me and in Guatemala I locked myself in my room and just listened, listened, listened, to this music. Of course, I didn’t know which artists to listen to at first so I just bought compilations, and I do remember some of the artists I was listening to were KoKo Taylor, Big Mama Thornton, B.B. King, and after listening to that every chance I got to go back to the states I would again go to another record store and buy more CDs. I discovered it all by myself, from the blues I went on to Jazz and soul music.

The artists I started listening to a lot as a singer were Nina Simone, Ella Fitzgerald, and Billie Holiday, and then I went on to soul and gospel music. I was listening to Aretha Franklin, Stevie Wonder, and Ray Charles, and it just took off from there. I then got into playing the guitar, and when I came to LA I discovered the whole singer-songwriter folk scene from the 1960s. I got into Joni Mitchell, I got into Bob Dylan, clearly not his whole catalogue. I then got into wonderful bands like the Beatles and T Rex, and I got into Harry Nilsson and David Bowie. These are all the artists I still keep coming back to, it goes back to the blues of the 1920s with Bessie Smith, and the way to, I would say, the 1960s and ‘70s. Latin music from Latin America of course, artists like Chavela Vargas, Trio Los Panchos, wonderful, wonderful artists that have inspired me greatly.

What is your view of America in 2024, do you have more of an outsider’s view?

I feel there are a lot of flaws of course, just like any other country, really. There is a lot of work to be done with many different aspects, but I also see a country where there are so many opportunities, so I really do feel very grateful for the doors that were opened for me when I came here 23 years ago. It’s been quite a ride with the ups and downs, but I feel I wouldn’t be where I am if I had gone anywhere else. I really do believe this country has made me who I am musically, this is where I have grown and been inspired. I love so much music that comes from this country, it is a place I feel I can stay for a long time working in music, which is what I love and feel it is what I came into this world to do. I also worry, I see all the horrible things that go down here and I only hope they get better, and from my little space try and make things better. We have a saying in Guatemala where everyone has to put their own little grain of sand and it doesn’t matter how small, because that leads to the bigger change we want to see, it starts within yourself. I try to stay away from politics and all those kinds of things and focus on the good things that are happening right now, which are also a lot. That’s where I try to plant my feet.

Will you bring ‘Dusk’ to the UK and Europe?

The album comes out on 16^th February, and I had a showcase concert on the 15^th (Americana UK’s review).

We like to share new music with our readers, so currently, what are you really enjoying now that other people may be interested in?

I’m really enjoying Tim Bernardes from Brazil, and he has an album called ‘Mil Coisas Invisíveis’ which means A Thousand Invisible Things. It’s an album he put out last year and it is just a marvellous piece of music, and I highly, highly recommend it. I went to see him play a show in Los Angeles and he was mind blowing, he is truly the real deal.

Is there anything you want to say to Americana UK readers?

Look out for the new music, and I want to say thank you very much for the opportunity because this is my first interview with an outlet in the UK, and an americana one at that. So, I’m super excited that the music is being well received already by the genre. I’m very grateful and I hope I can get to the UK more often and do more shows out there. That would be fun.

Gaby Moreno’s ‘Dusk’ is out now on Cosmica.