Freddy Trujillo is probably best known in Europe as the bass player with The Delines but his life in music stretches back at least three decades. Hailing from Los Angeles he played with The Germs’ Pat Smear, and later with Luther Russell in the short-lived Federale. This latter connection led to long- term friendship, and it was through Russell’s work on Richmond Fontaine’s Lost Son and Winnemucca records that he came to know Willy Vlautin.
I Never Threw A Shadow At It is his fourth solo album, and its immediate genesis may be found in the events and circumstances of 2020. The uprisings around Black Lives Matter, coinciding with pandemic-imposed downtime, prompted, and allowed space and time for reflections on his life and how episodes in it related to, and shone light on, the Chicano experience.
The album draws on the many streams of Chicano participation in American popular music, and while all the other members of The Delines have parts to play it’s a different beast to their work. Further musicians feature, among them a pair of guitarists, A.G. Donnaloia and Kenny Coleman, and violinist Patricia Rojas.
That said, the opening tune is a Willy Vlautin song originally destined for The Delines. ‘Corpus Christi’ is a song about people trying to hang on in places that are out of patience with them, and has something of the feel of a Tex-Mex, psych-garage cut coming out of a dive-bar juke-box. It’s one of the few songs here not of personal lived experience.
Whereas a trio of clearly biographical songs provide the album’s spine. ‘I Didn’t Cross the Border, The Border Crossed Me’ is a ringing declaration of ’why we’re here’ and the reality that Mexican culture was entrenched long before ‘here’ was even thought a United States of America.
‘I Never Threw A Shadow At It’ reaches back to a 1991 experience with the LAPD; a deceptively sultry intro leading into a measured retelling of casual injustice, and a tale finally left to speak for itself. The speaking will comes at the last in the testamentary ‘Many Years Of Minding’ which gathers and enfolds the album’s multiple hues in the person of its begetter.
Hues displayed in a cluster of songs offering a variety of perspective. The heavy and despairing ‘World There Haunting Me’ points to the residual friction between aspiration and fear of failure in the example of his cousin prevented from taking up her university course, made to stay home and help the family. Against that ‘Mexican Hearts’ pictures ordinary people living their lives – “soak up the sun, and live, enjoy the ride” – exactly through someone staying home and helping.
‘Windows’ is a charming country pop song with Rojas’ violin snaking through it, a fetching lightness to Gerardo Calderon’s deft ronroco, charango, and Spanish guitar, and brief name-checks for Chomsky and Alice Bag. ‘No Puedo Llevar Este Dolor’ perhaps a bar-room lament for lost ambitions whose verve belies its sentiment while ‘Julio Jones’ an infectious instrumental in whose wild twang the desert collides with the surf, and the soulful Paul deLay cover with backing vocals from Amy Boone ‘Remember Me’ the plea of everyman.
Freddy’s ambition was “to make a record that didn’t feel safe, but really spoke the truth, from my experiences”, with this impressive album full of contrasts and variety he’s surely succeeded in that.
The Delines are touring in Europe from 11th June onwards, and on most nights Freddy will be opening with solo performances of songs from the album. Ticket links on The Delines website.
Prior to the tour he plays three solo shows:
8th June: Wild Acres in Sussex
9th June: The Hopscotch Pub, Crystal Palace
10th June: The Troubadour, Earls Court (songwriters’ circle with Ella Raphael and Graham Weber
Bucketfull Of Brains 