Defying definition

By Mark Whittington

Wednesday, Feb. 25, 2009 | 2 a.m.

The last time Los Lobos played “La Bamba,” about 30 members of Ritchie Valens’ family joined the band on stage.

It was the Feb. 2 concert marking the 50th anniversary of the Winter Dance Party, the night Valens, Buddy Holly and J.P. “The Big Bopper” Richardson died in a plane crash.

“It was really amazing to be there with Ritchie’s family, who we’ve known forever,” says Steve Berlin, Los Lobos’ saxophonist and keyboard player.

The Valenzuelas had gone to the crash site near Clear Lake, Iowa, and returned to the Surf Ballroom, which has been preserved much as it was “the day the music died.”

“It was heavy,” Berlin says. “I had his sister crying on my shoulder. She goes, ‘That’s the phone booth that he called Mom from.’ And she points to the little tiny dressing room. ‘That’s where he flipped the coin.’ ”

His voice drops to a whisper.

“I’m just, ‘Oh my God.’ It was powerful to be there with them at that moment and realizing that they really hadn’t come to terms with it. It gave the evening a deeply emotional quality — not that it didn’t have it going in of course.”

But Los Lobos — whose next show is Saturday night at the Silverton — is far more than “La Bamba.”

The song, recorded for the 1987 film about Valens’ life, was the band’s only No. 1 hit. But Los Lobos have won three Grammys, recorded more than a dozen albums to critical acclaim and scored several other movies, including “Desperado.”

Was “La Bamba” a blessing or a curse?

“It was definitely a blessing,” Berlin says. “We got to taste life at the top for a little while. But once it was done, it was done. When the hubbub was over, we were where we were when it started.

“Which is fine, because I think it’s allowed us to stick around for 30 years. If it was one of those ‘quick burn’ careers where everyone in the world is just sick of you in five minutes, it would be a much more challenging thing.”

The band started in East L.A. in the early ’70s with high school buddies Cesar Rosas, David Hidalgo, Louie Perez and Conrad Lozano.

Berlin jokes that he’s the “new guy” in the band because he didn’t join till about 1983, leaving the Blasters, mainstays of the L.A. punk rock scene, and gradually going from fan to occasional jammer to producer to full-time member of Los Lobos.

Although he grew up in Philadelphia — and lives in Portland, Ore. — Berlin says it wasn’t much of an adjustment joining Los Lobos and going from a Jewish-American culture to a Mexican-American culture. (“Although I still don’t get the menudo, personally.”)

“There was a shared musical language,” he says. “Musically we were brothers from a different mother.”

Berlin, 53, speaks with a quiet passion about the creative process, the music business, digital technology and politics, but he’s stumped when asked to describe Los Lobos’ music.

“It’s always been a little tough. We cover an awful lot of ground. During the course of any given show, we could be two or three different bands.”

It’s true. The band mixes musical styles — a norteño flowing into an atmospheric ballad, a cumbia into a hard-core rocker. Members pick up different instruments — putting down a guitar to pick up a button accordion, a baritone sax for the organ, a Les Paul for a bajo sexto. And they switch languages, singing in Spanish, English, Spanglish or Pachuco patois as the song demands.

“We don’t think of ourselves as a ‘Latin band,’ per se. Obviously we mostly are. But it’s never been that’s who we are. It’s always been just ‘American rock band.’ ”

Los Lobos never charted a course to success, embracing diverse influences and reinventing the band as it went along. That happened on its most recent album, “The Town and the City,” which grew into an opus about the immigrant experience.

“We didn’t plan to do a concept record. We didn’t plan to do anything like the record that actually ended up,” Berlin says. “We have refined instincts. There’s a difference between not having a plan and not having instincts.”

The songs are small and dark, Berlin says, and tough to work into live sets. But the album provides a rich payoff for listeners who follow the narrator’s journey from the rural valley to the city and back to the town of his dreams.

“I think as an artist your job is to crack the door and attempt to enlighten and broaden people’s perspectives,” he says, “to give them a glimpse of something beyond the corners of their world.”

The next offerings from Los Lobos should be easier to digest — a children’s CD and a live version of “Kiko,” the band’s groundbreaking album from 1992.

Meanwhile, the band is sitting on the sidelines with no immediate plans to record a new studio album. The Silverton show begins a two-month tour. Berlin also will find time to go into the studio to produce Buckwheat Zydeco and the Illinois band Backyard Tire Fire.

“When the place to hear new music is the commercials for cars, what does that tell you?” Berlin says. “God knows I would hate to be Los Lobos starting out right now. It’s just a tough time. It’s sort of every band for himself. Everybody is struggling for a toehold.

“I’m anxious to see how it all shakes out. I’d like to think there will be a healthy place for people like us.”