The Mavericks & Friends

For three decades, The Mavericks carved out their Grammy-winning sound — a multicultural version of American roots music, blending stateside influences like country and rock & roll with the border-crossing textures of Cuban grooves, Tex-Mex twang, and Latin swagger — under the direction of Raul Malo. Raul wasn’t just the band’s frontman; he was its larger-than-life patriarch, with a booming baritone hailed by Rolling Stone as “operatic, spiritual, casually elegant, and wholly captivating.” With help from musicians like Paul Deakin, Robert Reynolds, Eddie Perez, and Jerry Dale McFadden, Malo turned The Mavericks into modern-day legends on their own terms, enjoying mainstream success during the 1990s (when songs like “All You Ever Do Is Bring Me Down” became staples on country radio) before reinventing themselves as genre-bending independents during the 2010s and beyond.  “Raul was one of those fine-wine singers,” says Deakin, who co-fo