El Tule

Double decades ago, when El Tule emerged from East Austin, any overarching sense of a homegrown Latin scene – like all popular music since this time last century – liquified into our music capital’s genre melt. Ponty Bone, Rosie Flores, Alejandro Escovedo, Beto y Los Fairlanes, and Tomás Ramirez flourished, but with Grupo Fantasma’s millennial rise, a more alternative scene began to emerge. El Tule rattled and rolled with the best of them, a banging blend of South Texas Tex-Mex, Northern Mexico traditionalism, and Austonian psych. Bandleader John Dell’s cumbia crushers El Combo Oscuro flourished during the pandemic, but now he mothballs the mothership by notching 20 years with El Tule Live at Hotel Vegas, whose teaser “Tranquilo (En Vivo)” knocks back a shot of agave ATX. – Raoul Hernandez