Los Lobos Disconnects Sunday at the Musco Center in Orange

By John Roos

One of Steve Berlin’s fondest memories of playing with Los Lobos reaches back to 2009 when the rock band performed a medley of hits in front of the Obamas as part of “In Performance at the White House: Fiesta Latina,” a regal celebration of National Hispanic Month.

But boy have times changed.

The very idea of performing at the White House for our current Commander-in-Chief is unfathomable to Berlin, the baritone saxophone player who left the Blasters to join Los Lobos in 1983.

“I am appalled on a daily basis by how stupid this President is,” Berlin insisted during a recent phone interview. “It’s almost not expressible how I feel. You think you’ve seen the worst but I’m afraid there are many more bottoms to come. The lies, the narcissism, the bullying . . . . what we’re seeing is who the man really is.”

The anti-immigrant stance that has come to define this Presidency runs counter to the tolerance and multi-cultural experience that Los Lobos has embraced since the Mexican-American group from the barrios of East L.A. formed in 1973. Throughout their 40-plus-year career, Los Lobos has spread their music and culture across the globe by blending an enduring mix of rock, blues, Tex-Mex, folk and Americana with traditional Mexican music including cumbia, boleros and nortenos.

While the band members—also featuring lead singer-guitarist David Hidalgo, bassist Conrad Lozano, guitarist-percussionist Louie Perez, guitarist-vocalist Cesar Rosas and adjunct member, drummer Enrique “Bugs” Gonzalez– have never been overtly political, they spring from a collection of immigrants and share what their parents’ border-crossing experience might have been like on their most recent album, 2015’s “Gates of Gold”.

The title-track presents the hopeful promise of a new life across the northern border while facing the unknown in the quest for their own American Dream. Sample lyric: “Far off out of sight/there’s beauty to behold/Some say it’s a place where you never grow old/God only knows what we’ll find beyond those gates of gold.”

“Gates of Gold” also looks ahead to the after-life (“pearly gates”) as the band uses lyrical abstractions to create imagery that can be interpreted in both earthly and spiritual ways.

“We’re closer now to the end than the beginning,” mused the 62-year-old Berlin, “so it’s hard not to think about our mortality sometimes. But we’re still moving forward, trying new things and keeping our heads down while going after it. There’s really no way to predict what the future holds for us. At the same time, there is no expiration date on this band and we’ve been fortunate to last as long we have.”

Los Lobos had a sizeable grassroots following throughout the 1970’s and early-1980’s until their first major label release in 1984, “Will the Wolf Survive?” Critics loved it and the band did gain a bit larger audience but everything changed even more when the group covered the Ritchie Valens-associated song “La Bamba” for the movie of the same name in 1987. Their version soared to Number One on the pop charts and suddenly—for better and worse—Los Lobos was thrust into the national spotlight and was no longer just another band from East L.A.

Expectations from record producers and labels, as well as new mainstream fans, soared and were unrealistic. Los Lobos was never built for that kind of stardom and the quintet was suddenly under siege commercially. The group paused to reassess its business intentions before staying true to its artistic integrity with two terrific releases, “By the Light of the Moon” (1987) and “The Neighborhood” (1990). They boldly ventured into new creative terrain in 1992 with the release of the sublime “Kiko”. This dreamy, magical Mitchell Froom-produced collection of sonic delights took the band into a new musical direction while exploring a variety of neo-psychedelic and ambient textures. In particular, the song “Kiko and the Lavender Moon” still shines as a timeless aural masterpiece.

Los Lobos has continued touring and releasing solid albums over the years despite little support from commercial radio. A follow-up to 2010’s “Tin Can Trust,” “Gates of Gold” is only their second studio album this decade. The band members are at a stage in life where touring and spending time with family and friends takes precedence over recording new, predominantly digital music, which is not a lucrative proposition for most musicians these days.

Now in-between record labels, touring has in effect become the band’s livelihood and one concert they are excited about is Sunday afternoon’s unplugged gig in Orange.

Billed as “Los Lobos Disconnected”, this acoustic-based performance is similar in concept to what the group captured on 2012’s live “Disconnected in New York City” release, where several seldom performed live songs including “Chuco’s Cumbia,” “Tears of God” and “Little Things” held their own alongside staples like “Don’t Worry Baby,” “Tin Can Trust,” “The Neighborhood,” “Set Me Free (Rosa Lee)” and their popular take on “La Bamba”.

What can concert-goers expect when the group unplugs this time around?

“It’s fun to re-contextualize the sound, turn down the volume and strip things back,” said Berlin, who also plays harmonica and keyboards. “Playing this way also forces us to concentrate a bit more because it’s quieter and we’re more exposed to the audience. A little mistake won’t get buried in the booming sound mix that we usually serve up when we’re rockin' pretty hard. So we better be on our game.”

*Los Lobos with openers the Teskey Brothers perform Sunday at the Musco Center for the Arts, Chapman University, 415 N. Glassell St., Orange, (844-626-8726) 4 p.m. $30-$75. www.muscocenter.org.