Sometimes you need just a little bit more to make something perfect. One more pinch of salt for the exact flavor. A final brushstroke to complete a work of art. For Houston’s Cucucuy, adding just a bit more to a solid base has created some beautiful results for listeners, most notably an impressive new debut album, Noche de Cucucuy.
Noche de Cucucuy gets its night Friday, November 6, with a release party hosted by Dan Electros and Cucucuy’s sister act, Astro Inn. The album features 12 bangers, the perfected blend of adding just a little bit more, here and there, over time, according to Cucucuy’s bassist, producer and spokesperson, Jaykub Rodriguez.
We first met the band in 2022, when it began with Rodriguez, who’d helped power bands like Astro Inn and Handsomebeast, and Tax the Wolf’s Adrian Graniel and Alan Garza. The band’s name was a compass for its musical trajectory, a bastardization of the word “cucuy,” which is how Mexico and other parts of Latin America refer to the boogeyman. Adding a little extra “cu-“ gave the band a calling card, a fun and memorable word to say.
“I love listening to Latino radio stations and they have ‘Cu-cu-cumbia, cu-cu-cumbia!’ — that kind of thing,” Rodriguez told us recently with his best Spanish-language radio announcer impersonation. “Cucucuy sounds fun and we always like the cucuy aspect for this spooky cumbia. We use a lot of spooky sounds.”
Rodriguez describes those sounds as “this weird mix of genres that was all Latin-oriented, but also like a little Houston and it has all kinds of vibes to it.” The songs began as bumper music the band wrote for a television food series called United Tacos of America. Once the project was complete, the founding trio realized their interest in writing cumbia songs was just starting. And, Rodriguez said, it evolved, by adding just a little more, as needed.
“Everybody brought a few songs and we just kind of flushed them out. We had about four or five songs ready and we kind of started to work on more originals and the members,” Rodriguez said. “We played a show or two, but it was mostly covers and in learning those covers, we started writing more originals and seeing how to decode some of those classic Tejano, cumbia, chicha songs and what they were doing.”
As the songwriting went along, so went the addition of band members. The group added multi-instrumentalist brothers Tony and Carlos Ortiz, guitarist Peewee Ruiz and vocalist/percussionist J Moreno. As recording went along, guest artists added to the mix, including Gio Chamba, Big Y, Nick Gaitan and Matt Serice. Local tattoo artist PK created the vibrant cover art and the blood red vinyl was pressed in Houston by 610 Record Manufacturing.
“Over the past few years, we finally had enough material,” Rodriguez said, “and once we got it all recorded, we listened to it as a whole, and were like, there’s still something missing. So, I kind of made an ending song that was real romantic (with) acoustic guitar. Then it was like, we need one more fast song in the middle, so we added another, huapango style, like a cool upbeat thing. And it became a cool record. It was a group effort to make these songs happen. Everybody added their own part.”
Rodriguez is the de facto band leader in a band that has lots of members who’ve led bands. He gave us a comprehensive run down of the talents each band member brings to the table.
“I always gotta shout out the band because they each bring something so cool to the record. Carlos, the drummer, he’s like a rock drummer. He’s played in all these metal bands and he’s technically so good and taught Tony drums, he taught me drums. So, throwing him on a cumbia thing, he’ll do like a metal fill and we’re like, ‘This is cool. What a weird vibe. I love it.’
“Same thing with Tony. I’ve played in bands with Tony since seventh grade and it’s always been like punk rock and different kinds of blues, psychedelic stuff. But we’ve worked many labor jobs, many construction sites, so we know this music like the back of our hand. We listened to it all the time, but we never tried playing it. Once we started getting into it, him learning how to play these keyboard parts and making all these sounds – just so much fun. And then he starts growing out his mullet and, you know, it’s natural.
