Raul Malo: I Wish You Well

By Jason Barnard

When I spoke to Raul Malo in December 2020, we were in the worst of the pandemic lockdowns. The Mavericks were attempting to prepare to tour the UK again, promoting their excellent Spanish-language album En Español, and Raul was reflecting on a year spent connecting with fans through whatever means technology allowed. Now, with news of his death on 5 years on, those words take on extra weight.

In our conversation, Raul was champing at the bit to get back on stage. Social distancing and a Mavericks show, he told me, simply didn’t equate. He spoke about connecting with people in a hot, sweaty room, everyone dancing and singing along to the music. That visceral connection, that communion between performer and audience, was what The Mavericks lived for.

When I asked about “Dance the Night Away”, Raul seemed genuinely bemused by its enduring success. It wasn’t a deep song by any means, he said. Rather silly, actually. He’d been tinkering with a horn part, not really thinking much of it. Yet there was his composition, playing at parties in UK hotels, getting everyone onto the dance floor at weddings, connecting with people across all walks of life.

That’s quite an achievement, he reflected. As a songwriter, you want to connect with people. To have a song that does that universally, regardless of background or circumstance, represented something special. The track that made The Mavericks ubiquitous in the 1990s became larger than its creator ever imagined.

The En Español album arrived at the start of the pandemic, a project The Mavericks had long wanted to make. It was a departure, a conscious choice to explore Raul’s Cuban heritage more fully. Rather than hold it back, they released it anyway. People were at home and wanted music. They needed inspiration.

Malo was known as ‘El Maestro’ among his bandmates and fans, his singing style both powerful and emotive. He could adapt to different styles and languages with remarkable fluidity. There’s a Roy Orbison quality to some of his work, Tex-Mex influences running throughout, country underpinning it all, yet the result was unmistakably his own.

As we closed our conversation, Raul spoke about getting through COVID, celebrating music, bringing people together. That’s how we feel, he said. He got that chance. The Mavericks toured, recorded, performed. They brought joy to countless people in those final years. And now his songs remain.

Raul Malo leaves behind his wife Betty and their three sons. He also leaves bandmates along with a legacy of multicultural American music that reached far beyond America itself.

I want to finish with the story Raul told me about one of my favourite song of his, “I Wish You Well.” He explained it came from watching his father near the end of his life. They’d sit together, watching baseball and the news, avoiding anything heavy or emotional. His father wasn’t the type to bare his heart. After a lifetime together, Raul realised there was really nothing left to say. The love was understood, implicit in their silence.

Rual explained:

I realised that at the end, after a lifetime together, after a life of knowing the man and him being there for me and me being there for him all those years, there was really nothing left to say. I knew he loved me and he knew that I loved him. Everybody would get heavy around him and so I would go the other way. We would just have it as if it was another day. And the song really came from that sentiment. At the end of the day, all I can say is “I wish you well, in your next life”. That’s the message of the song. It’s about that sort of love.