Eamonn Fitzgerald's Rainy Day

In the heyday of the ballrooms of romance, the maxim of the dancehall proprietors in the West of Ireland was "to send them home sweatin'", and it did the business. Calexico applied the same principle to a packed Tonhalle last night. The two-hour set left all involved limp and damp but exhilarated as they hit the road home.

Throughout the night, the band morphed into a range of combos: here a five-piece; there an eight-man lineup and, crowning it all, counting the presence of the marvelous flamenco guitarist Salvador Duran and warm-up act Iron and Wine, a dozen musicians were on the stage at the end of the night. Marvellous. The border-line (USA-Mexico) music Calexico plays is infectiously hip-swinging stuff at times, and poignantly topical in places. In light of the debate about illegal migration, Across The Wire has rarely sounded so relevant:

Alberto y Hermano on the coyote's trail
and dodging the shadows of the border patrol
out in the wastelands wandering for days
the future looks bleak with no sign of change

darkness in the eye and down in the soul
all across the wire to those in control
holding so much with no show of heart
you think it'd be crazy to watch it all fall apart
watch it all fall apart

Back in November last year, Salvador Duran, Iron and Wine and Calexico performed at Washington, D.C.'s 9:30 Club, and NPR recorded the entire evening's music. Enjoy it.