“Same thing working with Adrian. Mexico’s home for him, so he actually brings the roots to this thing and helps with all the lyrics and all the messaging of what we’re trying to do,” Rodriguez said. “Then we met J Moreno and that guy’s just like a shining star, dude. He’s got this voice. He came into the studio just to record some songs and when I heard him, I was like, ‘I don’t have to put any tuning on him, he’s a pro.’ He just comes in and nails it. And then he started playing some percussion, and I was like, ‘Oh, you’re good at this too?’ He brings this pop star-like charm to everything, but also it’s roots, really, like that Cuban rhythm stuff that we were lacking.
“We get Peewee on guitar every time I’m in a band. I always got to throw Peewee on something. He’s my other partner in crime here,” Rodriguez continued. “I’m like, ‘Just rip a solo dude,’ and then he does his thing and everybody’s like, ‘Ah, that’s why we get Peewee.”
For his part, Rodriguez said, “I get to play these bass lines that I never got to play before and try to start singing in Spanish, which is something I never grew up doing, but I always wanted to get better at. These guys are always pushing me. It’s a band that is slowly pushing everybody to do something new, but that’s kind of always been there. It’s fun, man, a lot of fun.”
That fun comes through on Noche de Cucucuy, Rodriguez promised, and we agreed after an advanced listen. “Amor de Ayer” is the album’s lead single and opens things the appropriate way, by getting listeners moving to a song about unfaithful and forgotten (but not quite forgotten) love, with vocals beautifully traded by Graniel and Moreno. The spooky groove title track and “Amaneciendo,” a collaboration with Gio Chamba, have been on our playlists awhile, having been previously released. We’re digging the vibes of radio-ready “No Se Acabo” and “WowWow,” which sounds puro H-town and is primed for a chopped and screwed version. “Mota,” is a trippy jam about a favorite subject – “Florece como hierba santa,” as the song goes.
There are all sorts of sounds on the album but we didn’t expect some tracks to recall the Beatles. There’s something reminiscent though on album closers “Mijo,” complete with group vocals and trumpet, and “Y Zombis,” a ballad Rodriguez wrote about being a monster for love.
“I don’t know what came over me. One night, I wanted to write a romantic song that’s all acoustic guitar based and I had a melody and I tried my hardest to write in Spanish and I sent it to Peewee and Adrian. I was like, ‘Okay, help me say this correctly,’” Rodriguez said. “And I’m so proud of how that last song came out. It feels like an ending of a romantic novela.”
The track is tender but also menacing, by design. Think Radiohead’s “Creep,” but with far less of the creepiness and a lot more of the undying love, which comes through on amorous lines like “Todavia aún hay esperanza para mí as pensar que soy malvado pero los mantos por ti” and “Usa mi sangre como prueba mis huesos las celan los sabes que haré cualquier cosa para salvarte hasta la muerte daré.”
“It’s pretty much like, I’ll be a monster for you. I’ll do whatever you need. I’ll fight this. I’ll fight the snakes off and the spiders and even the zombies, you know – but, I might turn into a monster. It’s a cool, cool vibe. Definitely goes with the cucuy.”
“The diversity the city has, we tried to encompass that in the record,” Rodriguez added. “’Okay, now we need more of like a classic trio singing song, like mariachi song. Okay, now we need a song that kind of feels like when we grew up and those fast huapangos where everybody does a line dance. Okay, now we need a song that’s more of like you’re driving your little dropped low rider truck to.’
“This is a passion project really more than anything, it was us dipping our toes into something we grew up listening to that we never really got a chance to play. And now that we know that we can do it, where do we go from here? You know, that’s still up in the air,” he said.
“We’ve been slowly marinating these over the past couple years,” he said, “It’s a mix of all the things I’ve been learning over the years of how to record and it finally came together and I’m just happy that it’s finally done and it’s something we could share with people.”
Cucucuy celebrates the release of Noche de Cucucuy Friday, November 6, at Dan Electros, 1031 E. 24th. With Astro Inn. 8 p.m., $23.75.
