For 4 days every June, all eyes within the resort city of Puerto Peñasco, Mexico, are on Roger Clyne.
He’s the chief of Roger Clyne and the Peacemakers, and he’s additionally the founder and first curator of Circus Mexicus — a beachfront music pageant, heavy on unbiased rock and nation that performs out in and round Puerto Peñasco (Rocky Level in English), a four-hour drive throughout the desert from both Phoenix or Tucson and located on the Gulf of California.
By evening, Clyne is the headliner and important draw at Circus Mexicus. By day, he makes his method round city, from bar to bar, shaking palms with followers and shopping for rounds of tequila pictures and margaritas for anybody who appears . For Clyne, a lifelong Arizonan whose household ranch is 30 miles south of Tucson within the Sonoran desert, tequila pictures and margaritas come second-nature. His solely problem in making these rounds is pacing himself.
“I’m Santa Claus on Christmas right here,” Clyne says of internet hosting Circus Mexicus. “I’m tremendous busy. The trickiest half is serving all these superb followers, prospects and vacationers — and people bars, and making it residence alive and getting a great nap earlier than nonetheless placing on the most effective present that I can placed on.”
Circus Mexicus is in its twenty sixth 12 months. Counting pre-parties and afterparties earlier than and after the principle pageant, subsequent month’s incarnation will happen from June 5 by means of 9. The four-piece Peacemakers, identified for “Heaven on a Paper Plate,” “Inexperienced & Dumb,” “Switchblade,” and a bunch of songs from Clyne’s prior band — The Refreshments — headline two nights. Others on the invoice embody Micky and the Motorcars, John Cannon of Low Down Drifters, Willy Braun of Reckless Kelly, and Shelby Stone.
Competition organizers, Clyne included, are conscious of the present U.S. political local weather, particularly insurance policies surrounding border crossings. Clyne says his expertise on the main crossing for followers driving to Puerto Peñasco — in Lukeville, Arizona — up to now this 12 months has been much like earlier years and doesn’t anticipate main delays or incidents for touring followers.
Clyne, 57, has been writing, recording and performing for almost 4 a long time. He fell right into a vibrant faculty rock scene in Tempe within the late Eighties. Within the span of a decade, the school bars within the Phoenix suburb gave rise to various bands resembling Gin Blossoms, Pistoleros, and the Refreshments. Even informal followers of Nineties rock have seemingly heard “Banditos,” The Refreshments’ 1996 breakout hit about robbing a financial institution in a border city — which Clyne nonetheless performs immediately. The Refreshments additionally recorded the catchy instrumental theme music for King of the Hill. However the band members had been younger and unstable, and in 1998, the group cut up after six years.
After the breakup, Clyne and P.H. Naffah — Refreshments drummer and co-founder — regrouped and shaped the Peacemakers in 1999. Round many of the U.S., the Peacemakers are a membership band, however in Arizona, they’re bona fide superstars, headlining main venues and festivals and incomes a 2019 induction into the Arizona Music & Leisure Corridor of Fame. “Peacemakers” has a double that means, too, as it’s the identify Clyne has given to the band’s fiercely loyal fan base. Immediately, the band is Clyne and Naffah plus bassist Nick Scropos and lead guitarist Jim Dalton — who additionally fronts the Denver-based nation band the Railbenders. Their 11 studio albums, all independently launched, nonetheless evoke Clyne’s alt-rock roots, however they’re way more aligned, musically, with Americana.
All of that is on show at Circus Mexicus, which started within the wake of the Refreshments’ breakup.
“The Refreshments put out a file, and was me singing about what I do know,” Clyne recollects. “Mexico is in there as a spot. Characters from Mexico are in there as folks. Then, 1999 occurs. The Refreshments — as has been well-documented — have damaged up. The Peacemakers are simply beginning to do stuff, and I mentioned, ‘Let’s fucking go to Mexico,’ as a result of we couldn’t do it with the Refreshments. The file label, administration and distribution, all of them couldn’t generate income down there. However I mentioned, let’s stroll the stroll and go down there and do one thing.
“It wasn’t even a pageant, it was a present. I drove the band’s van down there on the lookout for a stage, and no person had one. However, at Sundown Cantina, there was a younger man named Chad, and he goes, ‘I don’t have a stage, however I acquired a roof. I can put pallets up there and run an extension wire.’ Excessive-five! Let’s do it! That was October 1999. That’s the place this entire journey started.”
Over time, Circus Mexicus advanced, finally ballooning right into a four-day pageant drawing upwards of 5,000 followers to its beachfront important stage and a sequence of facet phases at bars, cantinas, and eating places stretching from Puerto Peñasco to La Choya. Clyne says that is the pure results of a fan base that returned year-over-year.
“We used to go one evening, and play for 4 hours and move out,” Clyne tells Rolling Stone. “Attempt to be the final folks standing. If the band was the final one standing, and all people else was laying down, and it was 2 within the morning, that was one thing! However, issues form of modified, and our crowd acquired older, and had completely different wants, so we tried to adapt to these. Let’s begin at 9 as a substitute of 11. Let’s convey our buddies — our musical group — down right here. Let folks day-drink and go see music in any respect of our cantinas.”
He says “our” deliberately. Clyne has an affinity for Puerto Peñasco and Mexico as an entire. Rising up on his household’s ranch — nonetheless run by his father, Doc Clyne, and website of the intimate Clyne Nation Campout pageant in mid-autumn — he was uncovered to Mexican tradition by means of the employed ranch palms from south of the border. His first shot of tequila — “I acquired to knock it again with them,” had been his phrases — got here at round age 11 or 12, when he noticed some palms from Mexico consuming it out of an unmarked bottle.
“We acquired numerous assist from the locals,” Clyne says. “And by ‘locals,’ I additionally embody Mexican folks. The border wasn’t an enormous ballyhoo then. You might cross the border with no huge deal. We did it on a regular basis.
“It was at all times actually cooperative. My relationship goes method again, and I’ve a deep respect due to how I do not forget that. Now, in fact, politics will get concerned, and the border will get much less porous, and other people get vilified on either side. That every one occurred independently of my expertise. I simply tried to disregard it.”
He’ll ignore it once more subsequent month in Puerto Peñasco, when he pre-games his personal pageant by making an attempt to look as cool to his followers because the cowboys with the tequila appeared to him. He’s fairly assured he’ll discover takers as soon as once more for the pictures.
“All I’m doing is placing cash within the cantinas’ pockets,” Clyne says.
Josh Crutchmer is a journalist and creator whose fourth ebook, Never Say Never: Cross Canadian Ragweed, Boys From Oklahoma, and a Red Dirt Comeback Story for the Ages, was launched in April through Again Lounge Publishing.
