Gypsy rock band Diego’s Umbrella has been taking concert-goers by storm with their electrifying blend of Eastern European folk, punk rock and flamenco. The San Francisco-based band just dropped their fourth studio album, Proper Cowboy, in July- their first to be produced by the Rondo Brothers (MC Lars, Foster the People). It is a collaboration that yields eleven very danceable tunes built on incendiary fiddle work, Latin-influenced grooves, and vocals full of vim and vigor. The band’s music has that punk vibe that gets your head nodding, as well as the busy-ness of klezmer that gets your feet moving. They have a knack for pleasing crowds, so if you ever have the opportunity to catch a Diego’s Umbrella show, you won’t be disappointed. They just played a show at North Star Bar in August, so if you caught it, you’ll have had the pleasure of hearing the band’s spritely music that comes from an eclectic group of influences.
Photo by Cameron Ingalls
It all started when college friends and longtime musical collaborators Tyson Maulhardt and Vaughn Lindstrom decided to record a couple four-track EPs. Their initial style was very different from the songs on Proper Cowboy. “I remember playing a show with them in an Irish Pub in 2002, and they sounded more like G Love. It was a laid back jazzy, funky, scat-vocal kind of deal,” says guitarist and percussionist Ben Leon. When Maulhardt and Lindstrom toured Europe, they brought on their friend Jason Kleinberg to play violin. He added that eastern European/gypsy flare to the music, which was already laced with a Latin vibe.
“We really love [those different styles of music]. A lot of the flavor at one point came from Jason- he adds those harmonic minor scales. We eventually found a groove that was [a mish-mosh] of those kinds of music. At one point the styles were a little too far off the map. We made a serious effort to hone it into the thing that it is now,” Leon explains.
If you play in a six-piece band, the songwriting process may get complicated at times because everyone has ideas to bring to the table. There’s a lot of room for the music to get very nuanced, and one song may transform into several versions along the way.
“Tyson, Vaughn and I got together and did a ton of sessions. We started by listening to each other’s stuff, and then workshopped everything with a few acoustic guitars and wrote words. We had a couple of ballads, but we made a decision at the end to trim those away and make basically a party album. We wanted to keep it up and fun,” shares Leon.
Photo by Cameron Ingalls
This album marks the beginning of a new collaboration between Diego’s Umbrella and the Rondo Brothers, so it is without a doubt that the songs on the record have gone in a slightly different direction compared to the band’s previous output. In working with new producers and musicians, you only stand to learn more about taking different approaches to songwriting and recording. In terms of working the Rondo Brothers, Leon notes:
“We’ve got a great label and they’re very supportive, super fun, and pretty nuts at times. They’re down to pursue all sorts of approaches to each song. One of the guys we were working with got a little exhausted toward the end because sometimes we would have three different versions of a song. We started calling it the Build-a-Bear workshop. We all wiped each other out a little bit, but it was awesome. I look forward to making another record with them.”
The variety of musical influences that funnel into D. U.’s sound make them very unique amidst the pop-dominated mainstream music scene. The group’s sound has a bit of exoticism to it that makes it very enticing. “What we do doesn’t feel very exotic to me, but I think that it probably is given the very straightforward state of popular music these days. It’s different from a lot of stuff you’re going to see at a festival.”
Look out for Diego’s Umbrella to bring their high-energy and off-the-beaten-path style back to Philly next summer. They incite musical riots wherever they go.
Written by Michele Zipkin
